Orchid Mantis

Nadine83

Nadine83

Third Instar
Been thinking about getting an orchid mantis. However never owned mantis' before. Any suggestions on good housing, temps, etc.  Are they considered difficult to breed/care for? Any suggestions & tips would be greatly appreciated. I am researching info on mantis care but information from someone who has experience with them is better than google search.

 
Nadine83 said:
However never owned mantis' before.
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Then I would advise you to look for another species than H. coronatus. They are not easy to keep/breed. I mean, they are not as hard as I. diabolica, but they are no where near easy either.

Also, the males mature SIGNIFICANTLY faster than females, and live a very short life. So I guess that might be hard to manage for beginners. I always kept the males a bit cooler, but it did not work everytime.

If you like flower mimicing manzids, the easier ones are Creobroter species (nebulosa, gemmatus,....)

When you gathered a bit of experience with these, I could also suggest Pseudocreobotra wahlbergii, they would be a bit more tricky, but far away from Hymenopus.

If you like all mantids, classic beginner species are all Hierodula sp., Phyllocrania paradoxa and Sphodromantis sp. as well as Tenodera sinensis and a few others.

Also, please don't feed mantids crickets, I'm not just copying this from somwhere, I've had bad experiences with that before. Also, "flower mantids" are mostly specialised in flying insects (bees, flies, butterflies, moths...), so flies are more suitable (and I like them better..)

some might tell you, crickets are perfectly fine, and sometimes nothing happens at all, but I wouldn't risk it. If you want to feed it something else, there are so many choices. It will save you a lot of trouble

 
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Yeah, Orchid mantids are not a good beginner species, they are more difficult to keep and breed than other mantids. I'd keep some of the easier to breed species first, then work your way up to them, once you have a good grip on how to care for mantids and how to deal with the more finicky species.

I've heard of a lot of people who failed breeding this species, definitely wouldn't want you to get discouraged from keeping mantids entirely just because your first experience was with a difficult to keep species.

 
I've had an Orchid, hence my name but I never got mine past sub-adult due to heating issues, no miss molts though, today getting Giant Asian!

 
I'm interested in them because many years ago my dad and I took care of one during the summer and then released it as fall approached.  I'd like to eventually breed some, but this is for a future project.  I saw a picture of one that was blue/green.  IS there a mantis thread or something on this forum.  Sometimes searching this forum results in 0 finds.

 
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