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A lot of mantids will stalk their pray. I've noticed that a lot with my chinese. I've got 5 or 6 living together in the same tank, so I just dump about 6 or 7 crickets in and they usually just scurry around the bottom. I've seen my chinese come all the way down the side of the tank from the...

They have to be mature, with a full set of wings. I think usually about 7 or 8 molts.

I've had several of my mantises hang from the side of the glass aquarium while molting, and in some cases they do fall but all of them were able to wriggle out of their old exoskeleton without any problem. They'll hang on just about anything to molt. I've had some L1s and L2s hang from a blade...

When my chinese ootheca hatched my flies were not abundant enough to feed all of them. In desperation I bought some Week1 crickets, and my L1 chinese nymphs had no problem catching them. They fattened up quick eating one of them too. :D

I always thought the little black dot was at the back of the eye, basically where the receptor nerve attaches.

You're lucky! Mantids arent from around my area natively so i get weird looks from people at Petland, Petsmart and such when I tell them that I need food and supplies for them.

Lol it's absolutely not neccessary. Infact one male can fertilize many females if the female is very well fed before introducing the male to the female.

I had the same issue when my othecae hatched. Give them a couple of days, they will come around. A lot of them will just get freaked out by the food and run away for a couple of days until they realize "hey, thats food, and i'm hungry"

It depends on your species of mantids. My chinese nymphs (Tenodera aridifolia) were big enough at L1 (hatchlings) to be able to handle 1 week pinhead crickets. They're tough little buggers.

Wow! Its as if they all decided to molt on one day! I count at least 9 or 10 more, and about 4 or 5 more molting as I type.

Ants are not generally a good idea at this age because the mantids are vulnerable. Ants are known to be a rather hardy insect and their jaws quite strong. I would stick with fruit flies or equivalent.

As long as it has ample room to move around you should be ok, but don't make it so big that it has a hard time finding its food when you feed it. Give it a spritz of water once or twice a day, to make sure the enclosure stays moist. It sounds like its in its L2 or L3 stages, which means its...

Here's a picture of my first L2 molt.

3 or 4.

two ooths worth, about 150 or so.

sure i'll put a 40 gallon tank in the fridge ;)

Wow. Wonderful responses, thank you all. I'm gonna try letting it dry out and see if that works. The problem with digging it out is that once I open the lid the nymphs are going to try to run out which can lead to problems, obviously lol.

I've noticed a little bit of white stuff forming along the bottom of my enclosure. I'm using the coconut husk stuff for bottom substrate. Does anyone know how I can get rid of it? I'd rather not have to fish out all of my L1 nymphs and change the substrate..

When my sister went to Africa to study bats, she ran into these in caves all over africa. That's about all i can tell you lol, sorry.

Yeah. I was going to say something but i didnt want to sound stupid lol. These seem to be bigger than the others I have hatched in the past.