jday
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- Apr 19, 2010
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Here are few ideas from our brief experience:
This isn't a new idea, but we cut up a few 2-liter bottles and made fly holders out of them. We stuck an inverted top of one in place of the bottom of another so (ideally) bugs can crawl up a funnel at the bottom, hang out a while in the middle and leave out the top when we want them to. We cut all of the feeder holes in our deli cups (mostly 32 oz.) the same size: just large enough for these bottles/funnels to fit inside. This is also good because the stoppers/sponges are interchangeable, and we cut several different colors of sponges to mark a variety of things (newly molted, great hunter, etc.) so we can easily match the food to the mantis.
We've found it useful to cut the feeder hole off center on the lid, so it can be rotated toward or away from the mantis before unplugging.
By the way, a couple of weeks ago one of our mantises came through a molt in terrible shape...missing one leg and another very twisted and useless. I didn't think it would make it, but she had great spirit, so I put some paper towels in the container to help her crawl around with her forelimbs and fed her a lot of little bugs that didn't struggle much while she ate them. Well, this morning we found her freshly molted, and her remaining hind leg was much improved. It's shorter than it should be, but it isn't twisted any more, and she seems to have control over it!
And for those of you that read our earlier post...the mantis I dropped out the 3rd floor window molted again and is doing great!
This isn't a new idea, but we cut up a few 2-liter bottles and made fly holders out of them. We stuck an inverted top of one in place of the bottom of another so (ideally) bugs can crawl up a funnel at the bottom, hang out a while in the middle and leave out the top when we want them to. We cut all of the feeder holes in our deli cups (mostly 32 oz.) the same size: just large enough for these bottles/funnels to fit inside. This is also good because the stoppers/sponges are interchangeable, and we cut several different colors of sponges to mark a variety of things (newly molted, great hunter, etc.) so we can easily match the food to the mantis.
We've found it useful to cut the feeder hole off center on the lid, so it can be rotated toward or away from the mantis before unplugging.
By the way, a couple of weeks ago one of our mantises came through a molt in terrible shape...missing one leg and another very twisted and useless. I didn't think it would make it, but she had great spirit, so I put some paper towels in the container to help her crawl around with her forelimbs and fed her a lot of little bugs that didn't struggle much while she ate them. Well, this morning we found her freshly molted, and her remaining hind leg was much improved. It's shorter than it should be, but it isn't twisted any more, and she seems to have control over it!
And for those of you that read our earlier post...the mantis I dropped out the 3rd floor window molted again and is doing great!
