new mantis setup - hows it look?

[anaconda19]

hello, just bought a peacock mantis and a griffin mantis, they are at L3-L4 right now so are small, so theyre staying in their plastic drinks cup for another month or two... but i set up their new tank, twigs and plastic leaves(pushed into chunk of cork bark), coir coco fibre substrate, bottle cap for water. they have a large 36x24x26cm? plastic tank with a styrofoam divide so they both fit in. will have a heat mat at the back when they move in. so how does it look/sound? also please could someone tell me about the feeding, they arrived today and ate pretty much immediately, how often do i feed them? i have put a few drops of water in their cup should i do this every day? anything else i should do or know? is this a stupid question but will the crickets actually climb the thin twigs and so be caught by the mantis when theyre in their newer tank or are they just gonna hide in the dirt? ive done some hours of research but i always feel i dont find enough out from care sheets... thanks a lot.

 

[Eclipse]

It's great, but not nessecery. Yes, crickets can climb the branches, but the mantis will probably catch them anyway. As for the caps, remove them as the mantis will rarely use it. Just spray the whole cage twice a week. The crickets will also probably just hide in the dirt.

 

[anaconda19]

substrate

ok so maybe remove substrate? replace with? so can you hand feed mantids like you can emperor scorps? i feed mine with tweezers and put crix in its claw, just for fun, it hunts its own down too...

 

[Eclipse]

You can replace them with papertowels if you want. You CAN feed mantids with tweezers, but they can catch prey on their own. They're really good at doing so too so don't worry about that part. And if they stopped eating, don't freak out like most people do. This means that they are about to molt. New mantid keepers usually freak out about them not eating then try to force feed them and it stresses them out.