Thought I'd make a bit of an update after time has passed. 2 females failed their final molt. One was a regular mismolt, I suspect it got dehydrated because it spent a whole week preparing without eating anything. The second one somehow badly hurt its eye at the start of the molt and basically "bled out" before it was finished. You can see a leftover blob of hemolymph on its eye in the following picture.
This left me with 2 females and 2 males. The first female took over a month to get ready to mate, though when I put the male into their tank it showed no interest in mating. I seperated it again and kept it several days in a different room. While this did motivate the male to jump on her, his age seems to have taken a toll on his motoric abilities and his movement became kind of awkward and less coordinated than it should be. He did attempt to copulate several times, but he was always unable to connect. The following pic shows the position he was in, wiggling his abdomen around but being too far off.
2 days ago he then dropped dead, almost reaching 2 months of lifespan after his final molt. The first female laid a pretty big, albeit unfertilized ooth and the second female became ready to mate as well.
The second male turned out to be an extremely slow grower, as it is still subadult today, eating well and without any signs of his wingbuds swelling. I hope he eventually makes it and is able to mate, else my first attempt at breeding Idolomantis will be a failure. Still, they definitely gave me some good experience while raising them and if it won't work out with the male I'm definitely gonna give this species another shot, maybe with an even bigger starting group. Here's a bunch of other photos.
I also recently got a group of L2/L3 Metallyticus splendidus nymphs. They are super small and don't have any metallic colors yet, but I'm absolutely in love with this species. :wub:
. Though it looks like they get it back once they are adults eh? I'm gonna have to invest in a enclosure like yours.
