# Are surinam or fulvous roaches fine for mantids?



## WhatWhyWhere (Jul 14, 2021)

Where I'm at, there are some roach restrictions, so not much to choose from for roaches. 

I ordered some mantids, but, I wasn't really paying attention to the sizes and got some a bit larger than I expected. They'd have to eat a lot of hydei. Anyhow, they ate a bunch of hydei tonight, just as well as I had a culture that was almost done anyhow so I gave them the rest of it. But, now I'm finally ordering a roach colony which I should have done already. 

They are Popa spurca and I think L4, a bit over an inch long. 

I have a bunch of wax worms in the fridge that my other creatures didn't like that I was going to let turn into moths if they would like those. 

Locally, I could buy mealworms, waxworm, horned worms or crickets. 

In addition to the roaches, am I going to wish I'd started a housefly culture? 

For most mantises, can I get away with just Hydei, houseflies, roaches and the occasional wax worm moth?

Sorry about the rambling post.


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## agent A (Jul 18, 2021)

hello!

so here has been my experience with roaches and _Popa spurca_

they are hit or miss. Females are more likely to eat them, and it seems like before the presub stage they won't eat them very readily. I think it has to do with the roaches being fairly flat. they tend to just sit on the floor of the cup and not do much, and the _Popa _aren't particularly interested

I wouldn't start a housefly culture for just a few mantises. I simply buy 500 pupae every 3 weeks, emerge them all out in a pop-up cage, and feed them nectar, watered down syrup, and crested gecko food (for protein and vitamins). They'll also eat milk and the material from flowers. I toss male willow catkins in their cage in spring to allow them to eat pollen, and I sometimes stick bee pollen into the cage. Keep in mind I have about 200 mantises. I've cultured houseflies before, and it can get really out of hand very quickly. A hundred adults can give rise to 3000 new adults in about 2 weeks, and that just is obnoxious! 

crickets are a good food for a number of species. I buy from Ghann's cricket farm, as they have the best rates. Generally, I buy 1000 of 3-4 different sizes, so 1000 1/8", 1000 1/4", 1000 1/2", and 1000 3/4"

Ghann's uses the banded cricket, which is easier to keep than typical pet store crickets. I keep them in large clear totes with a watering tower, a plate of dry food, a plate of fruit or veggies, and egg crate. I will take pics later. I use a separate bin for each size. I go through these crickets after about 6 weeks. I feed crickets and roaches to the amphibians, and certain species of mantis get crickets and roaches.

Generally, every empusid should only get flying things

anything in the Mantidae and Deroplatyidae (which includes _P. spurca_) can eat crickets and roaches

within the Hymenopodidae, certain species can get crickets and roaches in conjunction with flies (_Creobroter_ for example), although many others should only get flies, moths, and bees

if you can have suriname, dubia, and lobster roaches where you are, I will send you some for free

_Popa spurca _will prefer flighty, active prey during the earlier instars. In order to get young nymphs to eat crickets, I have to tilt the cup so they walk up to the nymph. Older nymphs will crawl to the floor of the cage to hunt crickets. 

In a pinch, you can do a few things to get wild insects. Sweep net through a flowery meadow for syrphid flies, bees, grasshoppers, etc. Leave a light on at night to attract god knows what. Set out some wet cat food or deli meat into the sun and net up the flies that come along to it

variety is great!


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 20, 2021)

Holy Cow!  Well it took a week to get a reply WhatWhyWhere, but I think it was worth the wait.


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## WhatWhyWhere (Jul 20, 2021)

mantisloverguy6000 said:


> hello!
> 
> so here has been my experience with roaches and _Popa spurca_
> 
> ...


Thank you for your reply, sorry about the delay in response. 

My current line-up includes two P. spurca, 2 L3 H. coronatus, a ghost and a double shield. I have a bit over 30 tarantulas and my kid has a leopard gecko, we go through a lot of bugs, but, more crickets than anything. I keep forgetting about the banded cricket and just getting the basic one, I'm not having them die off too badly, but, I feel like keeping them alive is more effort than my tarantulas. 

So far I've been feeding just fruit flies because I knew some couldn't eat crickets at all. But, now that I know P. spurca can eat crickets, that's easy as I have a ton of those. I think I will order housefly pupa and see how that goes. It sounds like for the H. coronatus I'll need to grow out some moths too. They just molted from L2 to L3, so I imagine they'll be done with hydei before I know it. 

