budwing molt, chinese molt

[wyethia]

Well, it is mass molt time in the Wyethia household.

one budwing finally molted this morning...i knew it was coming and it happened within 20 min of me misting. I'm so bummed though because one of his raptorial arms didn't molt all the way. is there anyway that might correct in the next molt? Will it be able to hunt?

The chinese nymphs started molting to L2 around 10 am yesterday (that's day 10 days from hatch...i looked and looked for that on here, lol). A lot are doing well--there are about 10 so far with full beautiful molts and 4 that didn't get one back leg out. There are still a lot to molt. I only see 3 totally bungled molts, but they may have dropped.

Interestingly, the big net cage is doing a lot better than the smaller one...they started molting first and are more succesful. The big cage has a big live ficus in it. the smaller cage, just dry branches. There hasn't been a fully succssful molt in the small cage, but I've only seen two try. I took out the branch and switched it for one with better spots, they don't seem to do well molting on the net sides and prefer the tree.

Wyethia

 

[wyethia]

well, I am a bit confused because the the budwing mantis appears to use the "badly molted" arm normally--maybe it is just different colors at the end?

I hope this isn't cruel, but I grabbed most of the chinese mantids with bad one leg molts and snipped off the skin. Some now look pretty normal, a couple now have either one half leg and one has no use of the back legs. I put them in two containers with 4 missing-legs mantids. the rest continue to molt fine...I'm really happy with the number successfully molting--I have about 15-20 total molted and many more to go. I put a humidifier by the enclosures and am misting 4x day. I'm in AZ and in-house humidity is really low (30% by my barometer [which also measures humidity). No idea the actual in the enclosure. I watered the ficus this morning too, which probably helps.

Wyethia

 

[hibiscusmile]

hummm, I dont know about how cruel it is, and the humidity gotta help