hey you’ve kept mantids right... do u have any care tips for a beginner? i’m picking up my first babies next week ( two texas unicorn nymphs ) and i’m pretty confident in my abilities, but mantids are one of the few inverts i’ve never had before so i figured it’d be worth it to ask around !
ill just list some things that i DONT see on mantis care guides
mantises are very stupid and one of their key instincts is that if they grab something in their claw in a predatory strike, they will not let go and will try to eat it. my mantis paladin is currently attempting to eat the feeding tongs which are in one claw, while the mealworm is in the other. theyll eventually figure it out and stop doing that, but this means DO NOT HOLD THEM WHILE YOU FEED THEM, and if you feed them out of their cage make sure its not near anything that could potentially be dangerous if a dumb insect mistakes it for food. i did that a few times because i am also very stupid and both of my mantises have tried to eat me (GREEN BEAN succeeded in drawing blood).
both of my mantids got sick as nymphs and i would find dark smears of mantis vomit on the sides of their enclosures. a lot of mantid sources call a certain illness “the black death” or etc but i think its fairly common for non deadly vomit problems to occur. their health improved with their enclosures being cleaned and being fed some diluted raw honey (not sure if it actually works but people swear it has antibiotic properties). also id strongly advise not feeding them crickets, that seems to be a general consensus among mantid keepers and in my experience most of their health problems occurred when they had crickets (i keep mealworms). i hear some people suggest cockroaches instead but im skeptical that theyre less likely to catch something from roaches because mantids ARE most closely related to roaches but thats my untested opinion.
if they escape, check your ceiling. GREEN BEAN escaped only once and paladin escaped like 5 times and 5/6 of those times they were in a corner on the ceiling in my room. if they dont have their wings yet check the sides of tall objects like a dresser or whatever. if you know they were in their cage only a short while ago, obviously check around there first, but when they escape they will sometimes just go nuts (i found paladin on the opposite end of the room when she was a nymph which is a massive distance when you cant fly). the trend is they like to be in high places and they like to be sideways or upside down, so thats where you want to look.
another one is if your mantis isnt eating or cant properly use their claws, or is a wuss and gets scared of their food, one almost guaranteed way to get them to eat is cutting their prey and putting the guts on their mouthparts. that will induce them to start feeding . i dont see a lot of people talking about this but its a really important thing to know if you have any issues.
paladin has eye rub that didnt heal in her final moult, and is impacting her vision and makes catching prey difficult, so most of the time i snip the mealworms head off with scissors and poke her face with the guts and shes like “AHHHH THING IN MY FACE oh wait food”. here she is being confused because she grabbed the feeding tongs and her tiny brain cant process whats going on. if they have an injury that prevents hunting or they just wont hunt because theyre a wuss, this is a pretty good workaround. ive heard of people whose mantids lost both of their raptorial claws in a bad final moult but lived full lives being fed this way
