New to the forum - Retinal

retinal · Sep 10, 2015

HI all,

My names Mike. I live in London. I ventured into the mantis world of fun with an orchid female about a year ago.

She has sadly since passed but I've returned to the hobby with a recent acquisition of 3 ghosts and 3 chinese flower mantids. Well it was supposed to be 3 but the seller sent 6 and all survived, so I now have 9 L1/2 chinese flower mantids and 3 L3/4 ghosts.

I've been reading the forum a bit and everyone seems very friendly so I look forward to posting and chatting to all.

I've only had them a few days and atm they are still in their separate little pots they came in. All are eating fruit flies fine and will happily come out and walk all over my hands. I have also been misting them and using paper towel in the bottoms. I use a bit of paper towel to pop any large droplets of water.

No names as of yet but I got a pic of one ghost tonight. He grabbed a fly just after i opened his pot

CosbyArt · Sep 10, 2015

Hello Mike and welcome to the forum

Sounds like you are well on your way to getting a collection of mantids.

Ghosts are great, still one of my favorites. It looks like yours is getting to a bit larger as it lost the typical newborn nymph white eye coloring.

Sounds like they are doing great. When you are ready to change their housing you can make nymph cups easy like these, or use deli cups and such. If you are new to making such a thing take a peek at my tutorial on building mantid habitats.

Rick · Sep 10, 2015

Welcom

retinal · Sep 11, 2015

Cheers guys.

I have already had a read through your habitat guides CosbyArt

, good job. They have given me some great idea's. I've got deli cups waiting at my local post office to be picked up and this weekend I will set them all up in one each. I'll post some pics once it's all done.

CosbyArt · Sep 11, 2015

retinal said:
Cheers guys.

I have already had a read through your habitat guides CosbyArt , good job. They have given me some great idea's. I've got deli cups waiting at my local post office to be picked up and this weekend I will set them all up in one each. I'll post some pics once it's all done.

Thanks, glad to see they helped you.

Sounds good, I'll keep my eye out for your photos then.