Mantis beginner needs advice!

[ChloeP]

Hello

I have had a young bud-winged mantis for a few weeks. We have been trying to feed him on flies (mostly those caught in the house) which was fine to start with but now it has gone cold we have tried him on bought large flies and crickets. He doesn’t seem keen on either and runs away/backs off from them instead of trying to catch them (although he goes through stages of attempting to catch them). He shed his skin this weekend so is a bit bigger (about 2.5-3cm long) but still hasn’t caught anything. We haven’t seen him eat anything in over a week (despite lots of prey being in his cage). Has anyone had any experience similar to this, how long can they survive without eating? His abdomen looks very thin. We spray water which he sucks up from the mesh or vegetation.

It doesn’t help that none of the maggots or fruit flies hatch, they just go mouldy!

Any advice would be helpful! We don’t want him to die!

Chloe

[shep1979]

hi i had a problem like that with one of my giant asian mantids i just put him in a smaller tub with 2 small crickets and after an hour he had eaten one ,its worth a try ,it was a small poly tea cup with the dark lid on it so he wasent disturbed , i hope ur gets feeding again soon

[Pioden]

If he's just shed he may not feel hungry yet. Mantids often stop eating as much as a week before they are due a shed and it usually takes a few days if not a week before they will take food again. Don't leave any prey items in with your mantid, especially crix as they are liable to have a nibble on it when its asleep.

This is my experience when i had my budwing anyway! They will eat when they want to and not before. But when they do start eating they are greedy little pigs! :P

[ChloeP]

Thanks for the advice. We still haven't seen him eat, although he does seem to get thursty. I'll try him in a smaller pot, we tried this before and it did work. Have any of you tried hand feeding them? Do you think they eat dead flies?

[shep1979]

no they wont eat anything dead

[jetski]

has the size of the food changed? if your feeding large blue/green bottles and the mantis being just 2.5cm and with 2 buzzing round it may be a bit much. can you try smaller ones? how about buy a fruit fly culture for a couple of pound and you get a few hatching every day and will last you several weeks. they are just a couple of mm big so your little mantis should easily handle them.

i have a peacock mantis that eats dead food. id prefer her not to but she will go back to her left overs the day after. iv seen her eat some compost too. shes heavily pregnant so maybe shes getting weird cravings or something lol

[jetski]

sorry i just read your post again and i see you are trying fruit flies. ive never known them to go mouldy. must be a lack of air circulation. when i make up my fruit fly food i put in food colouring. it has a food preservative in it so it stops it going mouldy. some people use orange juice because its very acidic but i think you would have to use fresh juice

[andie]

If your using larger flies try pulling the wings off seems to make them easier to handle, also you can add a few drops of white wine vinegar to your culture to stop mould.

[BigC90210]

does yours hang upside down to eat yeah? Mind used to only eat when hanging upside down from a branch and grabbing the crickets as they walked underneith

[macro junkie]

Originally Posted by BigC90210

does yours hang upside down to eat yeah? Mind used to only eat when hanging upside down from a branch and grabbing the crickets as they walked underneith

this was 7 months ago..its probably dead now they dont live long.