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So... it's safe to catch bugs at night with a net? I've always avoided this for fear of feeding my critters sick bugs or bugs that may have eaten nasty stuff. Has anyone ever lost mantids (spiders, lizards, etc) from feeding wild caught insect food? It would be nice to vary all my critters diets.

Why hatch them in a separate container at all instead of putting the spikes right into the vivarium? Do some people "dust" the flies with something before feeding them to your mantids? Or what is the "bee pollen" for? What size flies should I get (houseflies or BB) for L5/L6 ghosts? Will they...

Thanks a lot Phil the info is very helpful! Freezing them to knock them out I see. Letting them actually hatch in the vivarium itself seems like it would be a great way to do it and not even have to make a transfer. Is there any drawback to doing it that way? I do really like that "set it and...

I haven't ever done houseflies yet but as I understand it I buy the 500 pc cups of pupae and they hatch into flies and I get them into the mantis enclosure somehow. Does anyone have video or photo series or something of how someone opens a housefly culture to feed their mantids without the flies...

Great shots Jeff! Are you keeping all the mantids "free range" in that 10 x10 basement Nep setup with the moving light rack or are they all in small vivariums? N. ampullaria "harlequin" is the first Nep I've gotten since getting back into them. My second now is N. bellii. I'm trying to stick...

Hello folks, thanks for the kind words! I'm just "swords" on other forums too. Sometimes people ask me if I'm the same swords from wherever but they use dif names on dif sites. I already got an PM from one member here that I knew from before finding this site - funny just how small the...

Hello folks, I'm new here but not totally new to mantids - or online forums for that matter. Some of you may know me from elsewhere or maybe you'll want to pretend you don't know this silly old metal head! :D I've hatched and raised some of the common mantid species in years past but I...