prolonging life, and a series of questions.

[jason_mazzy]

1: What is the longest you think orchid's would live from hatchling till death, if kept in an average house hold temp and fed sparingly, tho not starved? My house temps fluctuate from 72-78 or so. and would like a few as a pet.

2: Also if I set up a 55 gallon with live plants, and orchids could I keep a few together if I fed more often?

3: Would a 55 work well with a colony of ghost's? and how many?

4: 10 gallon screen tops? your opinion on keeping mantis in them.

5: Are there life prolonging techniques (other than cold temperatures and food restiction)?

I am not into keeping them in cups. I would rather center a display around them.

 

[Rick]

1. They can live several months

2. Mantids are easiest to keep in small, individual enclosures. All mantids will eat each other and the larger the enclosure the more food you will have to put in just to make sure they all get enough.

3. See above.

4. Same as above. 32 oz deli cups work great for small mantids. For large mantids I like to use 2.5 gallon aquariums that are divided into three sections.

5. Just keep them at room temps and feed normally. I don't recomend keeping them cold or restricting food either. These are insects and you cannot expect them to live very long.

I understand wanting a nice enclosure with plants and all that. I have done both and I always end up back with smaller enclosures housing a single mantis.

 

[mrblue]

i dont know much about orchid mantids or gallons, but i'll try to give a few thoughts. i quickly googled gallons to litres and apparently 1 gallon is about 4.5 litres? i sometimes use 72 litre containers for keeping mantids together, and i reckon one of these could hold about 3 adult pairs of p.paradoxa just fine. and according to calculations this container is only 16 gallons. so a 55 gallon container...! well, you could fit quite alot of p.paradoxa in there. its really up to you how many you would like to keep in there, and how many you can get hold of/afford (to buy aswell as feed). however i would say if youre going for the big communal type setup then you should use flies or flying prey as food as they cover the whole container better (so more liekly to get eaten quicker and by all the mantids) than other prey.

as for life prolonging, well your mantids will grow alot slower if kept cooler and fed sparingly. but like rick says, they are still not very long lived usually. to give you an idea, one of my p.paradoxa was born last september, became adult in march, and is still alive today. and this is having kept her around 25C and fed pretty well. she is around 11 months old and still actively catching prey so doesnt seem to be on her way out TOO soon. if she had been fed less as a nymph she would have taken longer to reach adult. this is just to give you an idea. i dont know how long she has left but you can expect at least 11 months. the males live alot less. other than the temp and food, i dont think theres any other ways to get them to live longer. some people say mated males live less, i dont know how true that is though.

EDIT: this thread might be useful to give you an idea of how close to each other they can be, and maybe an idea of how many you can fit into your container (bear in mind in this thread theres alot of empty space; with more twigs and branches/plants you could fit more mantids obviously):

http://mantidforum.net/forums/index.php?sh...c=10405&hl=