WHat do I feed the babies?

[erin412]

We bought a praying mantis egg case off of ebay and it hatched today. My daughter and her friends would like to keep some as pets. I know the adults will eat live crickets from the pet store, but these are way too small for that.

What do I feed them? Do I need to seperate them (will they eat each other)

Thanks in advance

Erin

 

[infinity]

Depends how many you want to keep... micro crickets, fruit flies, aphids, greenfly, blackfly, micro waxworms (which you'll need to grow yourself) can all be used.

If you want to keep as many as you can, put them into individual cups etc but expect quite a few deaths at first (hatchlings are very fragile and easily die).

Or, put them all into a large tank, put in a tub of micros, fruitflies and if their numbers are kept up, there should be minimal cannibalism

 

[Ian]

Hi Erin,

Firstly, welcome to the forum!

Congrats on your hatch...do you know what species these are? The general rule when hatching is to leave the hatchlings around 2-3 days without any food. Until them, just spray them twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening. When they are ready to feed, your best option will be fruit flies. These can be obtained from most online livefood suppliers, and also in a few speciailist shops. If you do not like hte idea of flies then you can use micro crickets which do the same job. These are not as messy, and obviosuly cannot fly, but sometimes have the habbit of eating the hatchlings.

Keep us informed with how you get on!

Cheers,

Ian

 

[Rick]

Welcome. You need to feed them fruit flies. Some petstores like Petco carries them or you can order them online. You should already have a good culture of flies available when the mantids hatch. They will start to each each other but it is a huge pain to try and seperate them right now. Many of them will die. When they get to more managable number you can seperate what is left.