# h. grandis



## Devilpacker

Do you have to feed h grandis pinkies?


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## Sheldon Johnson

no, but you _could_ feed a female some.


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## Macano

Why waste time with pinkies? Get rid of all those darn stray kittens the fun way! Here kitty kitty! :twisted:


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## Jackson

My ones are only ever interested in moving food.


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## Rick

No, they eat crickets and the other usual stuff. Even though they could eat a pinkie.


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## Max

Congrats On Being A Moderator Now Rick


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## dino

Hello Devilpacker,

You can feed a H.Grandis a pinkie if you want to. But make sure if you don't do that don't just feed your H.Grandis crickets it is not healthey for the mantis. You should move on to a new diet every once and a while such as moths.mealworms,flies. But you should not feed your mantis a assassin bug,wasp,bee or any other animals that contain poision. I have heard of someone removing the stinger on a wasp and feed it to thier mantis. (I can't remember the guy who put that on thier caresheets I think it was DeShawn at mantiskingdom.com) However, he probably got lucky. But I still woudn't try this.

Well good luck


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## Rick

It is ok to feed all crickets if you have too. But you have to look at what you feed the crickets. I feed my crickets dry cat food and fresh baby greens. This is called gutloading and makes the crickets more nutritious for the mantids. Of course if you can vary the diet that is good too. However a lot of people just cannot keep several kinds of feeder insects around. During the summer months I collect insects outside to feed my mantis but the vast majority of their diets consists of gutloaded crickets.


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## dino

Hello,

I personaly still wouldn't just feed your mantis crickets, because last summer I bought a Female spiny flower mantis nymph for my friend but he told me to take care of it while he was gone for vacation and all I did was feed the female crickets. A few days later she started having black dots all over her abdomen and died 2 days later after the dots started to appear.


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## Rick

You have to make the cricket nutritious. What the cricket eats the mantis eats. My crickets eat better than me sometimes I think. I also have turtles so my crickets feed those too. During summer my mantids get more variety though. But all winter its nothing but crickets. Never had a problem with mantids and they still produce large, healthy ootheca.


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## dino

Hello,

I read that you can not even feed one cricket to a Gonglyus Gonglyodes or the females may be unable to produce eggcases.


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## Peekaboo

> Hello,I personaly still wouldn't just feed your mantis crickets, because last summer I bought a Female spiny flower mantis nymph for my friend but he told me to take care of it while he was gone for vacation and all I did was feed the female crickets. A few days later she started having black dots all over her abdomen and died 2 days later after the dots started to appear.


It sounds like the specific crickets you fed the mantid was the problem, rather than crickets in general. I had pws during winter and had to resort to feeding them crickets as well. All my pws were fine and lived happy healthy lives.

The crickets that killed your friend's mantid might have eaten something bad for the mantid, or the crickets may have been sick themselves. As Rick said, what the cricket eats, the mantid eats. In fact, what any feeder insect eats, your mantid eats.


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## Leah

There are a few food-grade high quality gut loads available online. Many are geared for reptiles, however, they often can be used for insects as well. Gutload is what makes or breaks a bloodline otherwise cared for properly, in my opinion, the differences are stifling. We've just recently started marketing our own gutload that has been used for reptiles AND insects over multiple generations for the last 13 years. If interested, its listed in the classifieds here.


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## dino

Hello,

I fed them house crickets from your pet shop and I fed the crickets grapes and oranges.


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## Peekaboo

Dino ... I don't own a petshop. Were you talking to Leah perhaps?

As for feeding the crickets fruit, I think I remember reading on the forum that one of the posters believed that fruit might have been the culprit for making some of their mantids sick. If I recall correctly, both their mantids and the pw you were caring for exhibited the same symptoms before death. It's quite possible the fruit fed feeders may make mantids sick.


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## dino

Sorry for the mistake. And I VERY HIGHLY doubt that fruit can make a mantis sick. Fruit is healthy so I dont know you told you that fruit is bad. It says in the book Praying Mantids: Keeping Aliens. It says you can feed your crickets in the food chapter fruit so I dont think that fruit is bad for the mantis. Yes I was talking to you peekaboo... sorry thats not what I meant about the pet shop. I meant to say I buy crickets from the petshop. Let's all try to keep this thread on topic about wether you can feed your Grandis pnkies and not talk about crickets.


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## Sheldon Johnson

Shouldnt this be moved to the feeding section?

I think it might have been one of my care sheets that said about crickets and violins dont mix - this is true the ootheca they then lay become deformed and too hard for nymphs to hatch.

It is quite acceptable to feed crickets only to a mantis, but you would be wise to gutload them first - the reason why flower mantids in particual often react badly to crickets is because they are FLOWER MANTIDS and live on flowers - not on the floor with the crickets - they eat flies etc bugs that have a generally low chittin content in proportion ot mass.

Feeding oranges to crickets may seem like a good idea, but mantids arent use to that much acidity in their diet and it may well cause problems - if your going to feed your crix fruit - cut up some apple.

Melaworms/waxworms arent good food as they have too high fat content and the mealworms in particualr become bastards when theyre adult.

Bee's, wasp's and poisonous creatures CAN be fed to mantids with no problem - they have to deal with it in the wild all the time. I have fed bee's and wasps to mantids on occasion and they have evolved to deal with it by acivly "disarming" the sting. However i do not advise this very often as poison is poison and regardless of how resistant a mantis may be, it will all build up eventually


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## dino

Hello Sheldon,

Well I agree with you this should be moved to food and feeding section, but just because they are flower mantids doesnt really mean anything. And I didnt read this on your caresheet. I read it on deshawns caresheets at www.mantiskingdom.com


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