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Hi everyone! I've had an account here for awhile but never needed to make an intro until now. I'm an aspiring herpetologist and paleontologist from Northern California! So far, I've had Deroplatys lobata and desiccata, and Hymenopus coronatus.

My male adult D. lobata seems to be able to differentiate between humans and "dangerous" animals. I can never get him to threat-pose or fly away, no matter how many times I poke him. He'll only scuttle a couple of inches each instance I poke him persistently. However, if I put some prey item...

Lol, no one outside of the herp and invert hobby understands our wood plights. Markup on wood is insane, especially on Manzanita! Cork bark maybe excluded. Anyways, If I were you, I'd try to get some Metallyticus (although you'd need a full cork bark background instead of great stuff unless...

I saw the episode where you killed your brother a couple days ago! Welcome

You can feed crawling insects to them easily, like waxworms, hornworms, silkworms, or mealworms (although they don't really like mealworms much due to low moisture content and the exoskeleton). Orchid mantids (and all mantids really) can eat anything they can catch, unless it is toxic of course...

You can't judge sex by their thoraxes right now; They're way too young for that. Also it's hard to accurately count their segments because the area where the last few may be is somewhat concealed by the image's quality. It could help if you take an image of the side of their abdomen though...

My orchid female instantaneously snatched up an adult nivea the same size as herself. If you want to start a colony though, it's probably better to feed off adult males than the brown burrowing nymphs for obvious reasons, though they culture somewhat slowly, sadly,and they're somewhat expensive...

Yen Saw kept Sinomantis denticulata for a while, and they are very similar. You should PM him.

Rhombodera megaera gets HUGE. Here's a comparison between an adult female R. megaera and an adult female P. guineensis (by Andy Kitson on Facebook): He also said that R. megaera can bisect superworms with one bite. :o If all goes well, I might have some R. megaera to offer eventually.

Yeah. There are lots of them but my favorite vine is Marcgravia species. They grow somewhat slowly, which is a beneficial trait for your small vivarium, and their looks blow everything else out of the water. I think I have 5 species of it, but sorry, I can't give any of it away because currently...

So, is Keket's lifespan even more exceptional given that it's a male?

You're not going to provide a decently-sized enclosure?

Welcome to the forum! That definitely looks like Anolis sangrei. Here's a caresheet: http://www.reptilesncritters.com/care-guide-brown-anole.php

Jewel orchids are terrestrial, so put them on directly on the substrate. Also, you should consider a nice vining to tie everything together.

Two years ago I found a beautiful Timema cristinae like this: Although I decided to let it stay wild. I kinda regret that now. :( Anyways, exotic phasmids in the US, although illegal, are actually fairly easy to find. People in the US advertise them blatantly for sale and nothing happens...

Sounds great! Crickets (assuming they are on a good diet) are generally tolerated well by the majority of mantids, but some genera are hypersensitive to them, like Rhombodera.

Yeah, FFs are way to small for that mantid. The abdomen is somewhat skinny so it'll definitely accept appropriate food, though I wouldn't recommend crickets (or any feeders in general) from petsmart. They've probably been fed garbage and crickets are an especially dangerous food for mantids...

Switch around 'male' and 'female' in that 3rd chunk of your post ;)

You could just add in some springtails to control the mold. Also Isopods if you want them to clean up the mantis frass, although they are somewhat opportunistic and might take advantage of a freshly molted mantis. Honestly though, with that size vent, I don't think you'll be getting mold.

You should get the book, Keeping Mantids, by Orin McMonigle. It's great, has pictures on all but two pages in the book, and isn't boring like most books. Anyways, you should consider Parasphendale species or Deroplatys species. They're large, look beautiful, are easy to care for, and are good...