Hello from Chicago

[gibbons]

My daughter Opal & I caught a Carolina mantis over the summer which we kept in a terrarium for a short while, and that experience sparked our interest in mantises. We recently got a Ghost and Heterochaeta from Mantisplace.com - Rebecca's been awesome at answering our questions and even sent us a very gracious gift with our order! Unfortunately the heterochaeta died - not sure why, but we weren't tuned in to how much she was or wasn't eating and probably she stressed due to having blue bottles zooming around while she was preparing to molt. The ghost seems to be doing very well though, and we're being much more attentive to his/her eating routine: mostly fruit flies and the smallest crickets so far... If anyone has a recommendation about when a ghost can move up to blue bottles, that would be great... We have some bb larvae & pupae in the fridge, but at the moment she's about the same size as a bb so I've been holding off.

- Scott

 

[dmina]

 

[LAME]

Welcome chitown! From the capital city.

 

[dwalls247]

Welcome gibbons,as far as feeding the ghosts,I feed anything that is half the size of the mantis or smaller and seems to work well,I would stick with fruit flies and small crickets for now,and maybe try some very small roach nymphs if you can get your hands on some.I don't know if there is a difference with the mantids when you add vitamins and supplement powders,but I use repashy calcium plus to dust my feeders for my mantids,maybe somebody else can chime in with more info on supplements.

 

[Rick]

Welcome

 

[CosbyArt]

Hello Scott and welcome to the forum

A Carolina mantis is to blame for me getting into the hobby as well. Glad to see though your daughter is involved too, nice to share a hobby.

In regards to the Ghost eating BB flies sorry to say the flies will not be any good by the time it can eat them, as fly pupae are only good for about two weeks in the fridge before they quit hatching. My past Ghosts would eat anything up to about 75% of their body size. If that is a bamboo skewer the Ghost is perched on, it will need to molt about 3 more times till it gets there.

It will quickly though move up from the Melanogaster fruit flies stage to the Hydei FF's, and will need those in another molt. At that point the best next feeder is the smaller house flies (which you can also get from Rebecca) before moving up to the BB flies.

 

[Fredstrong]

Welcome!

 

[gibbons]

Thanks everyone! Four molts later, our ghost is doing great. Found someone with a lizard who took my BB's. We're now eating the larger FF's and small crickets. Every once in a while I'll catch a small moth outside that I'll toss in, and it rarely lasts long...