Giant Shield Mantis

(4-24-07) This morning, while i was thinking of misting the ooth, surprisingly 4 nymphs hatched out, i was hoping for more but it
stopped to my dismay. When i separate them this evening, another one hatched out... well, is it going to stop now or hatching out
more?

(4-27-07) Finally it stopped hatching after 3 days. Total of around 150 nymphs!! I have separated them into 3 groups. 4 in individual
container. Another two cages housing 70+ nymphs each. One in net cages, and another in plastic container with mesh screen on top
and side for ventilation purpose. One is being kept at higher at high T and H while another at lower T and H.

(4-29-07) So far, the finding is they prefer to hang on the highest point of the cage and very aggressive. They will attack the flies and kill
it even when they are full. The cage with lower H seems to be always thirsty, so i have decided to increase the H by spraying more. and
they seem to prefer higher T too so my suspect is they are from the lowland species which is less sensitive to high T. In fact i think they
prefer high T. So i will keep them all at high T and high H for now. They are a good feeders so far. I need to make sure the food supply
is continuous.

5-10-07) Another ootheca of this species hatch!! This time it is burst-type hatching and not over a few days like the previous ooth. As
usual, they are very thirsty after hatching and start to feed one day after hatching.

(5-12-2007) I am putting much effort into this species so far trying to learn them and avoid any mistake from previous breeders. Well, I
must have been very lucky so far because they are all doing very well without casualty from sickness. In less than 2 weeks, some are
approaching L4 stage! The “shield” is still not visible, maybe it will start to grow after L5/L6. One thing I have noticed was this species
preferred high temperature with frequent misting (once a day). The group with less misting seems to feed on less and the group in
lower temp grow slowly too, so now I am putting all of them into high T and high H. Most of them are in L3 stage now. Yesterday, one
more ootheca hatched out!! It appeared that this time all hatched at the same time but I will see if there are more hatching out
tomorrow.

(5-25-2007) They are growing up quickly, some had reached L5 stage, the shield is getting visible but should be interesting to see the
size of the shield after next molt.

(6-16-2007) One more molt and now it is subadult!! It didn't take long at long. I have bunch of them in the net cage, although they were
notoriously cannibalism, i have yet to see one. Here are some pics.

(6-28-2007) After couple of cannibalism incidents, i decided to separate them into individual container, and realized that i have only 4
male and 16 female!! so now i have to give the male "extra" care to ensure at least few will mate to continue another generation.

(6-29-2007) Still waiting for any to molt into adult, i believed some will mature into adult soon. Some female has smaller shield than
other. but most of the subadult females are about 6 cm, the smallest is about 5 cm and largest is probably about 6.5 cm.

(7-1-2007) Ironically, two of the smallest females with smaller shield molted into adult yesterday. They are about 7.5 cm. The shield
actually grown up quite a bit, so i am looking forward to see the size of the larger shield moulted into adult. I am feeding them mainly
blue bottles and crickets now.

(7-19-2007) First adult pair mated few days ago, it was a success. Yesterday, the same female appear to be acceptive again, so i
introduce another male and they promptly mated. Hopefully, i can find an ootheca soon in the cage! By the way, my last adult subadult
female has successfully moulted into adult! Now i have 4 male and 8 female all in adult stage.