Sorry, I should have done more research before buying them. I'd read about enclosures, ventilation, humidity and so on, but, for some reason just assumed they'd all be able to eat crickets eventually like my tarantulas. Oh well, at least I checked before actually doing it. I knew the little ones ate fruit flies, but, didn't stop to question why people weren't feeding pinhead crickets.. lol 

I'm stuck with just surinams, fulvous or discoids I believe. I should have some surinams on the way already or else I'd take you up on your offer. I think person I'm getting them from is just waiting on a cool enough day to ship.


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## agent A (Jul 20, 2021)

WhatWhyWhere said:


> Thank you for your reply, sorry about the delay in response.
> 
> My current line-up includes two P. spurca, 2 L3 H. coronatus, a ghost and a double shield. I have a bit over 30 tarantulas and my kid has a leopard gecko, we go through a lot of bugs, but, more crickets than anything. I keep forgetting about the banded cricket and just getting the basic one, I'm not having them die off too badly, but, I feel like keeping them alive is more effort than my tarantulas.
> 
> ...


_P. spurca _are odd. They'll go on hunger strike, but they seem to like maintaining a slim figure (they are my spirit animal haha). Maybe this is why they grow so darn slowly (8 months to reach adulthood!). If they just gorged themselves like other species do, they could reach adulthood in no time, but then again they wouldn't look like twigs anymore!

they like a food rotation, but you can't go wrong with flies

mantisplace.com is a great place to get fly pupae. with your modest collection of mantises, 100 or so fly pupae a month should suffice. I make a nectar for my flies by mixing 1/4 cup honey, 1/4 cup molasses, 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce together and then thickening it with fructose until it's saltwater taffy texture. then i add 1g per 100mL water and feed that to flies. I also make crested gecko MRP for the flies to feed on

I change out the food every other day

your _H. coronatus _should handle houseflies at i3, but the ghosts won't until i4

I recommend keeping up with the food sizes. when I reared _Galinthias amoena _on just houseflies, they produced infertile ooths despite mating. I reckon if I gave them bottleflies from the subadult stage onward, they wouldn't have had this issue. fruitflies are probably not adequate for larger nymphs

double shields will eat anything you throw at them

I feed my tarantulas a rotation of crickets, roaches, and moths

how hot is it where the person is? surinams can take 90F easily!


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## WhatWhyWhere (Jul 20, 2021)

mantisloverguy6000 said:


> _P. spurca _are odd. They'll go on hunger strike, but they seem to like maintaining a slim figure (they are my spirit animal haha). Maybe this is why they grow so darn slowly (8 months to reach adulthood!). If they just gorged themselves like other species do, they could reach adulthood in no time, but then again they wouldn't look like twigs anymore!
> 
> they like a food rotation, but you can't go wrong with flies
> 
> ...


Thank you so much for the information- since I'll be ordering flies anyways, I will keep up and move to bottleflies. I was trying to get less reliant on having to order as I've been having delivery issues with even things like plants that should be able to handle shipping. 

You likely know how it is, if you're paying for shipping anyways, might as well order some more tarantulas.. lol I have a couple tarantulas and a mantid in my surinam order. That's the hold up. I know the surinams won't care. The shame of it is, I used to be able to catch them by the shoebox full at my parent's place but my dad got a new backpack style bug sprayer and last time I found none at all. I didn't bother to raise them because I could just go dump out a couple stacks of nursery pots and have a bajillion of them. Realistically, if I spread out some chicken feed out in my backyard and put a stack of plant pots out there I could probably harvest a bunch of them in a few weeks. 

I went ahead and ordered some flies from mantisplace- I ordered a combo pack so I could try out a few. 

What moths are you feeding?


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 21, 2021)

Do either of you have any thoughts on the proverbial "brown goo of death" that gets discussed in connection with mantids that have been fed crickets?  Does the disease occur primarily with pet store crickets that haven't been properly raised?  .......or crickets that have been fed carrots?  Is it more likely to occur with the virus prone Acheta domesticus species, as opposed to Ghann's Gryllodes sigillatus variety?


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## agent A (Jul 21, 2021)

WhatWhyWhere said:


> Thank you so much for the information- since I'll be ordering flies anyways, I will keep up and move to bottleflies. I was trying to get less reliant on having to order as I've been having delivery issues with even things like plants that should be able to handle shipping.
> 
> You likely know how it is, if you're paying for shipping anyways, might as well order some more tarantulas.. lol I have a couple tarantulas and a mantid in my surinam order. That's the hold up. I know the surinams won't care. The shame of it is, I used to be able to catch them by the shoebox full at my parent's place but my dad got a new backpack style bug sprayer and last time I found none at all. I didn't bother to raise them because I could just go dump out a couple stacks of nursery pots and have a bajillion of them. Realistically, if I spread out some chicken feed out in my backyard and put a stack of plant pots out there I could probably harvest a bunch of them in a few weeks.
> 
> ...


