AdrianVonEpic
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- Jan 22, 2020
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Soooo, hello! I'm Adrian. I'm from/in Seattle, Washington. I'm 41, and me and my gf are both fairly obsessed with arthropods. She's got a bit of a thing for some amphibians too, but they don't count around here, am I right? 
hahah.
Anyhow, I'm uh.. Into a bunch of really weird things, video games, strange new recipes, and fringe technology. Anyone wanna game sometime?
But, I just got my first mantis about 9 months ago? I had no idea I even liked them so much. Girlfriend just happened to bring me home an ooth from the local garden center at the fred meyers she happened to work at, at the time. Neither of us were even sure it was going to hatch. So, I put it in a small, crappy, 8x6x12? plastic discount model terrarium thing from the pet shop, inside a little dish. just laying there. TOTALLY didn't know any better yeah? Well.
So, fast forward a few weeks, and nothing has happened, but I've kept it misted periodically. So, I mist it again, and next thing I know, there's just tons of babies crawling all over the whole tank! I guess I got lucky and they hatched right anyways. Phew. I let the majority of them go outside after the first day or so, just to ensure they'd survive due to the limited space I had. Kept about 10. They slowly started disappearing. .I was worried. I checked online, read up on whatever I could about them thinking maybe they were eating each other. My fears were confirmed. LOL. I told my girlfriend, she thought I was crazy, that they wouldn't eat each other. By the time she finally believed me, we were down to one. A female. I named her darth manticus, in honor of the brutal fratricide she committed, to survive to adulthood.
Unfortunately, I do believe she either wasn't moist enough in molting, or got knocked down before she finished, but her wing was messed up and all tangled up. Her back end was also very slightly damaged a bit. I was able to partially straighten out her wing with a tiny paper clip and some patience, but I couldn't do a whole lot for her back end aside from misting her with water and patting it dry when the hemolymph would leak out until it wasn't. I did the best I could. Kept her alive for almost 6 weeks after that, until I think the damage just got to be too much, or she finally got an infection from it.. and got weak and ended up dying. But, you know. It is what it is
Now, I have 2 female ghost mantids - phyllocrania paradoxa, that are almost adults, that I acquired locally here. A what I believe? is female, sphodromantis, that i picked up from mantidkingdom. A cute little female, almost adult, indian flower mantis, the creobroter gemmatus? that we had picked up at the recent trade show.. And a new lil Hierodula membranacea, that I just picked up from over at bugs in cyberspace. (both bugs in cyberspace,
and mantid kingdom were amazing, btw!)
Hoping to get quite a few more as time goes on. Also hoping to get enough space here to (with any luck) get some of the more rare, or unique ones behaviorally, and breed them to study them. I've become overly fascinated with the mantids, but arthropods in general are pretty great as well!
The gf has a nice little collection, too. I'm doing my best to add to that as best as I can! Hahaha. She's currently at 6 blue death feigning beetles, 2 chrome roaches, 2 extinct roaches, a handful of madagascar roaches, an adult wide horned hisser, a nymph wide horned hisser, a handful of peppered deaths head roaches, and some new babies! uhh.. a pacman frog, a couple of african dwarf frogs? I believe? and a florida tailless whip scorpion. And then a container with kenyan roaches and dubia roaches, both purchased as food, that she got too attached to and we're now keeping them.. LOL! also another container with some random snails and some isopods and some crickets at various stages.. We're also experimenting with different ways/time involved for getting zophobas morio to pupate and beetle up. Had one that JUST FINALLY pupated, stayed a worm for nearly.. 8 months? Very odd We're attempting to see how well things thrive/breed together to find ideal ways to sustain food populations with minimal attention needed
(However, in the meantime.. anyone in the seattle area have some spare flies/moths/etc? One of my ghosties just molted and my flies quit hatching near as i can tell..
)
Aaaaaand, below.. Is one of my favorite pics of all time, that I took of my lovely girl Darth Manticus, at sub adult, maybe 3 or 4 days before her last molt? She went to town on that cricket, and I had just the right angle, lighting, and focus to make it an amazing shot
ANYWAYS! Glad to be here, can't wait to meet some of you and chat, and if any of y'all live near by, let's talk! maybe we can discuss mantids in more detail. (or if you like roaches, my girlfriend is available as well.. lol)
I'll just toss in a few more of her so you can check her out a bit better.
