# coloney?



## robo mantis (Jul 31, 2006)

Is it possible to keep egyptian mantids together in one huge container and they will not kill eachother?


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## julian camilo (Jul 31, 2006)

as a rule, no. they will eat each other as readily as any other prey, especially if food isnt completely abundant. if its absolutely massive, then maybe. but for it to be ok, itd have to be so big that youd probably have trouble seeing them and theyd have trouble finding food. so in short, no.


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## robo mantis (Jul 31, 2006)

ok any how i have a lot of them and it isn't funny


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## Rick (Jul 31, 2006)

> ok any how i have a lot of them and it isn't funny


A lot will die so don't worry they will thin out.


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## robo mantis (Jul 31, 2006)

ok right now i have a few L1's and i am trying to grow them


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## jplelito (Jul 31, 2006)

In general, I agree, not a great idea.

But I did actually set up a few of these once, because, like it seems you have, I had more than I could even begin to count. And it's a more humane way of thinning them than just arbitrarily picking up a few of the little guys and dumping them in the freezer

So if you absolutely want to try it, here's what I did:

10 gallon aquarium, fine window screening as a lid, plus a whole mess of cheap walmart silk plants, preferably the ivy kind that you can sort of bend, and comes with a lot of foliage. If you literally cram the tank full of these, so that theres barely any space to move around, you can set about 100 M. paykullii loose, and then just dump in a few 100 fruit flies every other day (use D. hydei as they age, then bottle flies)... you might end up with 20 late instar nymphs. I made two of these, and ended up with maybe 30 subadult/adults, mostly females (surprise, surprise).

If you mix hatches/sizes you will lose just about all of them. if you use siblings and just let the ooths hatch into the terrarium, for some reason that seems to work better. I think it's because they are all the same size, all eat at the same time, all molt together, etc. so they're always busy doing their thing, and don't interact too much. And flies are the best, because the Miomantis will always go up, to the lid, and so will the flies, so they stay full longer.

I think the other trick is, keep them at room temperature, or even cooler. They eat less and don't sem to attack as often.

Good luck!


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## robo mantis (Jul 31, 2006)

thanks i have 3 eggs 2 hatched and the other will hatch soon i like this kind of mantis because they like being held and don't need that much care i mean all you do is mist them and keep them warm and you fine  well i got a container and put about 9 mantids in and i put in a lot of flies and they all are getting fat i think when they shed next i'll separate a lot of them


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## Jay (Jul 31, 2006)

You CAN keep them together until subadult as long as you feed them well. The only times in which I have seen cannabalism is when they were not fed at least every other day. Males seem to be more communial at subadult and tend to leave each other alone while females start becoming much more aggressive at subadult (Pouncing on prey, looking at males as if they were prey, etc.).


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## yen_saw (Aug 1, 2006)

Miomantis Paykullii seems to be hungry all the time. They will never hesitate eating each other. I have lot of adult pair in one cage and found out that most of the male were eaten in a week even with plenty of food!


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