When to move from cup to mesh cage?

[cwebster]

Have many chinese mantis nymphs but as they shed the second time, some have had difficult molts. They are in deli cups with light listing twice daily and a diet of melanogasters then hydei flies. Just lost the two largest loveliest ones due to really bad mismolts.  Got some mesh mantis mansions but the mantises are still so tiny am not sure when to move them into the 12 by 12 cube mesh cages. Have a humidifier in the bathroom but dont use it until the mantises are in mesh cages. Any suggestions appreciated. 

 

[Teamonger]

You are likely going to lose a few to mismolts no matter what especially in the first few instars. I tend to keep my hatches in a 10 or 15 gallon tank filled with sticks and all manner of things for molting from. I dump as many fruit flies as I can into the aquarium and they sort themselves out pretty darn well until they hit L3 or L4 and start getting savage on each other and need their own rooms. With the aquarium setup you can easily either have substrate to keep the humidity up or set up a humidifier.

Here is my setup for my failed ghost hatch but my chinese is very similar. Bought a cheap aquarium with a lip, hot glued fruitfly proof mesh across the top (can later peel it off and redo when you need to open it for real) then sank a couple deli cups into the mesh at the corner for ease of feeding. You can also see the humidifier tube on the top there.

Hopefully photo bucket lets this be hosted for long enough for you to see it.

 

[cwebster]

Thank you for sharing your setup! Will see if I can set up something like that. The nymphs definitely seem to need more humidity now that they are mismolting. 

 

[CosbyArt]

@cwebster If they are in individual cups then they fine until they outgrow it, no idea what size the cups are to say when (as I use 3oz, 6oz, 9oz, and 32oz in cups not to mention larger containers).

Ideally the container is three times taller than the mantids length, and twice as wide. Or to put it another way if the nymph is currently 1/2" long (from the head to the tip of the abdomen) then the container needs to be 1.5" tall inside, and 1" wide - at the minimum a bit bigger never hurts.

 

[Teamonger]

Its just a matter of room and convenience for me. Its far harder to individually feed/spray a few dozen single containers then to dump a ton of flies into one big one and set up a humidifier so long as you are ok with a few loses to cannibalism. I rarely see any spats until they hit L3 and the violence does not escalate properly until L4 when they start to get in each other's way.

My brood just hit L4 and they are mostly all separated now and it takes forever to feed/mist them every day. They're lucky their cute hehe.

 

[Serle]

I do quite the same as teamonger , leave them in the hatch container till L3/4 then separate them into 5's per container for ease of maintenance .  The first stage leaves 60 % after mortality , Tenoderas are higher just because they are more aggressive .  Even with 2 to 5 per there is cannibalism my challenge is sexing them before the population gets too low.

I have learned not to give names to very many as the heart break of funerals can be wearing.... S