Keeping Mantids

Keeping Mantids

Postby Mongoose » Wed Oct 11, 2006 5:41 pm

I am interested in keeping mantids and i know in europe people keep them there so it is not impossible.

What are the cage requirements and how should it be set up? What do they feed on?

Does any one here keep any?

David
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Postby Hellemar » Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:01 pm

Hi...


I don´t have any mantids right now, but I have had some through the years...

As with walking sticks, they require a quite high enclosure (3 times their height) with a lot of branches to climb on. A nice trick is to take a branch from outside (with fresh leaves on it) and place that one in a bottle with water inside the enclosure - then you will have fresh leaves for some days... Or if you just put some live plants in the soil...

Moist in the enclosure once, maybe twice a day, depending on how high humidity you have... They need higher humidity when they are about to molt (shed)...

They feed on almost any insect you can find, but if you don´t want to hunt insects for yourself, crickets will do just fine...

Keep them one and one, because they are cannibalistic - everything that moves are food according to them - so even your fingers...



Henke :)
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Postby Dead_puppy » Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:43 pm

Hey mongoose
I caught a stunner a while back. According to me they are really easy to keep provided that you feed and mist regulary>>> I kept mine in living viv. I had it for about six months, got bored so I released it in kokoriba game reserve. They really intresting creatures when feeding.
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Re: Keeping Mantids

Postby mantisfart2 » Tue Aug 18, 2009 7:55 pm

If your interested in any particular species let me know and i will get you a care sheet for them telling you day and night time temperatures, humidity and feeding and housing requirements. I would be interested to know what species you find.
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Re: Keeping Mantids

Postby BushSnake » Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:03 pm

Are you going to go for flower mantids? They make good macro lens subjects ;)
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