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Just as an update, he molted again to adulthood. 42 days give or take. I did find it interesting that his leg did not grow back at all. It is only slightly larger than after the last molt. I am surprised he didnt make more progress with the leg, but he seems well adapted to having 5 legs. His...

Good to know. This is a behavioral change as he has aged so we will need to begin treating him appropriately.

I forgot to mention in my original post that I was wearing my blue bottle fly costume. :P

Thanks! Glad to hear this isn't entirely out of the norm. It is a bizarre experience dealing with an aggressive pet, because it creates a different type of fear. Rather than with a traditional threat (like a venomous spider) where you can leave it alone, smash it, run away, etc, you have fear...

Thanks, we hope so too. He may need fed more often since he seemed to calm down after being fed.

I have seen that behavior with our ghosts and peacock before, and it is certainly startling. On occasion even a feeder roach will surprise them and cause them to leap blindly. This was something different. He was in chase and attack mode for several minutes. Our other mantises are ambush...

Our great H. majuscula Carl had some strange behavior last night. We hadn't fed him in 3 days so we decided to take him out to feed a dubia. Immediately upon opening his enclosure, he tried to chase us down and strike. When we set him on the table, he would sprint to the side of the table we...

It seems like a prey response or excitement to me. Carl, our sub-adult h. majuscula does this almost daily when we approach his enclosure. He is near his heat pad and no air movement, so I am sure it is triggered by visual stimulus with Carl, not being cold or reacting to wind. Might be to...

First week is somewhat stressful since it is all new and their behavior is a bit alien, but before long you will hardly give it a second thought. We only spend a few minutes misting each day and maybe 15-20 minutes feeding a few times a week now unless we are just trying to spend time enjoying...

I have had the same problems but haven't been able to diagnose. Our fly pupae only has like a 5% hatch rate, and many of those died in the process of emerging from the pupae. I don't know the solution, but am interested to see if others have advice.

The shrimp do molt, but its not like mantises. I have seen a video of a neocaridina molting, it started and was done in about 15 seconds. It would be hard to catch them after a molt. I know that fish will gobble them up, and so will other aquatic animals, so I assume the exoskeleton isn't too...

Best of luck!

Easy solution though you say you dont want to add more chemicals. There are many aquarium solutions to this exact problem. With fish, it is much more of a problem since plants and animals are living in the chlorine and chloramine. I use Seachem Prime. It breaks down the chlorine and chloramine...

Lots of good suggestions here. Due to your timeline it looks like you will be limited to behavioral mantis experiments. If I remember my science fair days, they care much more about you setting up a proper experiment, not having interesting results. Unfortunately that is in contrast to what most...

Probably not a typical question, but am wondering if neocaridina shrimp (like red cherry shrimp) would be acceptable live food for mantises. We are starting a small colony of shrimp, and assuming they breed, we will have far more than we can use. Many of them will be given to friends or sold to...

Not so much an update to the mantises, but to the setup as a whole. We have reorganized it so that the mantids are closer together and now we also have a planted aquarium to match our vivariums. The planted aquarium will be for aquatic inverts (neocaridina shrimp and snails). It currently has a...

Hope so. The aquarium is sort of the same theme as the vivariums. Lots of live plants and microfauna to make a little ecosystem. We still have a lot of work to do on the aquarium though.

Yeah, since he is a picky eater I'm not too worried. Hoping to get dwarf whites, powder orange, and giant canyon all established cultures so we can use them moving forward. My hope is to have dwarf whites and springtails in every bioactive setup and then one larger species in each. It will take...

He ate all of the isopods that we seeded the tank with. Now we find that he hangs out within striking distance of the substrate, likely because he learned there is food there. I think the problem was choosing such a large variety to house him with. We used giant canyon isopods, which are...

Looks great. In my opinion, the in-depth life cycle discussion (molt, instar, hatching, 1-4, 5-8, other species) should come towards the end. I think anatomy should come directly after "what is a praying mantis" then the habits (which I might call behavior). I think this would lend itself...