And just because I was shocked at how big and heavy this guy was.. Here's her wide horned hisser adult, that she got at a trade show a while back He's super chill, and super clingy. lol.
hahah. Anyhow, I'm uh.. Into a bunch of really weird things, video games, strange new recipes, and fringe technology. Anyone wanna game sometime?
But, I just got my first mantis about 9 months ago? I had no idea I even liked them so much. Girlfriend just happened to bring me home an ooth from the local garden center at the fred meyers she happened to work at, at the time. Neither of us were even sure it was going to hatch. So, I put it in a small, crappy, 8x6x12? plastic discount model terrarium thing from the pet shop, inside a little dish. just laying there. TOTALLY didn't know any better yeah? Well.
So, fast forward a few weeks, and nothing has happened, but I've kept it misted periodically. So, I mist it again, and next thing I know, there's just tons of babies crawling all over the whole tank! I guess I got lucky and they hatched right anyways. Phew. I let the majority of them go outside after the first day or so, just to ensure they'd survive due to the limited space I had. Kept about 10. They slowly started disappearing. .I was worried. I checked online, read up on whatever I could about them thinking maybe they were eating each other. My fears were confirmed. LOL. I told my girlfriend, she thought I was crazy, that they wouldn't eat each other. By the time she finally believed me, we were down to one. A female. I named her darth manticus, in honor of the brutal fratricide she committed, to survive to adulthood.
Unfortunately, I do believe she either wasn't moist enough in molting, or got knocked down before she finished, but her wing was messed up and all tangled up. Her back end was also very slightly damaged a bit. I was able to partially straighten out her wing with a tiny paper clip and some patience, but I couldn't do a whole lot for her back end aside from misting her with water and patting it dry when the hemolymph would leak out until it wasn't. I did the best I could. Kept her alive for almost 6 weeks after that, until I think the damage just got to be too much, or she finally got an infection from it.. and got weak and ended up dying. But, you know. It is what it is
Now, I have 2 female ghost mantids - phyllocrania paradoxa, that are almost adults, that I acquired locally here. A what I believe? is female, sphodromantis, that i picked up from mantidkingdom. A cute little female, almost adult, indian flower mantis, the creobroter gemmatus? that we had picked up at the recent trade show.. And a new lil Hierodula membranacea, that I just picked up from over at bugs in cyberspace. (both bugs in cyberspace,
and mantid kingdom were amazing, btw!)
Hoping to get quite a few more as time goes on. Also hoping to get enough space here to (with any luck) get some of the more rare, or unique ones behaviorally, and breed them to study them. I've become overly fascinated with the mantids, but arthropods in general are pretty great as well!
The gf has a nice little collection, too. I'm doing my best to add to that as best as I can! Hahaha. She's currently at 6 blue death feigning beetles, 2 chrome roaches, 2 extinct roaches, a handful of madagascar roaches, an adult wide horned hisser, a nymph wide horned hisser, a handful of peppered deaths head roaches, and some new babies! uhh.. a pacman frog, a couple of african dwarf frogs? I believe? and a florida tailless whip scorpion. And then a container with kenyan roaches and dubia roaches, both purchased as food, that she got too attached to and we're now keeping them.. LOL! also another container with some random snails and some isopods and some crickets at various stages.. We're also experimenting with different ways/time involved for getting zophobas morio to pupate and beetle up. Had one that JUST FINALLY pupated, stayed a worm for nearly.. 8 months? Very odd
We're attempting to see how well things thrive/breed together to find ideal ways to sustain food populations with minimal attention needed (However, in the meantime.. anyone in the seattle area have some spare flies/moths/etc? One of my ghosties just molted and my flies quit hatching near as i can tell..
)Aaaaaand, below.. Is one of my favorite pics of all time, that I took of my lovely girl Darth Manticus, at sub adult, maybe 3 or 4 days before her last molt? She went to town on that cricket, and I had just the right angle, lighting, and focus to make it an amazing shot
ANYWAYS! Glad to be here, can't wait to meet some of you and chat, and if any of y'all live near by, let's talk! maybe we can discuss mantids in more detail.
(or if you like roaches, my girlfriend is available as well.. lol) I'll just toss in a few more of her so you can check her out a bit better.
And just because I was shocked at how big and heavy this guy was.. Here's her wide horned hisser adult, that she got at a trade show a while back
He's super chill, and super clingy. lol.
but, I'm hoping to get a nice macro lens soon, and would love to find some great unique species for taking photos of and learning more about. If anyone has any great suggestions on anything that would be unique either behaviorally or aesthetically, let me know.. I'd love to know more! 