I use waxworm moths usually. I used to rear _Spodoptera exigua _as feeders too. i also catch moths at lights and use those for food. I sometimes rear small-medium geometrids but these are often seasonal as they feed on deciduous plants. Shame there isn't much available that will feed on AD or lettuce or an evergreen and will be able to rear year-round. the AD for _S. exigua _isn't commercially available (I've tried them on commercially available ADs without much success), _Manduca sexta _are really big and cannibalistic, so rearing them isn't that practical, but I think we could try to rear _Pieris brassicae _or _Vanessa cardui _as feeders... lemme look into that



Introvertebrate said:


> Do either of you have any thoughts on the proverbial "brown goo of death" that gets discussed in connection with mantids that have been fed crickets?  Does the disease occur primarily with pet store crickets that haven't been properly raised?  .......or crickets that have been fed carrots?  Is it more likely to occur with the virus prone Acheta domesticus species, as opposed to Ghann's Gryllodes sigillatus variety?


I've heard of this

my suspicion is that this is an infection transferred from the cricket to the mantis. Since _Achetta domesticus _is prone to diseases, it's possible this is to blame, but without a thorough investigation into the causative agent, we may never know. I can, at some point, do a literature search on the diseases of crickets and see if there's info on any transmission to mantises


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 21, 2021)

mantisloverguy6000 said:


> I've heard of this
> 
> my suspicion is that this is an infection transferred from the cricket to the mantis. Since _Achetta domesticus _is prone to diseases, it's possible this is to blame, but without a thorough investigation into the causative agent, we may never know. I can, at some point, do a literature search on the diseases of crickets and see if there's info on any transmission to mantises


Yes, if it's worth your while, I'd be interested in what the literature says.  Some mantis keepers just avoid crickets as a rule, rather than run the risk of infecting their pets.  I suspect it's all in the way that you keep/raise them.........the crickets that is.


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## agent A (Jul 21, 2021)

Introvertebrate said:


> Yes, if it's worth your while, I'd be interested in what the literature says.  Some mantis keepers just avoid crickets as a rule, rather than run the risk of infecting their pets.  I suspect it's all in the way that you keep/raise them.........the crickets that is.


i will try to do it tonight but my car broke down yesterday and so I am way behind on animal care and that has to come first


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## agent A (Jul 22, 2021)

ok so here's what I could gather...

according to this article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022201110002727?casa_token=iT67Dh4kAfkAAAAA104C0N_Zo8KfVnZNGrM-H_LX6rueUAgSW_s5xzn3h6bFDfRWPshM30DLclnpiAAn8PttI6TV_o

only _Acheta domesticus _tissue is susceptible to the virus

HOWEVER, there are 2 bacteria, _Rickettsia grylii _and _Serratia marcescens_, that infect crickets, with _S. marcescens _being isolated from a number of other species (including humans). Something tells me that any of the infections mantises get after eating crickets is due to a bacterium, possibly this one

unfortunately, there hasn't been any research done in the diseases of mantises

here's a study on the life history of _Popa spurca_. like me, the authors note that it takes well over 200 days for the nymphs to reach maturity, with males taking a bit longer, but I am confused as to how their females only lived 4-5 months after the final molt. Mine live nearly another year!

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00305316.2020.1820916?casa_token=ja8vmsFuyRcAAAAA%3AWlOAD8l8F4SGrSAm_tmuuu0wJkcyWephk-WGjbM6iJJbxx3mlon60bUA7-mKDLtV7j-8VkZq5sv6tA

I also couldn't find much on mantis microflora

so without doing culturing or microscopy of diseased mantises, I am just not sure. I suspect (given that most mantises are solitary) when our mantises get infections and die, they are due to some generalist pathogenic bacterium that came from their food, but that still doesn't explain why you can get a few deaths out of dozens of mantises that ate prey from the same cage, while the others are fine

i don't know... it isn't studied well enough


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 22, 2021)

Thanks for finding that.  Interesting that the infections are most likely bacterial.  I guess that rules out the densovirus as a potential culprit.


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