Egg hatching, newbie...when to separate mantids?

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d270

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Hi,

I'm a newbie here...I've seen 2 real life mantis' my entire life (chicago Illinois area) and my son caught one last year which lasted about two weeks in its new enclosure and died.

So I promised I would get some this year, plus I thought I would populate the yard with them. I have hardly any shrubs/bushes/flowers, but about 16 50' tall oak trees. I hope maybe the mantids will get the carpenter ants and caterpillers.

Anyway, first things first. Online I bought 2 babies....one died during the first molt. I then became cognizant about humidity.

Got a smaller plastic container (baby food jar size) with papertowel at the bottom. The other mantis molted and survived and seems to be doing well. These were the only live mantis' I could find for sale (Chinese).

So, I ALSO got three egg cases from online.

The egg cases have been around about 2 weeks in my garage (about 50-65 deg/30-40% humidity) with no real spritzing...I'm a slow learner about this humidity stuff.

These are in 2 fish tank/enclosures with a cloth top. I recently got some plexiglass and am covering 80% of the top (humidity concerns again).

IF, IF these guys hatch....when is it appropriate to start separating them? I'm fine with them canabilizing at first (less fruit flies I must feed them right? :)

Do you think they may could be too dried out already? :-( Not sure where they were cultivated from.

Thanks!!!

 
Any idea what species the ooths are?

I'd guess they're ok having been through that humidity, but I'd definately aim for at least 40%-60% right about now. Try to get 2-4 goods mistings a week. As for seperating the nymphs, I'm not entirely sure about that either, but I'd say by L3 (3 molts) they would have cannibilized enough to be slightly more managable if your ooths are from chinese mantids. Chinese ooths hatch out A LOT of nymphs though, so if that's what the ooths are (Most likely) than It might be a bit overwhelming setting up containers for each and every nymph. You can raise them together until L2-L4, and then release the majority. Keep around 10-20 to ensure you have some adult pairs for mating and future broods.

 
Yeah follow the first response, I'd actually release a lot of the hatchlings rather than trying to raise them to L4, since a lot of them will die by then, at least they could be put to use in nature.

 
I normally hatch them in a larger enclosure and separate out at about L3. Those generally have a high number of nymphs and it really isn't practical to separate hundreds of nymphs and care for them. If you keep them together for awhile the weaker ones will die off/be eaten and you should be left with the strongest. They also have a high mortality rate when young so you will lose a lot for no obvious reasons. And I wouldn't expect much from releasing any in your yard. It doesn't really sound like you have the proper habitat.

 
Ok, so do I keep food from the new baby mantids? So they eat eachother on purpose?

Will they cannibalise eachother if they are hungry enough?

Sounds gory....but I will need to thin the herd.

 
Aren't you from chicago? I live outside of chicago and my first mantis was a wild caught Chinese. So the environment here is good for release. I'd just wait for it to warm up a little bit more first.

 
Dump food in there for them. It's unlikely for them to cannibalize each other if they've never eaten anything else before. What I mean is, the ones that are able to eat fruit flies are going to get a little bigger than their siblings and therefore be able to cannibalize on the ones that failed to catch some flies. So go ahead and put some food in there for them to eat. And give them some water.

 
Mine were chinese mantids, and began to eat eachother as soon as they hatched. So I would say just keep a few, and let most of them go, because ALOT will hatch.

 
Been dumping fruit flys in there, and not many are eating them. There have been quite a few casualties. The aquarium I had them in with papertowel on the bottom didn't work too well. I didnt cut it to size exactly and about 20 mantids got themselves stuck under the lining...bummer. There are others that have just fallen over....it's been getting here in the mid 30's and 40's in Chicago so I cant let them go yet.

I have learned a lot if/when the other 2 egg cases hatch. one of my cultures is crashing I think.....so I have been depopulating the flies into the mantids cage...hoping for the best.

I really thought the mantids would jump at the flies, but many dont know what to do yet.

Thanks.

 
Same thing happened with my M. religiosa hatchlings. Waited about a day, dumped fruit flies in their, some got stuck in between paper towels, all of them just ran from ffs and didn't do anything...

Until I gave them water. Then they started devouring the flies and each other. So if you haven't misted yet, just wait. You'll get some that start taking the fruit flies. Assuming their in a large enough enclosure that they're not constantly being bothered by their siblings.

 

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