July 11th 2015
The Tenodera sinensis that Sticky sent me as an addition to the Hierodula LAME got me from her molted to L3! I haven't picked a name yet, hmmm...
One of the Heterochaeta from the ootheca Bobericc sent me molted to L4, the first one!
July 15th
Kamakiri molted to L7 and joined her sister, Zeltor! LAME helped me sex them, we are quite positive they are female.
Baline, my female Idolomantis diabolica, reached L6!
Here she was some hours before, still at L5... saying "leave me alone, I'm ready for a molt!"
I am very cautious with my Idolos, I watch them like a hawk. I had her on my bed stand and kept the light on so I could see her lol. She was literally only a foot from my face as I slept. Each time I woke up, I checked on her. One of those times I woke, I saw she had molted, and was hanging there from her exuvia. I fell back to sleep, woke back up, and she was hanging upside down perfectly. She is missing a bit of her antenna but she is okay, it is growing back. She molted in this enclosure, this is the first time I let an Idolo molt in there.
Here she is at L6 (only 3 more molts to go!):
Here is the enclosure she molted in. It took a while to make! Around 5 hours. I took a large cardboard box, cut windows in it, made doors. I taped the entire box with packing tape, it's very strong and resilient, and waterproof. After taping the box, which took quite a whole, I then taped an image as a background. Hot glued netting over the image and over one of the windows as well as the doors. Then I hot glued sticks over the netting on the back and the window. Hot glued drawer liner over one window, as well as the area around the doors, so they'd close better. I also hot glued tacs to the doors and hot glued an elastic band to one of the tacs so I can wrap it around the other tac to shut the doors. Then I hot glued a temp/humidity gauge to the back. And hung strips of drawer liner from the top, to be used as a sort of safety net (like Precarious has used for his Idolos in later instars, to help them flip for the inflation of the wings). The bottom is made of two plastic bags, some bubble wrap insulation, paper towel, and moss placed over all of it. The plastic bags are to keep the water from soaking through the box, just in case, and the bubble wrap insulation is to keep warmth in (for when I place a heating mat under the enclosure, which works well, and keeps the humidity up). What also keeps the humidity up, are the pillow cases that I pinned over the windows, to keep too much moisture from escaping (the doors seem to be enough). Oh and the lid -- It's made of gauze bandage, which has been working like a charm from L2-L6. And I hot glued sticks along the gauze.
And just something cool... I caught a mantidfly today!
Ghost is beautiful!! That's cool that they can be different colors!
