Sick Orchid mantis

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JoeCapricorn

JoeCapricorn

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My female Orchid mantis Sakura has been having some symptoms lately.

The first noticable one was she had a darkened coloration visible through her thorax, especially above her wings. Then today I discovered vomit in her cage, cleaned everything out and discovered more vomit later on.

Her energy doesn't seem to be affected. She is crawling and hopping around like her normal self. She watches the screen when I move a black dot in MSPaint.

Her diet has thus far consisted of crickets and mealworms. She subsisted entirely on crickets during her previous instar and had no problems. Should I attempt to feed her tonight?

I've been giving her water, she doesn't seem to want to drink at this present moment, but it could be because she has plenty of water in her cage.

I am going to try and give her some banana, if we have any.

 
Since giving her a little bit of banana, the dark coloration on her thorax, which was especially noticeable underneath her wings, but also on her pronotum, is now largely gone. So it seems giving her the banana caused her to "swallow" that stuff back into her abdomen.

 
How do I get bluebottles... that is what bbs are, right? I've never used flies. Is there a bluebottle culture?

 
My adult orchid Alice loves bbflys. She ate 8 today. I am trying to space the flys emerging from the pupae better. Seems I take too many out or not enough lol hope your orchid keeps getting better

 
I hope so too. I'm going to just leave her flush her system out. Hopefully she recovers soon!

I ordered BB spikes from Green Oasis. Hoping they arrive in time for Sakura to feast upon them. She won't eat until then.

 
Honey should do the trick! ;) my orchids eat almost all the honey! GI've it a try and see how much your will take, also it will help heal her as honey has beneficial properties and is like mantis meds. There is no culture for bbs like there is for ffs, but you can breed them yourself...read the long, detailed thread if you want to learn more...

All the best,

Andrew

 
I might give Sakura drumsticks of crickets. See if she eats them. She seems quite hungry, though she did vomit once again today. I've given her a little bit of honey.

Still no noticeable change in her energy. She is exploring and hopping around. The only thing wrong with her is the vomiting.

 
Last night I decided to give Sakura something to snack on. I stuck mainly with cricket drumsticks, but I decided to give her a degutted cricket at the end (that is, I pulled the head off such that the digestive system went with, takes practice)

After all, crickets aren't forbidden - I still find them more convenient than any other feeder. I don't use gutload or any cricket cubes or the like, just organic greens since that's what I feed the grasshoppers and cockroaches too.

Because of how I care for the crickets, and how Sakura recently molted, I think the culprit in this case was a meal worm I took from an old container. I'll avoid using mealworms from this container, which date to December, especially since most of the substrate is frass.

It might also be neither the crickets or mealworms, but rather how much I fed her. I've been feeding her more often than any other mantis since I want her to grow faster - I have two males as well, and I really want to try and breed these wonderful creatures. So perhaps this was merely just a case of indigestion?

Though the vomit did have a noticeable smell to it.

In any case, blue bottles are on their way and might be here as soon as tomorrow!

 

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