Record keeping

[cumminsa]

What and how do most of you keep records if any? What do you track or record

Alex

 

[dgerndt]

I keep records of all my mantids. First I start by heading my notes with the species and gender. Then I write down the date of the ooth laid; date of hatch; date of each molt and how many days it was from the last molt; and any notes on health, coloration, or behavior. Then I would go on to record the date of mating; dates of ooth laying (if female); and finally date of death.

Good luck!

 

[LauraMG]

I keep a running note in my phone about how many I have of what species and what sex and what molt and such. It keeps sanity to having a bunch of them! :lol:

 

[hibiscusmile]

:blink:

 

[PeterF]

This is a great topic, has it been covered before?

 

[Mex_Ghost]

I started at first when I had my Ghosts, writing dates of molt, kind of food, coloration of the nymphs, but I quit doing that :lol:

saludos

 

[hibiscusmile]

yeppers been covered and buried, thanks for digging it up :tt2:

 

[Ntsees]

I keep a post-it in my insect book with tally marks. For every 5 tally marks, I put down the year so that I don't lose track if I forgot to put a tally mark for that year. I record how many generations that have passed by. If my mantids hatch this year, that'll be the 14th tally mark (14th generation from that first female mantid from way way back).

 

[sporeworld]

Having gone through Idolos without a decent "compass", I started collecting as much as I could on the one species. I now have a simple excel sheet with my own timetables, times I found from other breeders online, and just collected predictions where I could find them. You can patrol Yen's thread from years ago and check the dates of each molt he posted. His were shockingly fast (we all suspect steroids, of course).

Soooooo many variables on diet and metabolism (feeder variety, gutloading, lineage), but at least NOW I panic a lot less. Big questions for me are how long between molts, how long do they stop feeding BEFORE molts, and when can I safely re-introduce food AFTER molting. Heat and humidity are less of a concern for me this time around.

Hope that helps...

 

[Rick]

I don't keep records anymore. I used to but this is a hobby for me and nothing more. I found it takes some of the enjoyment out of it. The only thing I do now is use a marker to write dates on the side of cages indicating when the individual molted to adult and when they were mated. I will keep track of when ooths were laid so I can inform the buyer.

 

[hibiscusmile]

Hey sporeworld, when u feed them and they dont eat, after an hour, remove the food, as long as they see it and dont eat, it is good indication of molting, I usually try agin the next day, and if the same remove again, they seem to empty their bodies of food and waste so the molting works, funny how they know, don't know if I would realize before my clothes don't fit no more I should stop eating..... :blink:

 

[sporeworld]

Hey sporeworld, when u feed them and they dont eat, after an hour, remove the food, as long as they see it and dont eat, it is good indication of molting, I usually try agin the next day, and if the same remove again, they seem to empty their bodies of food and waste so the molting works, funny how they know, don't know if I would realize before my clothes don't fit no more I should stop eating..... :blink:

Yeah - that was a lot easier with crawling prey and non-communal enclosures. With almost exclusively flies and communal, removing the food can be... challenging. ;-) There have been times when I just hauled a huge cage outside and opened the door - be free little BB's - just to get some good pictures. Sigh, Good thing you can buy flies by the kilo... (ha).

 

[Krissim Klaw]

I keep the best kind of records, none. Lol I am too lazy to write stuff down.

 

[jday]

Unless you're breeding to sell, my advice is to keep records only if they make the hobby more fun, and skip 'em otherwise.

Last summer we kept some records of the personalities of our mantises (killer, normal, shy, etc.) Some were very passive and others were incredibly aggressive hunters. It was interesting to see if the personality survived a molt. Usually it did, but sometimes they changed dramatically. The biggest change, of course, was when the males became full adults, 'cause they hardly ate anything after that.

We also kept records of their colors, and it was cool watching some of them change from green to brown or cinnamon to green during a molt.

While we were traveling with our mantises, food supplies were inconsistent, so we also kept records of who had the biggest meal so we could distribute the food more evenly over the long haul.

 

[lancaster1313]

I started keeping a record of molting dates when I had 1 mantis, but I decided that it was too time consuming when I started keeping many of them. Now I only keep records of birthdays, final molts, day of mating, days oothecae were laid, and days of death. All of these notes are on my phone calendar, but most of the time I just take a phone pic and it automatically has a date. I don't have exact birth days for a few of my Carolinas, because of the way they hatched a few every day, I only recorded the days that the oothecae started hatching.