My OSH mantids hatched yesterday!!

aminah · Apr 10, 2007

The other ooth hatched today!! Yeyyy!

So now that I have what appears to be a 2nd chance, anything else I should do or know about? I'm going to put them in 32oz. deli cups this time, and see if that cuts back on the cannibalism.

When I searched for lone survivors from the first ooth today, I found quite a few dead nymphs at the bottom, so they didn't just eat each other... some died for some reason.

How can I avoid this?

Peekaboo · Apr 10, 2007

You can't really. The thing about nymphs is that they often die for no reason, one of the reasons why there can be hundreds to an ootheca.

Don't try to raise each mantis separately, you won't be able to take care of every single one of them. I'd suggest seperating a few dozen at a time into separate cups. When they get a little older, and are reduced to more manageable numbers, you can then house them individually.

aminah · Apr 11, 2007

Okay, so expect some random deaths... good to know.

I was actually planning on putting 4-6 in each cup and working with that. I'll still have quite a few cups, but I'm used to feeding multiple "folks" around here... I breed geckos and can have quite a few little hatchlings to look after, all at once. (When I bred Betta splendens, I had to separate at 4 weeks and deal with 100s of feedings and water changes. Heh! I'm trained well.

)

Thanks again for the info. I'm feeling much more confident about this.

Rick · Apr 11, 2007

With these and some others you will lose most of them. Keep them all together until you only have five or so. Its a waste of time to seperate hundreds of nymphs. It's much more practical to only care for a few anyways. Regardless of how much you feed them they will still eat each other.

aminah · Apr 18, 2007

Update:

I have 2 survivors that I can see. There may be a couple more, but not likely. The 2 are eating well and it's getting time to separate them out, I believe.

So much for protecting my garden!!