# Pretty ironic huh?



## HoldThePickle (Apr 12, 2005)

Its funny how the Tenoderas are pretty much one of the biggest and toughest mantids in the hobby, yet the freaking hatchlings are such weak animals. You hatch out like 150 and about 3/4 of them die. Ah well, just sharing a thought.


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## Rick (Apr 12, 2005)

Yeah I agree. It's amazing any of them survive in the wild.


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## agent A (May 31, 2009)

True.


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## hibiscusmile (May 31, 2009)

I always wondered if they do better without us?


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## hibiscusmile (May 31, 2009)

Maybe they wear theirselves out running around the container and they die from exhaustion :huh:


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## Zephyr (May 31, 2009)

Contrary to what others on here have experienced, when my Chinese mantid ooths hatch I have a hard time feeding all the nymphs!

I once had 3 ooths hatch at once (when I was in 5th grade; Now I'm in 12th) and so many lived to L2 that we had to start freezing them so I wouldn't be overwhelmed!


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## PhilinYuma (May 31, 2009)

Zephyr said:


> Contrary to what others on here have experienced, when my Chinese mantid ooths hatch I have a hard time feeding all the nymphs!I once had 3 ooths hatch at once (when I was in 5th grade; Now I'm in 12th) and so many lived to L2 that we had to start freezing them so I wouldn't be overwhelmed!


You may be doing something right that we are not, Zephyr, but I think that a number of us have had large numbers surviving past their first molt, though still an unaccountable number die, but by the time they're ready to molt to the next instar, numbers drop dramatically, possibly due to canibalism of molting nymphs at that age as well as "SIDS". There is a facile (I think) answer to this. It has been argued that a given environment in the field can only support a given biomass of mantids (or any other insect) and that as they grow, the number of individuals has to decrease to keep that mass stable. This theory, though, doesn't hold under what Superfreak has called "ideal" conditions. Our nymphs get as much food and moisture as they could possibly want, and yet dozens, hundreds perhaps, just drop dead.

It might just be that Hibiscusmile has the answer. In nature, the nymphs would scatter and hide and lead very quiet lives. Many would be predated, particularly by spiders at that age, but those that were not would lead a much "quieter" life than they do in our enclosures. It would be an interesting experiment to hatch a Chinese ooth in, say, a 1' (30cm) cube and remove about twelve and raise them as a seperate group in a similar sized cube to determine if the survival rate would be higher among the "chosen few" than among the larger population. My guess is that it would not be.

Another experiment if you are lucky enough to see the beginning iof a hatch would be to isolate the first dozen to emerge and see if that group had a higher rate of survival than the rest.

Now all we need is someone with time, patience, a few chinese ooths and a lot of cubes.....


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## Zephyr (May 31, 2009)

Personally, I think they may require higher ventilation and oxygen levels, seeing as whenever I kept them in 5th grade I went nuts with screening and live plants.


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## Zephyr (May 31, 2009)

**OR, maybe all the shelter from the plants gave them more closure and less stress level?

I did find a few newly hatched nymphs under some dying spring foliage today...


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## PhilinYuma (Jun 1, 2009)

Zephyr said:


> **OR, maybe all the shelter from the plants gave them more closure and less stress level? I did find a few newly hatched nymphs under some dying spring foliage today...


I don't know thether this is true or not, but it sounds like a great idea to me. In one of the more interesting (to me) chapters in Prete, "Ontogeny of Defensive Behaviors," the authors studied defensive behaviour among nymphs of S. viridis at various instars. The second instar nymphs ran away from a perceived threat about 50% of the time and hid for the other half. In my setup, the nymphs are raised in constant site of each other and with nowhere to hide but the excelsior or raffia that I put in there, so not only is the frequency of their fright response (to each other) greatly increased over what it would be in nature, but they really have nowhere adequate to hide and are forced to run. Exhaustion/stress _might _be a cause of major mortality, so I have just set up the kids' butterfly cage mentioned in another thread, put a large, loose substrate of moist sphagnum moss in the bottom, and lots of raffia and artifiacial plants with broad leaves (thank you, Katt!). I just dumped a new hatch of about 30 ghost nymphs in there. and they have all hidden themselves. There is a pot of mels in there, too, so it will be interesting to see how often and how many of the nymphs venture to the top of the cage where the flies are thickest.

Thanks, Zephyr, for an interesting idea, and if anyone can find a serious flaw in my hypothesis and/or practice, I would be most interested to hear of it.


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## Zephyr (Jun 1, 2009)

They ARE rather small to be sitting out in the open and hunting prey. I don't think I've ever seen a Chinese mantid out and about around here until about L4.


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## PhilinYuma (Jun 2, 2009)

Zephyr said:


> They ARE rather small to be sitting out in the open and hunting prey. I don't think I've ever seen a Chinese mantid out and about around here until about L4.


Well, the only part of yr idea that I have been able to test so far appears to be true. Instead of having most of the ghost nymphs running around on the enclosure's netting, I can only see five, lured there by the ffs that have congregated on the inside of the top. I can see others hiding under leaves and skulking arount in the moss.

This is a bit disconcerting for someone who is used to seeing all of his nymphs every day, but I'll get used to it.

The next thing to do will be to try raise a batch of Chinese or giant Asian nymphs who normally have a high mortality rate, to see if this method reduces losses.

It's a pity that the ffs wont stay in the greenery. Is anyone raising a strain that is positively geotropic?


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