Mt H. Grandis complete his/her third instar Saturday morning. To my surprise my little 8 yr. old runs in and grabs me going on about a bubble or bubbles on the tips of it's wings. When I arrived there were indeed two droplets of what appeared to be water on the tips of each wing. Little light blue droplets, which when I carefully removed a very tiny sample was a sticky little bubble. It looked as if while it was in the drying stage it somehow formed like little run off bubble. But, I could not understand where it came from because i had not misted it's tank since the night before assuming it would molt during the night I did not want to take any chances with humidity and all. The tank was really lightly misted at that so by Sat. morning perhaps the only moisture would have been the moss as the walls of the tank were dry already. At any rate, I just let it alone assuming it would dry off and all would be swell. Later, nephew returns shouting the mantis has two black big bubbles now....I arrived again and sure enough they were about maybe 1/8th of an inch in diameter and had hardened into a little plastic like bubble on each wing tip and has turned black now. I then performed a thorough inspection of the little guy/lady to see if there were any other such spots and lucky for it there were none. To date there still are no other spots but the bubbles are still there and the ends of the wings are now a tiny bit raveled. :? What?????
Does anyone have any ideas on this little weirdness? It does not seem to be bothering it though I guess it will should it try to fly.
Does anyone have any ideas on this little weirdness? It does not seem to be bothering it though I guess it will should it try to fly.
The second on molted early this morning 1:39 am and I'm looking at him now and though I don't see any imperfections he seems extremely weak. This is the weakest I've ever seen one after a molt. Is this normal?? Maybe I'll give it some water until I feed him tomorrow. I know as a rule you should not feed them until the next day but if it will accept food will it hurt him in some way? Is the rule exact like that for good reason?? :?
