Preserving with minimal color loss

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meaganelise9 said:
Where do you buy your pinning supplies?
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all I use are toothpicks( which I break in halves), a long flat starofoam, filter coffee paper( which I got i cut in strips), and shadow boxes that I buy at Michaels( should be 40% off right now). I don't use any pins when I put them into my shadowbox, I hot glue them down carefully on one spot only.

 
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I get my pinning stuff off bioquip. Not sure if its a good deal or not, I haven't done much shopping around. All I buy is the pins, the display boxes, and forceps.

Styrofoam (esp. the stuff you get with a new tv) is all you need to position the little guys, as well as some small strips of paper for the legs and/or wings. I use Xacto knives and forceps to remove the GI tract of my mantids, as the bacteria will eat away at the specimen in no time if not done promptly. Once the GI and all eggs are removed, the abdomen is stuffed with wool, cotton balls, or paper towel.

I've gotten very good at this, can't see any signs of tampering and the abdomen looks real. Maybe this is good practice for my plastic surgery rotations in two years!

 
I am also looking to preserve my brown mantis. She only died yesterday and already looks discoloured (darkened). My problem with the pinning and shadow boxes is that I used to collect butterflies and pin them but noticed that after a few years they would basically turn to dust. I am not sure how to prevent that. I think the alcohol idea is interesting since the other alternative of disemboweling sounds a bit well difficult and messy. I am not sure I would be up to it but does anyone know exactly how one goes about disemboweling a mantis?

 
Samanthathamantis said:
I am also looking to preserve my brown mantis. She only died yesterday and already looks discoloured (darkened). My problem with the pinning and shadow boxes is that I used to collect butterflies and pin them but noticed that after a few years they would basically turn to dust. I am not sure how to prevent that. I think the alcohol idea is interesting since the other alternative of disemboweling sounds a bit well difficult and messy. I am not sure I would be up to it but does anyone know exactly how one goes about disemboweling a mantis?
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Yea it does get pretty messy. Cut a little slit on the abdomen. Get a needle nose tweezer, start tugging on the insides, carefully not to rip the bowels and what not and it should come out in one piece, if not, then better start cleaning everything. Good thing about it, is that the mantis won't start to rot and smell if you at least take most of the insides out. It'll dry up more quickly.

 
When you soak the bugs in alcohol, do you have to keep the bug in there forever, or only temporarily (a month)? Also, would you need to gut the mantis before/ after soaking?

 
Domanating said:
I already posted this image in the forum and i will post it again. I'm preserving my mantids in jars filled with alcohol. The main downsides are obviously the alcohol cost and space so next time i'll try drying them in the sun. A couple of years ago i didn't know a damn thing about preservation and i thought the more alcohol the better it preserves.

The results of that thought are well shown in the image. The jars with the yellowish liquid have alcohol 96% and the ones that are transparent have alcohol 70%. The difference is quite remarkable. Although not very noticeable in the picture, the mantids preserved in alcohol 70% have only a very slight discoloration while the other 2 in 96% alcohol are catastrophically discolored.

The advantages are that it's easy to do and it's quite interesting to observe. But you pay a price for this technique, which is huuuh... High.

conservedcollection2.jpg
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Is this rubbing alcohol? Or is it ethyl?

 
sinensispsyched said:
When you soak the bugs in alcohol, do you have to keep the bug in there forever, or only temporarily (a month)? Also, would you need to gut the mantis before/ after soaking?
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When I was a kid, I preserved my mantids in alcohol without gutting. Now that I look back, not sure if it was isopropanol or ethanol, I don't think it matters though. Now, ten years later, their color is fading considerably. I really believe the best way to preserve mantids is by gutting, spreading, chilling, and pinning.

 
happy1892 said:
Is this rubbing alcohol? Or is it ethyl?
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there are two rubbing alcohols, ethanol and isopropanol.

i use isopropanol but as guapoalto049 said, theres little difference for both alcohols in my opinion.

 
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I had this crazy idea of preserving my mantis. I was going to soak and gut him, and then I was going to make a mold of him out of plaster of paris. That would be his mummy. I would then put him in a wooden pyramid and give him grasshopper givings each day.

I know this is funny, but I am quite serious about this "operation".

 
Funny indeed! lol. If you are serious i would recommend skipping the pyramid and giving grasshoppers to a dead praying mantis.

 
He will leave happily ever after in heaven full of the best exotic tetra colored grasshoppers as dessert. No need to spend time or money with gifts m8 ;)

 
I don't mean to sound brutal, but I have devised a way to effectively hunt grasshoppers, even before I got the chinese nymphs. The only difference is that once I had the mantis, I had to capture the grasshoppers alive. The two ways are:

1) To swing a flexible stick at the closest grasshoppers, which often results in a missing head.

2) To borrow my dad's pellet gun and snipe the grasshopper.

This is where the brutality comes in : Once my mantis is full, any extra hoppers are kept or killed.

 
lol. in my case, i catch them with my bare hands or in case of the flying ones i get help from a butterfly catcher. its more practical in my opinion. just like you i also keep the grasshoppers if not needed, but i feed them meantime

 

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