Recent content by gotmantids

Baby beardies can't be sexed that young as far as I know. Hopefully you'll get lucky though :)

Hmm, you would think that they wouldn't be able to digest food as well, but there's a lot of mantids that have super skinny thoraxes (Gongylus gongyloids) and upward bent abdomens (many nymph mantids), which all look very uncomfortable to a human worm :)

For the most part, keeping a male and female together is OK, though if they weren't raised together then it may be a problem. They also need to be relatively the same age/size. An adult bearded dragon will eat a baby!

What I like to do when I feed my crickets cat food is soak the cat food in water so that it'll get bigger and sponge up the water. That way they get both water and food at the same time. :) This post is kinda getting off topic as to who's right and who's wrong.

Received two nymph Spiny flower mantids from Yen. Arrived fast and in perfect shape; Yen knows what he's doing! :)

Your mantid has to wait until the molt; mantids can't regenerate anything until they've molted. As long as she can still catch and eat prey, then it'll be fine :)

My name's Cynthia, I'm 18, and I've been interested in mantids for about as long as I can remember. My family owns a factory in China (where I've lived for about 3 years off and on), where there is a lot more bug life than what you see in the US. I was introduced to exotic inverts while I was in...

That's good; I learned the hard way; I left my one of my mantids alone with a cricket, and when I came back a few hours later, my mantid was headless. :x

Crickets can be dangerous; it sounds like the cricket took a bite out of your mantid before it ate the cricket. If the mantid can still use it's forelegs then it'll probably be fine, especially if it's going to molt again.

No prob Ian, good thing; my dad has that very same Nikon Coolpix model. I'll have to convince him to let me borrow it for me to snap some pictures. Thanks! :)

Andrew, my pregnant female D. Dessicata hasn't been eating, though I've tried moths & crickets. Have you ever had this happen to yours ?

Those are great shots; what camera do you use ? Mine can't do close-ups very well. :(

Also got a very nice mantid from Jesse, great packaging! USPS arrived a day late, but she survived, thanks!

Mine only molted this weekend, but he's so weak right now...you can tell by looking at how skinny and crimped his abdomen is. I tried to turn him upside down so that he'd drink some water, but I can't tell if he is or not. :(

This has got to be the weirdest bad molt I have ever seen for a mantid. (Look at his head closely) Except for his head, the rest of his body is fine. He is really disoriented, and has no way to catch anything for himself, or eat. I really don't expect him to last much longer. :(