Something odd and almost tragic

[agent A]

I was feeding my ghost mantids fruitflies from a culture I recently made. Well something unexpected happened. All the media inside the cup fell out of the cup into the cage. I don't understand. How do I prevent this? All the ghosts are still alive, so that's good. I'm hoping to get them going on crickets, most of them are L3, and they are a lot bigger than an L4 creobroter gemmatus, which binge on crickets like college students binge on beer. Thanks for your help, and can someone also explain to me how to properly handfeed a lazy mantis without scaring it? Thanks again!

 

[khabirun]

For ghost, I've been handfeeding them mealworms for most of their meals since L2 all the way to adult, though now they get to enjoy wild-caught butterflies. So what you do is if you have mealworms, cut off the head, make sure you pull the black tube like thingie inside the mealworm and make sure you have like a visible portion of the white stuff for the mantis to 'taste' cause after that they'll surely grab it and eat it. Hope this helps.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Healthy nymphs don't need hand feeding. At L3, try them on hose flies.

 

[sufistic]

Phil's right but if you do hand feed them, use tweezers, long ones work well so that they don't get freaked out by your hand.

 

[kamakiri]

Regarding the media, I try not to turn a fruit fly pot much more than 90 degrees to get the flies out. If I have to, then I try to transfer the flies to another container first. Another suggestion is to make sure the media does not dry out. Dry media will easily fall out.

Please try not to use vague thread titles like you just did: Something odd and almost tragic. That title says nothing about your problem with media falling out. Obscure thread titles can be annoying.

 

[Rick]

Your medium is too dry. On the other hand, if it is too wet it may run out. There is a perfect balance.

 

[agent A]

thanks for your help everyone! also, kamakiri, the reason I used the word odd is because I never had that media fall out before, and tragic because a few ghosts were almost killed, but they all survived.

 

[kamakiri]

thanks for your help everyone! also, kamakiri, the reason I used the word odd is because I never had that media fall out before, and tragic because a few ghosts were almost killed, but they all survived.

Alex, I understand why you used those words. Your explanation comes across as condescending, as if I simply don't understand why you used those words. Very insulting if I didn't already know that you type like this.

Read my other post again. Your title does not describe the topic you are starting. And you sound like you are arguing about my explanation.

You've extended a request to understand what you do that may be annoying to others, and again, you are defending your actions instead of just listening to the suggestions.

Does that make sense to you?

 

[agent A]

You've extended a request to understand what you do that may be annoying to others, and again, you are defending your actions instead of just listening to the suggestions. Does that make sense to you?

makes sense. sorry I misread the post. :mellow: anyway, funny thing happened. I don't see the crickets in the ghost cage anymore . I know what happened...

 

[massaman]

Are you ignoring the questions asked to you?

 

[JoeCapricorn]

Sometimes when I use forceps, my African mantises do a threat pose. I still just slowly touch the food to their tiny mouths and they'll take it. Not often I need to hand feed them, but if I grabbed a fruit fly and accidentally killed it in the process, I'll hand feet it so as not to waste a fruit fly. Never got a threat pose from my fingers, although Angel did a kinda funny threat dance when Nectarine (my Eastern Lubber) crawled near him.