Help needed!

[Prelan]

although i have a lot of experience in keeping snakes, i am new to mantids and came home today to find that my mantid(H.Grandis) has had a terrible shed.he's lost one of his ''back'' legs because it was caught in the exo and the other 'back' leg is bent as a U, it bends the wrong way, and one of his 'middle' legs is back to front, so to speak. so he only has one functional 'standing' leg. i have read other topics in the health issues section but decided to make a post for myself as i couldn't find anything as drastic as this case.

i have been misting him every other day to once every three days, hes in a 24x15 aquarium and i use just some sort of universal reptile-amphib bark. he also has a live plant in there to help with the humidity and thats what he molted on but he chose a leaf really close to the soil. now he can't support himself when on a flat surface but can climb relatively well using his forearms, and when i mean relatively, thats exactly what i mean.

was this my fault? cuz i tend not to get the same issues with snakes, if they have a bad shed i just help them with a damp towel, but this is too much. maybe i took the caresheets information too literally when it said that ''these animals are really easy to keep'', and i feel guilty.

oh and i don't know what stage hes at but i'll measure him and count the sections on his back, but hes pretty big now. i'll also get some pictures and in the meantime i'll try some hand feeding.

i'm Steve btw

Thanks

 

[Rick]

Welcome. Be sure to intro yourself in the introductions forum.

I doubt it was anything you did wrong. Sometimes it just happens. It even happens to those of us who have been keeping these for years. It doesn't sound like your mantis will do well now. The next molt may be impossible due to its condition.

 

[OGIGA]

That's sad... Nobody knows what could have gone wrong. Sometimes my most neglected mantises do best and least neglected do worst.

 

[Peter Clausen]

Hi Steve,

A lot of hobbyists get excited when they get their first mantis and want to create some elaborate dream habitat. Dealers learn pretty quickly that simplicity is always the best way to go when they're raising hundreds at a time.

The ideal habitat (commonly quoted standard) is one that is 3 times as tall as your mantis is long and twice as wide. I typically keep a few pieces of paper towel folded back on themselves and placed in the cage so that it covers both the bottom and one wall of the habitat. This is usually sufficient to provide a proper molting place, though not very attractive as a display tank. The towel also helps to retain moisture, which doesn't sound like a contributing factor in your mantid's mismolt.

The best case scenario is one where all walls and the top of the cage are lined with either paper towel or screen. This provides 100% molting surfaces.

It sounds to me like your mantis picked a place too near the ground to molt effectively. I had a lot of experience with this problem when I raised stick-insects. Despite other perches higher up in the cage, an individual will sometimes choose a very low branch. Why? Simply because "it was there"! This occasional problem is prevented by removing any low-level perches.

My best guess is that your mantis started off well and was able to get its front legs and one of its middle legs out (they shed their skin head first). At that time it either fell to the ground (slipped/lost its footing) or had begun to touch the ground (ran out of space). By not being able to finish extracting its other three legs with the aid of gravity and adequate space, its molt was disrupted and incomplete.

Now your only dilemma is a moral one. What to do about a mantis that has an almost zero percent chance of surviving the next molt???

Peter

 

[Mantida]

Aw, I'm sorry for that mismolt. Like Rick and Peter pointed out there isn't much you could have done for the mantis when it was molting and it is not your fault. I've had several bad molts before, most being low to the ground.

If you have the patience you can continue to feed the mantis and see if the next molt can be successful. You said that both raptorial arms are intact I believe... correct? If so the mantis should have no problem eating if the prey is able to come to your mantis. What I did with my crippled female (who was kind of in the same situation except I had to hand feed her due to her twisted raptorial arm), when she neared the time to molt I loosely taped her crippled legs to the top of the enclosure's lid. Overnight she had molted and it was a successful one.

It really depends on luck sometimes.