Mantis Riligiosa ooth hatch?...

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dmina

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OK... so I have had my ooth from the end of July..

This morning about 2:30 am I noticed my ooth hatching... 1 nymph on the bottom, one almost out of the ooth..

Watch for an hour.. the one finished coming out and I watched it dry.. an hour later no more..

So I went to bed knowing I had a lot of work to do today..

Woke up... went and checked the container expecting to see alot more hatchlings... but..

No.. Just those 2 ????

10 hours later... should more come? Or Was that my great explosion..everyone warned me about..LOL

Also..when should I start feeding the nymphs?.. I don't want them to eat each other...

should I just remove them, into their own container?... and just wait and see on the ooth longer?

Thanks for your time

 
Sometimes one of them just gets too excited to wait for his siblings. I'd start to wonder after 3-4 days, but even then I had one that hatched three, then two weeks later hatched about a hundred. No clue what happened, but they're all still alive and kicking (L5ish now).

For food, throw a few melanogasters in there (the smaller wingless flies) per nymph. My latest European ooth hatched and they actually got aggressive toward each other really fast despite a large terrarium and lots of food. After about 5 casualties we separated everyone. That was not typical in my experience, but if you want to error on the side of caution... and you'll need to separate them eventually anyway so why not.

 
The great explosion of nymphs is more typical in Chinese ooths. It's not very common with Europeans. This year for example I had something similar to you:

Day 1, one nymph on the morning and a 2nd one at night.

Day 2, 6/7 nymphs.

Day 3, 30+

Day 4, 36-40

Day 5, 42-45

Day 6, 70+

Note these numbers are approximations.

I find kind of weird your ooth is hatching only now. I suppose it's because you live at higher latitudes than me.

A word of warning, European nymph mortality is VERY high. For me, this year on Europeans was a disaster. Compared to the usual 300/400 nymphs I get from 10+ ooths, I got around 80 from 3 ooths from a total of 12 fertile ooths (I opened the failed ooths to make sure they were fertile).

From those 80 nymphs only 1 is alive now and currently L3. I had four nymphs that were quite healthy but upon molting to L2, three of them fell off their perch and failed to get their legs out of the old skin. Massive bad luck in my opinion.

 
ouch... well I still have just the 2 nymphs so far.. still alive...bonus.. but I am gonna keep waiting!

these were not wild cought ooths... they I ordered them 5 weeks ago.. captive bred I think...

 
I had one hatch in the spring and it woukd hatch a few a day for about 2 weeks i ended up with a little under 100 nymphs. I didnt have many issues with mine at all. I only lost a few the firat coupke if days. My only complaint is i wish i would of kept a few more for myself lol.

 
I've never hatched religiosas so no advise on hatch times.

Don't feed the first day (they are still hardening). on the second day throw in some melanogasters and see if they eat, then throw in more (a few for each nymph) if they do.

 

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