# housing 80 flowermantis nympths in a 13" X 13" X 13" butterfly cube



## macro junkie (Jan 3, 2008)

now i have enough food i have trasfered the 80 nympths that where in single cups all to the same cage..there in This is a 13" X 13" X 13" butterfly cube fomr mantis place..i just chucked loads iof wingless fruet fly in there..some have allready shed to L2 but my Q is..how long can i house them toghther with lots of food untill they start eating each other?i tryed housing 80 in single cups..what a nightmare..lol.its so much easier now in the same cage.when do i need to seprate them?L3? oh and is 80 to many for that small cage?


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## yen_saw (Jan 3, 2008)

When running out of net cage, i sometimes put 200 mantis together in that foot cube cages. and remember once i had 300 orchid mantis hatchling in the same cage as they all hatched at the same time.

I assumed you have _P. ocellata _ right now, they preferred not to eat each other when plenty of fruit flies are available. You can increase the surface area within the foot cube net cage with plenty of branches and leaves, i like to coil up some raffia on the fake branches/leaves too to further increase moulting surface and provide more hiding spots as well. But for the food, i prefer to use flyable fruit flies (wild) instead of wingless/flightless fly when keeping them in a large cage. The wild fruit flies will fly around and cover a larger area and thus giving better chance for the nymphs to catch/eat. Wingless/flightless fruit flies prefer to stay still at the bottom or at the highesit point and remain still, unless you shake the net cage and trigger the flies to move again, so without any movement to trigger the nymphs to catch the fruit flies they might turn on to each other when starved. Regardless, cannibalism is all possible with you keep bunch of them together, but with 80 nymphs you can afford to lose some, but proper way of feeding and setting can certainly reduce casualty.


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## macro junkie (Jan 3, 2008)

thanks u yen


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## Kruszakus (Jan 3, 2008)

Yeah - I'm a big fan of flying flies - they may be less handy - but I usually sacrifice a small area in my bugatorium to leave few jars with various fruit pieces inside (with some honey it's a great type of sustenance), so they congregate in one place. I get much more flies than from some strange flour-honey-yeast nourishement - plus, they can reach every place in a container - thus makining an easy target for mantids.


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## asdsdf (Jan 4, 2008)

Mine seem to be extra fierce. When I tried to mix an ooth of ant mantis nymphs with them, they are all practically gone! O.O (I dump in 3 cultures of d.melano almost everyday....)


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