# Is my ghost mantis about to molt?



## Zenythcatt (May 16, 2011)

Hello, I bought me a little ghost mantis online last week, he arrived on the tuesday. On the website it was stated as an L3-L4. 
It ate a fly on the day he arrived and a small moth during the night, watching him catch his fly and nibble it's head off was awesome . 

but after that i had three flies in his enclosure, greenbottle, bluebottle and another fly, Mantis ignored them all for the next few days and they ended up dying. 

He's still not eating and He's on his sixth day of not eating, though I have noticed his body looks a lot paler making me wonder if he's due a molt. 

Can the days of not eating before a molt vary between mantids?


----------



## vivalabam (Aug 8, 2010)

Zenythcatt said:


> Hello, I bought me a little ghost mantis online last week, he arrived on the tuesday. On the website it was stated as an L3-L4.
> It ate a fly on the day he arrived and a small moth during the night, watching him catch his fly and nibble it's head off was awesome .
> 
> but after that i had three flies in his enclosure, greenbottle, bluebottle and another fly, Mantis ignored them all for the next few days and they ended up dying.
> ...


He could well be due a moult, they do stop eating a while before, although I'd say 6 days is quite a long time for a mantis of that instar, how is his abdomen looking? Is it thin or fat? If it's fat nothing to worry about, if it's thin it could be something a bit more serious, although I would wait a couple more days before worrying. If you say he has recently got paler it sounds like he is about to moult.


----------



## Zenythcatt (May 16, 2011)

Yeah that's what I thought, 6 days is a bit long, I read they usually stop eating 1 or 2 days before moulting. 

His abdomen is thin. but also he loves to be handled . I open the enclosure to mist it and he wants to be handled, then when I want to put him back in he doesn't want to go in. Lonely perhaps? 

while he was out I also got a fly in tweezers and offered it to him and he backed away from it and ignored it again.


----------



## vivalabam (Aug 8, 2010)

Zenythcatt said:


> Yeah that's what I thought, 6 days is a bit long, I read they usually stop eating 1 or 2 days before moulting.
> 
> His abdomen is thin. but also he loves to be handled . I open the enclosure to mist it and he wants to be handled, then when I want to put him back in he doesn't want to go in. Lonely perhaps?
> 
> while he was out I also got a fly in tweezers and offered it to him and he backed away from it and ignored it again.


Yeah that's my thoughts, I've never known any of mine to go 6 days... Some start eating less, then stop for a couple of days. 

Yeah ghosties are like that, ours always do it. :lol2: It's a nightmare to get them back in, I don't think it's loneliness as they usually live alone, although they can be communal, but we've had a few losses that way so keep them apart now. 

Yeah, I mean it could still be a moult. What type of moth did you feed him and where did you get it from? I heard sometimes moths can be poisonous. 

Do you have any crickets? What we do to ours sometimes if we have no flies is chop a crickets head off and put the gooy bit to their mouths, they start munching and then grab it from the tweezers.


----------



## Zenythcatt (May 16, 2011)

hmm not sure on the moth, I will need to check, it was a small one sitting on the wall inside the house. 
There is a shop that has started selling crickets so I might buy a tub of them and try that with him. 

I have found information on crickets and mantids to be quite contradicting, some places say never feed crickets to mantids and other places say do feed them. 

Also he spends all his time in his enclosure hanging upside down and very still, which fits the descriptions I have read of a mantids mannerisms before a moult.

Edit
~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm pretty sure the moth was one of these guys http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?bf=647


----------



## vivalabam (Aug 8, 2010)

Zenythcatt said:


> hmm not sure on the moth, I will need to check, it was a small one sitting on the wall inside the house.
> There is a shop that has started selling crickets so I might buy a tub of them and try that with him.
> 
> I have found information on crickets and mantids to be quite contradicting, some places say never feed crickets to mantids and other places say do feed them.
> ...


I don't know anything about moths, it;s just one of those things you read... I wouldn't say there is much point buying a pack of crickets if you have flying food available. They don't eat them very often and crickets are nasty. :lol2:

Yeah if he is staying still he could well be getting ready for a moult, ours stay still for ages before they moult, they pick a nice spot and hang for a few days. :lol2: Leave him be for a couple of days, if he still hasn't done anything we'll see if there's anything else that could be wrong. 

We don't usually use crickets for mantids as we have flying food, it's so much easier. We only feed crickets if the casters haven't hatched and even then we kill the cricket first. I think for flower mantids crickets are poisonous, but for ghosts they aren't, but because crickets are so viscous giving them alive can end up harming the mantid. I never give black crickets as apparently they are poisonous, only brown ones.


----------



## Zenythcatt (May 16, 2011)

wow lots of handy information there . I also read you shouldn't catch food for mantids becuase of insectisides but to be honest I would think the bug would be dead by the time they reach our garden had they come into contact with insectisides. 
We don't use insectisides in our garden either. 

Yeah that's mostly what I read crickets can be poisonous and can harm mantids. 

I think that''s ust what i'll do, I have read that a mantis can live for 2 weeks without food but I will wait a few more days and see what happens. 

Thanks for the replies .


----------



## vivalabam (Aug 8, 2010)

Zenythcatt said:


> wow lots of handy information there . I also read you shouldn't catch food for mantids becuase of insectisides but to be honest I would think the bug would be dead by the time they reach our garden had they come into contact with insectisides.
> We don't use insectisides in our garden either.
> 
> Yeah that's mostly what I read crickets can be poisonous and can harm mantids.
> ...


Yeah, they do say that but for my first ever mantid I used a lot of food from outside and she lived a long and healthy life and I'm now taking care of her baby! 

You're welcome, any other problems feel free to PM me. 

Let me know how you get on. :2thumb:


----------

