Reptile & Amphibian Forums

WHAT THE HELL DO I DO!??

I am pretty experianced with keeping tarantulas and every other type of goofy pet... but I never really had a praying mantis. When the oppertunity came (at the wendies drive through) and a huge female chinese landed on my hood I thought she would make an awesome pet.

She ate like crazy for about a month... and got grossly fat. One day... I come in and there is a nice sized otheca (SP) on the middle branch in her cage. I have kept it inside for about 2 months so far, and my female has been dead for a month or so... now what.

I know that because it has been kept inside it will hatch much sooner, so I cannot put it outside.

I want to hatch these little ones but I need a very basic walk through.

How many can I expect, im assuming 2-300. What size tank should I stick them in, and how many wingless fruitflys will I have to rear up in order to feed them all. As soon as springtime hits, I plan on releasing them all or giving them to others as pets.

I know there are some experianced people on this board, a little walkthrough would be AWESOME. You could even email me, at itzvic@yahoo.com or IM me at itzvic.

Anything would help.
Thanks in advance.

They will hatch pretty soon. What you need is about a ten gallon tank. Get a screen lid and some type of mesh so that the tiny mantids and flies cannot crawl through. I go to Wal mart and get some thin, white fabric. I trim it to fit the top of the tank with just a little bit of overlap over the sides. I set that on top of the tank and then put the screen lid on over it. Just make sure it is very fine mesh. You should have ordered the flies already! Once you get the flies you will use them up pretty fast so it is important to get them early so that you can get new cultures started and have tons of flies on hand. Doing that takes some time. Or you can put the ooth in a smaller container and when it hatches you can seperate each mantis into it's own little cup or container. However with a common speicies like the chinese I like to keep them together for awhile so that I lose some of them. Much easier to take care of 20 than it is to try and take care of 150 of them. So once they hatch you can feed them in a couple days. They will start to eat each other after awhile but you can keep them together until you start to lose too many of them. I like to end up with about ten of em. That will get you started and if you need anymore help just post or email me at RichardTrone@nc.rr.com

Sounds like a plan man. I guess I will cruise over to petco and start up some cultures of fruitflys. They suck tho, half of them have wings... whatever though I dont care.

I can grow those bastards on a mix of potato flakes, vineger and water right?

How many flies a day will they consume, how many cultures do i need to get running?

Ive got a 20tall i can use for the babies... now i need to furnish it.

Thanks for the tips man

I order my flightless fruitflies online. You will need several cultures. But you need to get the flies started now. If not you will use them faster than you can breed them. I have nine cultures for only about five mantids. It takes some time to get the cultures established but once you do it's easy. I recommend buying the food from www.carolina.com I tried to make it homemade with potato flakes but it smelled and was runny and killed the flies. Order it from carolina.com and they give you enough to make a lot of cultures. Plus the stuff from them is much better and won't mold.