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robo mantis

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I am new at hatching and selling mantids. It always seems i cant get the nymphs past the first shed so they are strong enough to live through shipping. Is there a trick to keeping them alive and separating them fast enought and how to feed them all?

P.S. I wait a day for them to harden their skin and let some mantids eat each other but i cant raise the rest. Am i doing somthing wrong?

 
A rather silly question, but do you actually feed the nymphs or you just wait for them eat each other?

 
I just leave them all together in a ten gallon or so tank or a large net cage. After the second day I dump in some fruit flies. I mist them daily with a very light mist of water. A lot of nymphs will die for no reason so jsut accept that.

 
Yeah i left them alone for about 2 days then most were dead. But when i try to feed them they all run out :x any tricks to that?And how do you know when they can be shipped (i think after first shed am i wrong)?

 
My tanks full of nymphs will have a mesh top that is held down by double sided tape. Then I put a screen lid over that. So for feeding I just remove the screen top and pull back the mesh a little bit and stick the end of a funnel into the tank. Then I just pour the flies in. Or on my net cage I unzip the zipper just enough to get the funnel in.

 
i use the same system but i never have tried to feed them i think i will buys some flies from www.edsflymeat.com do his come with funnels?

 
You'll probably have to get a funnel at a hardware store or some place like that. I've seen them at walmart

 
I bought the funnel at wal mart I think.

 
One method I use is to put the mantid nursery into the fridge for 10-15 minutes. Sometimes they all look dead and fall to the enclosure floor, but they always "come back to life". It gives me a good 10-20 minute window to get fruitflies into the enclosure, which usually takes a minute or two.

By far the easiest method is to just keep a 16oz. size deli-cup fruitfly culture in the mantid enclosure and make sure it has one or more 1/4"-1/2" holes poked into it for the fruitflies to escape into the enclosure. Then all you have to do is mist from time to time until they reach L3 or L4. This works very well for me, but may not work with all species or people.

 
what i do put the whole ff culture in the enclosure this works for me.the hard part is takeing the culture out and removing the mantids :?

 
Robo mantis, i may of completely mis read your post, but i was wondering what species are you trying to hatch? because although it may be entirely due to feeding methods ect (which it may well be) but also it could be due to the diapause some species need...(chiling of the ooth) i once made this mistake with some europeans :oops: they just all dropped dead after hatching :cry:

 

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