I have not written anything here in a while. Most of my Deroplatys lobata died :(. Two males did live. I sent them both to the person I got them from but the adult male I sent him would not mate! Maybe he did (I did not write to him so I do not know much). The other male was still pre-sub-adult or close to that. I took pictures of them but I do not know where they are but they are somewhere on my computer. When I find them I will put them here.
I wrote this on 11/24/2012.
0 Comments
I wrote this in 07/09/2012. It is hard for me to feed them. They might die. One molted to L4 and is a female. Her leafy thing is very different from before. I can see 6 segments but I could see 8 when she was L3. All of them at L3 I could see 8 segments so I cannot sex them at L3 that way. On mantidforum a person said they are different from each other in the tip of their abdomen. I hope they do well. I wrote this in 07/01/2012. L2 nymphs are up to about 21mm long when their abdomens are expanded. All of the nymphs are L3 now. Their leaf like shapes are slightly different from L2 and L1. I will try to sex them soon. I have 9 of them now because one died. One seemed to lose control of his front legs and got weak and then died at L2. Another seemed to be dying just like that at L2 but after molting to L3 he became healthy again. These mantids are amazingly calm and slow! They do not drop their food easily like other mantids do. But if you mist them they usually drop their food so do not mist them while they are eating. I keep them in twos and one by him self in 32oz containers with moss on the bottom. They do not need anything rougher than the fabric mesh on the 32oz lids when molting to L3. I do not know if they needed the rough cotton like stuff on the lid at L1 to molt to L2. It is good to have a piece of bark in the container so that they could climb to the top easily if they fall. At L1 to L3 they can climb the plastic sides but not easily. At L1 they can eat House Flies and things much larger but Blue Bottle Flies are too large for L1 nymphs. I guess at L2 the nymphs can tackle and eat Blue Bottle Flies. I am keeping them at about 88-96 degrees right now. I wrote this in 06/18/2012. One of the L2 nymphs seems to be dying now. I fed it a moth I caught outside and after a few hours he got sick. The nymphs legs are easily pulled off. I pulled on the back leg of the nymph that seems to be dying right now and it came right off. I pulled on three legs of a dead nymph and all came off. Other mantids do not do that. I wrote this in 06/17/2012. I think a L1 Deroplatys lobata nymph could tackle and eat a house fly. I might be wrong. I put a moth that was smaller in size than the L1 nymphs in the container and the moth fluttered around. A few seconds later one L1 nymph grabbed hold of the moth by the wing and then after that got a good grip and started to eat the moth. The L1 nymph did not eat much of the moth but he was plump after he finished. The moth looked much larger than the L1 nymph because of its huge wings but the L1 nymph just grabbed the moth to eat it anyway so it was not to large for the L1 nymph. I put a Green Bottle Fly which is a little bit smaller than a Blue Bottle Fly in a container with two L2 nymphs. One L2 nymph grabbed the fly but lost his gripe and when he tried again he succeeded and he is eating the fly right now. L2 nymphs are not a lot bigger than L1 nymphs but still they are obviously larger than the L1 nymphs. The L2 nymphs are about 19mm long but after they get plump they will be larger. L1 nymphs are 15mm long when their abdomens are fully expanded or just after they stop eating. As I said in another post the L2 nymphs do not seem to be much different from the L1 nymphs except in size. I just saw an L2 nymph flatten out without his front legs stretched out. He seems to have been scared by the fly, I was watching them. Here is are two pictures of him. Here are pictures of the L2 nymphs while they are trying to hide. Here is the L2 nymph that successfully tackled the Green Bottle Fly. He only ate a little bit of the fly. All of the L2 nymphs seem to have 8 segments. I did not look at them carefully but I at least saw over 6 segments. So they cannot be sexed that way at L2 and almost certainly L1 unless for some reason the females have 6 segments while males have 8 segments at that stage and they actually might all be males at L1 and L2 and maybe half of them turn into females at L3 (I am not sure if they will change at L3 but the Stagmomantis carolina I had did), like swordtail fish (sometimes an adult female swordtail fish will change to a male and most males do not become males that late and if they are kept warmer then there are more likely to get males and vice versa). Most of the nymphs are in the 2nd instar stage right now. I wrote this in 06/16/2012. Edit 2014 Dec. 13th: Brancsikia genus is in Hymenopodidae family. Here is some information I got from Wikipedia. Here is an L1 nymph eating a large katydid I hand fed. They are able to tackle large prey items but this one was certainly to large. I wrote this in 06/07/2012. I have read about Choeradodis rhombicollis doing the same thing as these Dead Leaf Mantids did. I read that here, http://www.ukmantisforums.co.uk/newsletters/sep2011.pdf. I got 30 L1 nymphs from a guy on mantidforum.net today! A few died during the trip and it seems like to me it was because they did not eat enough but that does not matter much because there are still many! When I misted them heavily and some of them started to rub their side and top of their thoraxes on to the wet ground! I guess they did that because they wanted to be wetter. They are very slow and huge! I am feeding the young crickets I bred. They can eat Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies but they could eat things much larger. I saw one do a threat pose to another nymph. The longest ones (the ones that have expanded abdomens) are up to 15mm long and they are 1st instar nymphs! In each 34oz container I keep about five to ten nymphs right now. I will add something rough for them to molt on and to make it much easier for them to climb because the fabric mesh might not be rough enough for them. During the night and morning it is around 75 degrees and during the evening it is about 78-85 degrees. Here are pictures of the L1 nymphs. |
AuthorHappy1892. Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|