sent you an email

Hi, I saw this post and am hoping someone can tell me how to keep baby mantids alive?! My son loves to mate mantids every year, and for the past 5 years, we have around 100 baby mantids that emerge, but we can't seem to keep them alive. We keep reading more and more, and they seem to live longer each year (this year they lasted almost 2 months), but we don't know why they die. We try to keep them moist so they can molt, and we feed them fruit flies because they're too small for anything else. I know they should have variety, but I can't find any other food small enough around here. Is there a website that sells food for baby mantids? Maybe this isn't even the reason that they die. Does anyone out there know exactly how to take care of these babies?

Did you ever get any egg cases. I have an extra I found on bush trimmings if you want it.

Julia

They eat each other. When keeping more than one in confinement they can become cannabalistic.