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I like having springtails for sure. They will keep mold down with 0 effort on your part. I also like isopods, but they would be second on my list. It looks great!

This is a good point, and I definitely agree. I tried to acknowledge it in my original post when I wrote "I understand there may be a significant difference between the conditions A. vulgare prefer, and the conditions under which they breed best/fastest, but I will only be testing for preference...

The results for Test 2 are in after 24 hours, and I am more concerned about the viability of this experiment moving forward. Tetra RiverShrimp had 1 individual, Aqua Culture Freeze Dried Mealworms had 12, Aquatic Foods California Blackworm Co Freeze Dried Bloodworms had 15 and Aqueon Shrimp...

My goal now is to just never get it in the first place.

I think I must be crazy or stupid. I also went nuclear on the BBA. I took the plants out and soaked them in a mixture 1:1 of Excel for 1 hour. Rinsed. No effect. Tried the same with Hydrogen peroxide. No effect. Finally I just wanted to see how extreme I could get and used 1:1:1 and soaked for 7...

Thanks for the fertilizer tips. It sucks, we had a very good lilaeopsis carpet growing in the tank that got overrun with BBA. I liked it enough to try it again. The hydrocolyte is new to me, but is growing quite quickly. If I can keep it trimmed low and dense I really like the look. I need to...

That is beautiful. Ours isn't nearly as heavily planted. If you can afford the time and money, the Apex system is awesome. We set up a 75g for my dad with automatic water changes, co2, lighting, and feeding. Makes it so that the only thing you have to do is trim plants from time to time. I have...

Yeah, we have a red bromeliad. It seems to do fine in a 12x12x18" vivarium with about 12W of aquarium LED lights. Our bigger challenge is water.  Yours is beautifully planted. We haven't done nearly as much vertically. Once our mantis passes it will be difficult to resist getting a crested...

Awesome. I keep springtails and isopods in my bioactive. Dwarf purple will be great since the manic won't eat them, but if you add enough of other species they will reproduce faster than the mantis can eat. Plants are my biggest challenge. We have had the best luck with bromeliads, pothos, and...

Awesome idea. Very well done. I love bioactive. Tell us a little more about the bioactive part. You mentioned springtails. Have you used isopods? What about live plants (if any)?

Test 1 I set up the first test last Friday evening. I decided to test a few fish foods to start. Hikari Crab Cuisine, Hikari Micro Pellets, Tetra River Shrimp, and PE Pellets. This is an initial test to start fine tuning the setup and learning some initial hypotheses to test in more detail...

I am quite impressed. Very well written and thought out. When you learn more statistics in school you will also be able to find out whether the results are statistically significant, but I think you did a good job of coming to a conclusion without that. A+

They arrived yesterday. A nice mix of larger juveniles. A few DOA due to failed molts in transit. I separated out those displaying different morphology (brown body or yellow spotted). There are about 40 left of the wild type. One thing I neglected to research was alternatives to traditional...

Yes, he hates you. . . . Just kidding. I noticed that our ghost females go through moods. Sometimes they will stay high in their enclosure and climb onto me, other times I can barely get them to step onto a stick for feeding out of their enclosure. They just lock down and pretend to be a...

Lol. Yeah. I feel that too. Math used to be my strongest subject, but now its been 8 years since my last statistics class so I am very rusty. I put in the order for the isopods and will have 50-60 wild type A. Vulgare coming next week. That should be plenty to allow me to begin the choice...

When all was said and done, I still think the glowforge (especially at the early order price) is the best value for an all in one solution. The software does a good job and we are able to go from idea to product with almost no prototyping or messed up cuts. The choice chamber I built last week...

I tried a variety of apps and didn't like any of them. I ended up just dedicating a notebook to it and writing by hand. I try to get the hatch date from the breeder, write each molt, each medical event, the time of order, shipping, and receipt, and death. For my picky mantises I will track...

Glowforge is a mixed bag. While I really like using it, it was overhyped and the company is terribly managed. Dan Shapiro, the CEO, is far more interested in success at any price rather than being honest with customers. We ordered September of 2016 when the website said "deliveries beginning...

With the recent weather and some more research I think that I am being overly optimistic with my expectation that I can gather enough wild isopods in Colorado. The populations will not grow and become active for several months, in which time I could have already tested many variables on the...

I have read about this too. We had a couple dubia nymphs living in the substrate of our h. majuscula when he dropped them and they burrowed. They managed to hide well and survived on the mantises scraps. I probably wouldn't have done it intentionally, but I have read many other do this...