Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey all.

I just ordered 3 egg cases from Amazon.com for pretty cheap that I'm planning to feed my cham, keep a few as pets, and put in the garden. Anyway, I was just wondering if you guys could post you hatching and raising methods or post some good websites on the subject. Much appreciated.

Thanks
Jon

We have care instructions on our FAQ page. Here's the link just scroll down the page to the mantis section:

Dennis Scott
MANTIS CARE SHEET

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How big, or how small I guess I should say, are they when they hatch? And how big can they eventually get?

Jon
When they are first hatched they are roughly about 5mm long. Here is another link with the process start to finish.

Hope this Helps
Dennis Scott
Growing Up Mantis

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Thanks dude. I just checked amazon and the cases won't ship till the 22nd. Got some work to do.

By they way, how big are the egg cases usually? I'm not sure of the species, so that's no help, but they're pretty common, I'm assuming as they're shipping from some garden center.

I did the same thing (from Amazon) and I got 5 extra egg cases with my order - so you may get more then 3 too. I think its been 6 weeks or so at room temp with no hatching yet. I was going to put them in my baby cham cage (which is no longer in use) along with a ficus and feed them fruit flies at first. Then maybe flies, baby cock roaches, anything I can find.

-roo

Yeah, actually I remember your post a while back. There's an Orchards like 3 blocks away, but they say they're always out. And the Lowe's 5 minutes away that has a HUGE garden center don't have them. That's when I remember you saying something about Amazon and though "hmmm . . ." lol. You know I only ever really used Amazon for ordering harder to find books and maybe a cd that was harder to get and knew they sold other things and the like, then when you said you got egg cases there, I checked them out. And man, they have a TON of things you can buy there that I had no idea. lol

Anyway, I hope I get a few extra. 20 bucks seems like a lot for 3 egg cases. Then again, each of them spawn about 200 mantids. THey should keep my cham busy for a while. He won't even look at crix anymore.

By the way, how big are the egg cases? This is my first time dealing with mantids. Also, how do you have them set up?

I have a couple extra large critter keepers and a medium one I plan to put a case in each. I also have a thermostat along with a heat man and plan to incubate the cases at 80*F so hopefully they might hatch faster. I dunno. I'll figure it out by the end of the week. lol

I raised mantids for my cham. They can be kind of tricky to care for if you want them to last. The egg cases are about the size of a golf ball. Sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. Don't let the small ones fool you, they can hatch out just as many, if not more than the large ones. You'll need a fairly large hatching conatiner. Key thing is to have a very very fine mesh cover over it. The store screen tank lids are too big and you'll have hundreds of mantis everywhere very fast. Also the kritter keepers slots are too big. Lightly mist the hatching container everyday unless the humidity is already high in the room. Once they hatch, allow them to dry out for 24 hours before attempting to feed. I'd suggest only feeding fruit flies for the first stage. Each mantis will eat about 2-5 fruitflies a day at stage one. Dump in flies twice a day. Keep container at about 50% humidity or a little higher. Mist lightly daily so they can drink the drops. Provide standing/stalking perches. A few twigs are good. Too many and they won't find the food. After about a week they will shed. At this time you'll want to try to put them in seperate containers. Large plastic cups works great. They will start to eat each other if left together. Keep feeding fruit flies for at least another stage or pinhead crickets. Be sure not to leave too many pin heads in with the mantis as they can gang up and kill the mantis. A full grown female mantis (common chinese species) can grow to about 2 and half inches. Males are smaller and slimmer. It's really easy to get a mantis farm going, each female will lay 3-5 egg cases, with 50-200 babies hatching from each one. Hope this helps