Recent content by Vespertino

Good morning! I'm looking to buy Carolina Ooths (stagmomantis carolina), ideally would love to buy 4-5 ooths since I need enough to create a small army of mantids to patrol my organic garden (but I always keep a few as pets because they're awesome), Carolinas are the native species commonly...

I'd love to buy some stagmomantis carolina ootheca (to keep a few as pets and create a garden-pest-eating army to guard my tomato plants). If you have any fertile carolina ooths for sale, let me know. I'd love to see pictures of the ooths to confirm the species identification. I'm located in...

Gratz! They're so cute! Did you have any luck with getting the inured one into better health? There was lots of great advice in the health issues topics that helped me when I had a weak or injured nymph.

Ahhh, memories!!! Boy did I get screwed on Ebay... I learned my lesson not to buy from Ebay ever again, I just wish I found this forum before I placed that order :D I wound up buying Nymphs from Mikhalis and they were incredibly healthy and sooooo cute! If you can't get an ooth I second...

Looking to buy Stagmomantis carolina ooths, I'm located in Southlake, Tarrant County, TX, USA. If you have any for sale give me a holla!

Thought I'd report back, I went looking for mantids twice in areas with long grass and shrubs but didn't find a single one. Plenty of grasshoppers and bees, but no mantids. Both times I was outside around noon. As far as I know the properties aren't being sprayed. I'll have to try a different...

Yeah it was cute and easy to open, but it might work for much smaller mantids where the claws/barbs on the tibia and femur don't get quite as long. The one I had to cut free had both forearms stuck, and with the claws hooked into the mesh in different directions so it was impossible for her to...

I bought a couple of "critter cases", which are circular mesh cages, for my little Carolinas to move the girls into new condos. It seemed like a good idea at first, but I noticed their little claws would get stuck in the mesh now and then, and yesterday one got so badly snared I had to cut the...

Thanks so much Rick! That photo cleared up a lot as far as what to look for. Unfortunately my greenbelt area is wooded-ish and any grass areas are occasionally mowed (damn HOA). However the overgrown area next to the parking lot near my office has an area that resembles that habitat, albeit a...

Thanks! Likewise if I get lucky and find a ton of eligible carolina males hovering around my ladies cages. So far, still zero. I live two houses over from a greenbelt area in my HOA with a creek running through it, I would have thought I'd at least see one male. And the mantis my co-worker...

I didn't catch any males yesterday so I'll keep trying. I also tried during the day; there's an overgrown area not far from where my co-worker found the female where I put the enclosures around. Sadly that didn't work, but I will keep trying. One of my girls laid a sterile ooth the other day, it...

Another resource is co-workers with good eye-sight! One of mine, who knows I'm new to the mantis hobby, spotted a Carolina in a playground near my office today- she said it looked like "two of them" or that "one was molting" but this late in the season I had the feeling it was male+female pair...

This was more or less my experience, too. Initially when I received about 50-80 Carolina L1s I placed them all in the same enclosure until about L3. If you keep them VERY well fed for the first molt or two you might not have too many problems, as they seemed OK in my case during that time but I...

I have a lot of it too, so I started putting it in a tight pony tail in case any of them decide to attempt the climb to the top of my head. It seems to make it easier for them to climb that way rather than get tangled up in a loose hair avalanche.

Oh I never intended to feed her my hair, she sorta decided she wanted to chew on it while she was climbing on my head. I usually feed them a little of everything from my garden when it comes to bugs (except venomous stuff), and use store bought worms in between when I don't catch anything in the...