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MantidLord

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Hey all, finally decided to take some pics of my collection today. But first, a general update. My I. oratoria collection has decreased. Of the original 20, 12 now remain. Yesterday I went and bought some crix only to discover that 7 had died :( What really sucks is that they all died of starvation, and by the looks of it, only a couple of hours before I went to the pet store (thanks a lot school :angry: ).I knew that they were hungry, but I was hoping that they would be able to last by the time I got home. Needless to say, the others got a good meal.

The adult male that I caught on Tuesday had to be put down. For some reason, his abdomen was bursting to where it hang limp if he was upside down and he just seemed to be dying, not flying or jumping, or moving at all really. So total, I have fourteen Iris oratoria (the twelve mentioned earlier, and one adult and one subadult male I caught in the past two weeks).

My chinese population has finally decreased. I have a total of 18. However four have yet to molt yet, while 10 of them are beginning to molt to L4 :blink:

And of course, I still have the adult female ground mantis. Who I believe has been mated successfully, because she laid another ooth a couple of days ago, and it was significantly larger than the one she laid right after "mating", once the male was eaten. I know ooth size doesn't necessarily mean anything, but to go from a small ooth to a large one is pretty cool. Anyway, without further ado, the pics:

Thought this would be a cool pic, male right before take off

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Chinese L1 eating fruit fly

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Ground mantis

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Compared to adult male Iris oratoria

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Believe it or not, she actually attacked him, aggressive. Better be careful though, this guy ate his partner :angry:

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Male before jumping

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Scanning the area

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The rest of them

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Chinese again

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Here's how they all live. Guess you can tell my family loves spaghetti :p Iris oratoria on the bottom, chinese and ground mantis on top. Ground mantis to the left. This doesn't show the enclosure for my adult male and ten other chinese nymphs.

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And my three fruit fly cultures, one of them has been running for over a month now. wooot!!! :)

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Congrats on the ground mantis! I used to have a nymph and it died i still don't know why :-/ Let me know when you have some more. Maybe PM me how you care for them?

 
Hi,thanks.

The L1 chinese is about 1 cm long.

And robomantis, I'll let you know. I had some ooths hatch a while back, but all of the nymphs died, even though I tried feeding them spring tails. Though I did raise this one from an early instar.

 
Took pictures of the big one next to a normal sized male. Will post it soon.

Grrr. forum error. I just noticed the comments.

@Robomantis: it is annoying how they just up and die. I didn't even get one to molt to L2. They would grab the spring tails, nibble and then drop them. So frustrating.

@Seattle79: Thanks, it's funny that a little while ago, all I had were Iris oratoria. Until I found the ground mantids wild in my area. But no collection is complete without the "common" yet difficult to raise, Mantis religiosa. I need to go to California and catch a couple.

 
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