D. Diabolica being picky?

[TheArtisticArachnid]

Goodness it feels like whenever I have to go on this website it's because I'm having some kind of issue- I'm sorry about this but I've run into another problem.

A young juvenile d. Diabolica in my care recently molted about two weeks ago, however her two front raptors seem to always be perched oddly close/against her face and I can't help but wonder if something happened while she was molting that made them do that? Since molting she's also lost her appetite with only one or two things eaten. Since winter months have taken hold and finding things outside has become practically impossible I've been buying maggots from the local fishing store and waiting for them to pupate.

1) Does anyone know or have access to knowledge on how to house and care for maggots so that they'll pupate into flies faster?

2) She won't eat them as maggots, even though I've been told that she can. She's never been fed anything in larvae stage before, and I'm wondering if there's any way to entice her into eating them, even if it's just for a little while? One of the ideas was to dip them in honey, since honey is about the only thing she'll willingly eat.

She has a day glow light bulb and is being kept in a small chameleon enclosure, completely mesh wiring. The light bulb is turned on as soon as I get home and turned off when I go to bed, as well as on a little bit in the morning. When it's not on I drape towels over her enclosure to trap the heat. Temps usually range around 30 C to 40 C when the lightbulb is on, and drop to 20 C when it's off.

When I first tried to feed her the maggots she absolutely refused and even threw up some threat postures. I've given her one cricket, but she loathed it and only ate about half of it. I've been repeatedly trying with the maggots and giving her water and honey so she at least has something to hold her by.

Another option is that I have flightless fruitfly cultures, but these are very tiny for her and usually she doesn't see them or shoves the tweezers away, I assume she doesn't even know that there's something there. I could try putting them on something smaller, like a paper clip and holding it up to her. I don't know. Advice would be highly appreciated, I want to see her abdomen plump again.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Sticky]

Have you tried superworms? Trim the head off then try to pull the gut out. I use tweezers to hold the things like supers,mealworms and others. I find the mantids will take things more readily than hold it with just my fingers.

Put the cut end to her mouth and she should start eating it.

I give giant mealworms to my guys as I bought 1000 for my geckos. Every one of my mantids love them.

 

[TheArtisticArachnid]

Have you tried superworms? Trim the head off then try to pull the gut out. I use tweezers to hold the things like supers,mealworms and others. I find the mantids will take things more readily than hold it with just my fingers.

Put the cut end to her mouth and she should start eating it.

I give giant mealworms to my guys as I bought 1000 for my geckos. Every one of my mantids love them.

I don't have superworms but I could definitely buy some from the petstore- what I do have/could borrow is mealworms that we use for our gecko and give that a try, although with devil's flowers you're supposed to stick to flying type insects.... At this rate I'm willing to try anything.

 

[Darkrai283]

Paul's great short article on using flies as feeders:

http://www.ukmantisforums.co.uk/content.php?143-Help-and-Advice-on-Using-Flies-to-Feed-Your-Mantids-by-Paul-Millward

I can't help you with the appetite problem but my I. diabolica nymphs refuse to eat the insides of Zophobas morio larvae.

BTW, I do not encourage handfeeding unless it is absolutely necessary (ones with deformed raptorials from a mismoult for example). I had to try handfeeding for the Idolomantis as I ran out of BBs and I wanted to give them something so that they could hold on for a little while longer until the next back hatched out.

 

[Ralphys_Mantids]

Idolos only like flying prey

 

[TheArtisticArachnid]

Paul's great short article on using flies as feeders:

http://www.ukmantisforums.co.uk/content.php?143-Help-and-Advice-on-Using-Flies-to-Feed-Your-Mantids-by-Paul-Millward

I can't help you with the appetite problem but my I. diabolica nymphs refuse to eat the insides of Zophobas morio larvae.

BTW, I do not encourage handfeeding unless it is absolutely necessary (ones with deformed raptorials from a mismoult for example). I had to try handfeeding for the Idolomantis as I ran out of BBs and I wanted to give them something so that they could hold on for a little while longer until the next back hatched out.

Thank you so much for the article, I'll give it a thorough read.

I don't hand feed her anything, or at least I haven't had to for the first few months of her care- everything is either plopped into her enclosure or shown to her with tweezers. She did eat and grab a cricket from the tweezers by herself but since then she hasn't grabbed anything directly- I don't know if this is a problem with her raptors specifically or if she's choosing to aim for my hands instead of the tweezers because she thinks I might leave her alone (lol).

So would you suggest I hold the maggots up to her with my hands then?

 

[PlayingMantis]

Once I procrastinated taking out BB pupae from the fridge and I ran out of BB flies. Only 2 of the 11 idolos seemed interested in mealworms. The others ate cut-up BB pupae. I would just cut off the very top of a pupa, squeeze out a little juice, and hold it to the mantid's mouth. However, be warned that this is very time-consuming, and ever since then, I made sure to have a steady supply of eclosed flies.

If you want to try feeding your idolo maggots, you can cut a maggot in half and put the juicy part to her mandibles. She should start nibbling and if she likes it, she'll start eating. If she doesn't like it, she'll simply move her head away or push the food away using her claws. In that case, don't force feed.

You can also give her some water to drink by spraying her raptorials, and she'll drink the droplets.

About the raptorials - they tend to keep their raptorials closed while at rest. I've seen mismolted raptorials that are bent in odd directions. Or sometimes the claws cannot open and close. I can't say for sure if yours is OK, but if she keeps her claws folded symmetrically and neatly, can open/close her claws, and can grip surfaces while walking, I'd say she's fine. If you'd like, feel free to upload a photo.

 

[aNisip]

It's tricky with this species in terms of feeding. Yes they seem to only like flying foods but most bbs/hsfs dont just hover/fly in the middle of the enclosure perfectly awaiting the arms of the mantid. Most of the times they will fly for a short period of time and land on the wall of the enclosure and then just crawl. So there are two options to get those flies into "striking" distance of your I. diabolica.

1.) Just add more flies and the probability of some of those flies actually flying around for your mantid to grab will be much higher.

2.) Skewer a fly onto a long, thin, "skewer" and wave it in front of the mantid. I have a bunch of Long leaf pine trees in my yard that I use the pine needles to skewer the fly upon and it works the best. But if you dont have a long, thin yet sturdy pine needle, then most dissecting probes should work. If you dont have access to any form of probe, than a pair of forceps will work to hold the legs, body or a wing of the fly and just hold it in front of the mantid to strike.