# Keeping subadult and adult ghost mantids together?



## mantisman111 (Sep 10, 2014)

hello!

My first ghost mantis has finally molted into an adult, but I have a question. I never keep instars together, but since the size increase from subadult to adult wasn't huge, I am wondering if keeping them together is okay? I don't want any cannibalism.


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## twolfe (Sep 10, 2014)

Is your adult mantis a female? If so, I would separate them. The amount of food, size of the container and other things factor in. This species is less cannibalistic but there is always a chance.


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## mantisman111 (Sep 10, 2014)

Tammy Wolfe said:


> Is your adult mantis a female? If so, I would separate them. The amount of food, size of the container and other things factor in. This species is less cannibalistic but there is always a chance.


I'm pretty sure both the L7 and adult are female, and I have one L6 male straggler. The container houses the females, its a 15" net cube and I always make sure enough crickets are there for them. This was very unexpected!


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## Aryia (Sep 10, 2014)

If you have enough to take chances with, there's a good chance they won't eat each other if you keep them well fed. If you don't have enough to take chances with, then keep the females separate. I have all my females housed separately and all the males together, no problems so far. You have to remember that all mantises are cannibalistic once they are hungry, ghosts are simply known to be more "communal" since they're not active hunters.

Be careful with leaving crickets inside the enclosure btw. They will attack mantises if they see the opportunity for it (aka your mantis is lethargic from an impending molt) or knock them off while they are being crickets and hopping around.


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## mantisman111 (Sep 10, 2014)

Aryia said:


> If you have enough to take chances with, there's a good chance they won't eat each other if you keep them well fed. If you don't have enough to take chances with, then keep the females separate. I have all my females housed separately and all the males together, no problems so far. You have to remember that all mantises are cannibalistic once they are hungry, ghosts are simply known to be more "communal" since they're not active hunters.
> 
> Be careful with leaving crickets inside the enclosure btw. They will attack mantises if they see the opportunity for it (aka your mantis is lethargic from an impending molt) or knock them off while they are being crickets and hopping around.


I do only have three. I am still unsure on the gender, I will be posting pictures in this thread after I get home from work tonight. I have kept the three of them successfully in this cube since they were L5 with no issues whatsoever, only separating the separate instars when molts occured.


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## mantisman111 (Sep 10, 2014)

Here he/she is




any help?


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## Ranitomeya (Sep 11, 2014)

That's an adult female. Don't house them together if you don't want any cannibalism to occur. There's always a chance even in the most "communal" species and the chance of cannibalism increases if you house later instars/adults with earlier instars.


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