Reptile & Amphibian Forums

ive heard great things about using mantids as feeder inscects (correct me if im wrong), and was wondering when to get them. ive heard that you buy egg sacs and incubate and raise them and such but i have never seen them for sale. if i were to get them i would have no clue how to raise them so an article would also help alot. thanks.

-jonathan colton

try to see these: www.exoticmantis.com , www.mantisuk.com and www.totalmantis.com
They are good sites about information, but to order, dont know where you live. I suppose US, most of the sites are UK. Anyway, take a look, they have a lots of caresheets.

www.gardeningzone.com is where you can order them...my cham goes ga-ga for them...anything green is eaten very quickly...to raise them you will need a tank with a very fine mesh top...mantids are very small when they hatch and will easily go right thru your basic fish tank screen top...when the egg sacks arrive i hang them with some fishing line and keep them warm and humid...they hatched in 6 days...the other thing you will need is ALOT of pinhead crickets or fruit flies...when i say pinheads i mean true pinheads...newborn to a few days old...after a week or so you'll see the mantids shed...around that time you'll want to seperate them into large plastic cups with coffee filter lids held on with rubber bands or they will eat eachother...you can feed them 1-2 insects a day of appropriate size...they grow very quickly...you'll also want to mist the cups down once or twice a day