Best care for tenodora sinensis nymphs?

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cwebster

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Have had several eggs hatch and released hundreds. Kept some in deli cups with twigs and wet sponges and am feeding melanogaster fruit flies. However am losing a lot of nymphs. What am i doing wrong? What can i do to help them survive? Thanks. Temp is about 75.

 
Someone with a bit more experience might want to chime in but I raised a whole brood of Tenodora Sinensis nymphs from an egg and from that as well as reading many forum posts it seems to be that the Chinese mantis plays the numbers game. That is they have a high hatch and mortality rate. You might be doing nothing wrong, they just seem to up and die for 100s of mystery reasons.

 
They do have a very high mortality rate. Not sure I would keep wet sponges in habitat. Misting the walls usually gives the extra liquids if needed. Wet sponge would be a bacteria breeding ground, maybe fungus also.

Have read that some will keep new hatch together for a few days. The stronger will consume the weaker, giving a better selection for the ones to be kept. Sounds bad but is what nature does. Could this be part nutritional need? It is a way to weed out the weak and inferior from the gene pool.

 
@cwebster    With the Tenoderas , I let them live together till they achieve the L3 or even L4 stage especially with a large hatch.  As zeppy writes , they cull out the weaker ones and develop aggressive skills. .... S

 
Glad you posted this!

I had an ooth hatch while I was out of town. I came home 4 days ago and had separated all 25 of the nymphs. 

Do you guys think more hatched and they ate eachother while I was away? They each only ate about 1 or 2 fruit flies in the past few days. There are dead flies in all of their deli containers. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas for me? This is my first time raising this many nymphs. 

 
CS - I've raised Tenodera s. for seven years.  Your experience so far is pretty standard.  If you have a lot of nymphs in one container, and they are still L1 or L2, they will eat less often due to stress (of sharing the container).  If you have separated each nymph to his own container:

1: make sure both the mantis and melonogasters can climb up the container walls.

2: Make sure the top of the container is made of a material onto which the mantis can cling upside down.  They truly think they're bats and LOVE to hang upside-down.  Dead melenogasters are normal. They croak fairly quickly (2 days or so) after being transferred out of their culture container.

3: Don't know what happened to the missing nymphs.  But they are extremely adept at escape through the narrowest slit.  Doubtful they ate each other at that early instar.

4. Like Zeppy says - don't use a wet sponge for humidity.  A light mist spritz on the side of the container is fine. Distilled water is best.  Try not to spritz the nymph directly. The mist should disappear after a few hours if the containers are circulating air properly.  Feed 1/2 dozen or so Drosophila melanogasters once every other day. 

5: Don't fret!  They'll be fine.

Nia-Outdoor-Portrait.JPG


 
csliv36 said:
Glad you posted this!

I had an ooth hatch while I was out of town. I came home 4 days ago and had separated all 25 of the nymphs. 

Do you guys think more hatched and they ate eachother while I was away? They each only ate about 1 or 2 fruit flies in the past few days. There are dead flies in all of their deli containers. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas for me? This is my first time raising this many nymphs. 
Click to expand...
of course they ate each other!

 
@MantidLord Thanks. This info- about pollen- WoW. But does make sense when you think about walking on flowers and self-grooming.

MantidLord said:
I'm late but fed them pollen. Doing a study on them and taking the advice of a separate study that found pollen reduced mortality and increased growth rate in this species.

https://academic.oup.com/ee/article-lookup/doi/10.1603/0046-225X-32.4.881

Also they will cannibalize at L1
Click to expand...
I do know that bees at times will visit certain flowers for the mineral content they need at that time.

 
I had an ootheca hatch in the winter by accident. I was 8 and inexperienced. The nymphs were all over mom's kitchen floor. I gathered as many as I could and put them together hoping they would cannibalize and get to a manageable number. Didn't happen, they all died. 

Denise 

 
I've literally just witnessed my L1s cannibalizing after failing to feed them after their first two days. It may not occur frequently enough to rely upon (if that's what you're trying to do) due to closet similarities in size, but it can and does happen. 

 

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