Recent content by Gizmo

Now I've got tears in my eyes I'm so happy! Thanks MantisGirl13! I'm still going to cry like a baby when we lose her but I'm also going to do my best to make sure her legacy carries on. She's definitely a lot more active and in a better temperament now that she is so much lighter. 

In the past we have raised two ooths, one Chinese and one European. We plan on taking the top of her terrarium off, putting it in a bag, and putting it in the fridge until Spring. One was a gift from coworkers and the other was from the first mantis we ever had.   It's just that I've read so...

yay thank you! I love her so much and this has me excited! I don't want to think about what comes next for her so this will soften the blow somewhat. Thank you again!!

My girlfriend found a Mantis religiosa on August 22nd and took her home. She was skinny and could fly, so for a time I started to second guess that she was a she despite the segment count being that of a female. Eventually she got very plump, and this weekend (about 45 days later) she laid an...

You are not kidding. Molting to me is a terrifying event. They are cute and it's fun to feed them fruitflies but the random deaths can be disheartening.  I've had two incidents with an Orchid and a Chinese male mantids, where they stopped eating and acted as if they were going to molt, only to...

Hiya!

HER OOTHECA HATCHED THIS MORNING! Everyone said (correctly) that because she was caught in the wild her ootheca might not be fertile BUT IT WAS! She left us with her babies after all!  We are going to try our hardest to separate out as many as we can when we can and not do the method some do...

Thanks for your reply, makes us feel a bit better. We think they are Chinese. The three we have (it appears to be a male and two females) are doing great. The bigger of them all came though another molt the other day (that is a tense, tense time) so we are pretty confident they'll make it. Are...

I had an ootheca hatch about two months ago and out of possibly 80-90 there are only 3 left alive. We have been doing everything we've read that we are supposed to and still that happened. I am wondering if I'm just not very good at raising nymphs or if that high of a mortality rate is normal...

Gf bought an orchid mantis from the admin of this site (10/10 would buy from again) and I'm glad I read this board before we did because we knew to leave it be when it came to molting. Some people try misting and whatnot and it seems to end up bad for them.

I'm sorry we have read everything we can get our hands on, and have been getting great advice from a lot of very nice people... We know we have to diapause our European ootheca. Question is, what is the best method? We've been told to put them in a fridge, but that there can be a problem with...

September 5-6th. Since she is a European mantis we are trying diapause, which for us at least is in a cool garage. We read here that for that type of mantis that is what is best. Besides it's getting pretty cold around here and even if we were to keep them warm enough to hatch before spring I...

Thank you! That means a lot. And I hope you are right. We are treating her eggs so very carefully (when we took them from one location to another I buckled the container just in case!) and they are being cared for with great attention. We are hoping although it's a slim chance, that they are...

Thank you but she passed this weekend. More than being smart she was fun and lovable. She knew the difference between my girlfriend and I and would make it obvious who she wanted to hang out with each day. Her excitement in seeing us wasn't food related as once theorized, because it was me that...

Thanks. It was a rough weekend. We cried a lot and are still sad. We put her in a prescription bottle that we wrote/drew on, put cotton in it, and I buried her under my gf's window. Amazingly, within seconds of announcing her passing on Instagram, we were flooded with "hearts" and condolences...