FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

[29.09.14]

Agreed to do a breeding loan.

My male in exchange for a H. mauscula ooth (if he manages to mate with the 3 females the person on the other end has)

[02.12.14]

Well, 2 months later... and he had no luck. His females all died for some unknown reason.

BUT, he bought a fertile ooth from Germany and he said it hatched last week so he sent me 20, 1st instars; and here they are today.

Pics:
IMG_1461 by darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_1465 by darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_1478 by darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_1480 by darkrai283, on Flickr

[12.12.14]

A few are 2nd instar now.

Pics

IMG_1611 by Darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_1625 by Darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_1623 by Darkrai283, on Flickr

[04.01.15]

A few are 3rd instar now and one of them has this beautiful colouration.

Pics
IMG_2201 by Darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_2200 by Darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_2210 by Darkrai283, on Flickr

[19.01.15]

The first male 4th instar is here. The red colouration on the raptorials are much clearer now and they're large enough to be sexed too.

IMG_2306 by Darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_2296 by Darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_2302 by Darkrai283, on Flickr
IMG_2288 by Darkrai283, on Flickr

Maiden wrote:Wow, great pictures!

tish wrote:Very awesome! I wish to keep them too .but time is never enough here...

kcbugs wrote:Agree with maiden. That female is striking. Kinda makes me want to get back into inverts...

Cory wrote:Lol
I have been planning on adding some of these mantids to my collection strange things lol.

I find them outside from time to time.

The ones I want are quite colorful

Thanks.

Grey wrote:Love the new photos. How easily do your mantids take mealworms, Richard? The one thing that kept me from keeping mantids was their requirement for live food, but if I could keep something fairly simple (that our hedgehogs would enjoy in the spring and summer, too) that'd get me interested again.

Sorry about the late reply Rachel, I hadn't really checked the forums since November. The majority of species will take mealworms but there are an exception such as the flower mimicking ones that only take flying prey. To make things easier, I feed all my species bluebottle flies I get from a fishing tackle shop as maggots... and if I get any excess flies, they go straight to my plants. :p