acting weird

[aje88]

hey its been about 2 weeks since my L4 last molted and he has been acting very strange hes slowing down and is starting to bite hes never done this before.hes not dying i spray his habitat twice a day and make sures he drinks and i give him two ants every other day.if im doing something wrong please tell me or is he about to molt. after molt how long does it take for next molt.

 

[cloud jaguar]

2 ants every other day? he's probably starving to death

 

[PhilinYuma]

hey its been about 2 weeks since my L4 last molted and he has been acting very strange hes slowing down and is starting to bite hes never done this before.hes not dying i spray his habitat twice a day and make sures he drinks and i give him two ants every other day.if im doing something wrong please tell me or is he about to molt. after molt how long does it take for next molt.

He is starving, which is the only reason that he is eating ants. Give him crickets, house flies, even meal worms, now and then, or go out and catch some likely looking insects for him, like moths, butterflies, spiders etc. If you don't, he will soon stop biting and die.

 

[superfreak]

<_<

sigh.

 

[Rick]

2 ants every other day? he's probably starving to death

Beat me to it. He isn't biting you, he is sensing the moisture in your skin. Unless it is a very small species or these are some big ants he needs more food.

 

[Katnapper]

Your poor starving mantis is resorting to trying to take a bite of the only meat it's coming in contact with, in a last ditch effort to survive by any means. Yes, he's starving!!!! Feed him something appropriately sized, but substantial... not ants! Get out in your yard, or anywhere outside, and find him some proper food! You can skim the grass, bushes, weeds, etc. with an aquarium fish net and likely find something! And when you do, don't stop there.... collect several and offer them to him every day. If he eats them all... collect and offer more!

 

[aje88]

hes not starving and he has tons of water. like last night he was making the want to climb movement towards the celing. the reason is that they say if you feed them to much they get over weight and are forced to molt. so should i feed him every day. how many ant do i feed him.

 

[aje88]

i took some of your guys advice and it helped. i was walking around and found this speicies of ants in my yard ive never seen before. there huge and there pinchers are huge. its quite easy to to cut the pinchers off just get the tweezers and pluk them off. now im giving him three ants a day.one thing can i feed them cochroaches at L4 because i tried feeding him woodlouse since there like cockroaches and they seem to hard for his teeth. oh and over here where i am there aent much bugs . the ants are the only things in my yard that are able to fit in his arms. everything else is to big or to small.

 

[Rick]

hes not starving and he has tons of water. like last night he was making the want to climb movement towards the celing. the reason is that they say if you feed them to much they get over weight and are forced to molt. so should i feed him every day. how many ant do i feed him.

They always want to go up. They don't get overweight. I feed mine every other day but I feed enough to keep the abdomens plump.

 

[revmdn]

I think ants are a bad idea, last resort at best.

 

[aje88]

then wat do i feed it there are no worms or crickets here. and the moths and butterflies are like 2 times bigger than my L4

 

[Rick]

then wat do i feed it there are no worms or crickets here. and the moths and butterflies are like 2 times bigger than my L4

Well you wouldn't feed worms anyways. Look under leaves or logs for crickets. Look in weeds for other bugs. Moths or butterflies may be larger but most of that is wings. I don't know what species it is so that would help. Or you could buy food like the rest of us.

 

[Katnapper]

Catch moths or butterflies and just see if he will eat them. It definitely can't hurt to try and see!!! If they are too big and he will not eat them on his own, remove the wings and hand feed him the body with tweezers... either whole or cut it up into pieces he will eat. Please try it. Thanks!

 

[planetq]

Ooh man, yeah I agree with everyone-

What Katnapper said: Try and cut off the wings of moths and put it in front of the mantis and let the moth move around. Your mantis is gonna eat it up!

What kind of species do you have again?

And what kind of moths are around you?

Because it seems to me if it's a general medium size to large size species L4s could easily take on the tiny moths that fly around light sources at night. (If it's a smaller species I could see it)

Just remember that mantises like food that taste good too.

They have a sweet tooth, and they are very enthusiastic about soft-bellied, meaty, flying insects.

Compared to the hard shelled and acidic little bite that are ants.

 

[-MK-]

Dude, don't you have any pet stores near you? Petco sells the smaller crickets for 10 cents apiece where I live - if you go in and ask for 20 of the small crickets, you'll most likely pay for 20 and leave with more like 30 or 40. My Chinese L4s easily eat crickets half their size.

You could also just leave a light on outdoors at night and catch some moths. Even if they look too big, it's likely that your mantis can take them down and eat them. Just look at the video below of one of my Chinese mantids being thrashed around by a moth back when he was just a little L2. The quality isn't great, but you can see what's going on. This video is only about 1/3 the length of the entire battle, but after it was over, that little L2 had a full belly and all that was left of the moth were the wings. Now he's a big L5 (he molted today) because he gets fed as much as he can eat.

http://s912.photobucket.com/albums/ac323/M...nt=L2vsMoth.flv

 

[Katnapper]

hes not starving and he has tons of water. like last night he was making the want to climb movement towards the celing. the reason is that they say if you feed them to much they get over weight and are forced to molt. so should i feed him every day. how many ant do i feed him.

How can you say and think you know he's not starving? On two ants a day at L4??? What species is it?

And who is "they" that say "if you feed them too much they get over weight and are forced to molt?" That's nonsense. He needs to eat more substantial meals than ants, and consistently every day or every other day. Ants are NOT a good feeder food anyway, and I recommend you avoid feeding them to him altogether.

 

[PhilinYuma]

How can you say and think you know he's not starving? On two ants a day at L4??? What species is it?And who is "they" that say "if you feed them too much they get over weight and are forced to molt?" That's nonsense. He needs to eat more substantial meals than ants, and consistently every day or every other day. Ants are NOT a good feeder food anyway, and I recommend you avoid feeding them to him altogether.

+1

There are chemicals in a mantis's body (hormones, as in "Both my teens have raging hormones.") that cause it to start building a new skin under the one it already has and then to shed the old skin. They are not controlled by how much the mantis eats.

 

[ismart]

Go to your local pet shop and buy that dollars worth in small crickets. When a mantis moults thats a good thing. That means it is growing.

 

[aje88]

hey i just fed my mantis a butturfly and he loved it.