# Couple of things :)



## enlightenment (Dec 19, 2006)

1) If attaching an ooth to the top of a container, or at the top side, so to speak, could a blob of wax, a small bit, be just as good as the glue, or threading method.

2) Today, I bought a tub of fruit flies. Inside the tun are tiny flies, and also this kinda weird looking liquid??? Girl says that I can make a 'culture' out of the tub, and flies. Put thm in a jar, with tights over the top or meshing, I cannot recall.

Advise v welcomed :lol:


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## Rick (Dec 19, 2006)

That mush in the fly culture is the medium. Its what the maggots live in and eat. I buy a bag of it from carolina.com and it lasts awhile. I put a a half inch of that in a 32 oz deli cup with a pinch of yeast and add water until its nice and moist. Then I add some flies. Within a few weeks there are millions of flies in there. In the side of my deli cup is a hole plugged with foam. I can dump flies out of that hole through a funnel and into my mantid cages. The cultures will eventually die out so as soon as you see that starting you start a new one. Just keep doing that and you won't have to buy flies, just the medium.

The glue method works best for me for attaching ooths. You can use any method you like as long as it gets the ooth hanging there in position correctly.


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## enlightenment (Dec 20, 2006)

> That mush in the fly culture is the medium. Its what the maggots live in and eat. I buy a bag of it from carolina.com and it lasts awhile. I put a a half inch of that in a 32 oz deli cup with a pinch of yeast and add water until its nice and moist. Then I add some flies. Within a few weeks there are millions of flies in there. In the side of my deli cup is a hole plugged with foam. I can dump flies out of that hole through a funnel and into my mantid cages. The cultures will eventually die out so as soon as you see that starting you start a new one. Just keep doing that and you won't have to buy flies, just the medium.The glue method works best for me for attaching ooths. You can use any method you like as long as it gets the ooth hanging there in position correctly.


Thanks Rick.

The thing is this.

The friut flies that I bought were in a tub.

Within that tun there is a sealed tub, and it is that which has this beige stuff in it, only, like I say, it appears to have a lid on it.

On top of the inner tub, there is what appears to be hay.

Following your method, how would I get the inner tub open, without the flies that are in there, and v active, all coming out, if you follow what I mean?


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## Shelbycsx (Dec 20, 2006)

If you are worried about the flys escaping, they shouldn't be able to if they are the wingless/flightless variety. If the flys aren't in the medium yet, and you need to let them get to the medium so that they can continue to breed, just open the containers while constantly shaking/tapping the container so that the flys fall down and don't escape. Hope that answers your question.


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## enlightenment (Dec 20, 2006)

> If you are worried about the flys escaping, they shouldn't be able to if they are the wingless/flightless variety. If the flys aren't in the medium yet, and you need to let them get to the medium so that they can continue to breed, just open the containers while constantly shaking/tapping the container so that the flys fall down and don't escape. Hope that answers your question.


I did it in the bath!

A few escaped, but that was not so bad.

On opening their tub, I realsied that the tub that I thought was sealed, in fact had a hole in the middle of the lid, permitting them sccoess to whatever that VILE mix is!

However, I left some in there with the mix, and swapped some over to the tank that I had set up, smearing a few blons of that stuff in there, as well.


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## Rick (Dec 20, 2006)

I really don't know what you mean. Raising fruit flies is simple. Here is a pic of two kinds of cultures. The small one is how most places do them. The big one is how I do it.


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## enlightenment (Dec 20, 2006)

thanks for the pix, rick

good man


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## xenuwantsyou (Dec 20, 2006)

As a rule I always give the container a little tap to get the little beasties to the bottom. If it's open for a while you may want to give it a tap every few seconds. Just experiment with different methods and see what works for you.


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## yen_saw (Dec 22, 2006)

Hi Enlightenment

If you only have few nymphs to feed, the small culture of fruit flies in the tub will do, but when you have hundreds of hungry mouth to feed, the 32oz fruit flies culture with medium (see container on the right in Rick's pic) is preferred, although i would add some excelsior to yield more flies.


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## enlightenment (Dec 22, 2006)

> Hi EnlightenmentIf you only have few nymphs to feed, the small culture of fruit flies in the tub will do, but when you have hundreds of hungry mouth to feed, the 32oz fruit flies culture with medium (see container on the right in Rick's pic) is preferred, although i would add some excelsior to yield more flies.


Thanks.

Well it's an ooth, a Chinese Mantis, that I got from Ian, so we shall see what happens when it bursts.

What tends to be the average time? Any good tips on speeding up the method? I just have the ooth set up at quite warm/regular room temp, and I have more or less followed Ricks example here.

What is excelsior?

Steve


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## Shelbycsx (Dec 22, 2006)

> What is excelsior?


x 2 :lol:


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## enlightenment (Dec 22, 2006)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excelsior_%28wood_wool%29

I think it is this....


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## Shelbycsx (Dec 22, 2006)

So is excelsior a food? If so, would you reccomend a good clean source of it?


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## enlightenment (Dec 22, 2006)

Didn't read like a food to me, mate

_Excelsior is a wood product made of aspen fibers, used in packaging, cushioning, stuffing of stuffed animals, and for the cooling pads in home evaporative cooling systems known as swamp coolers._

Excelsior, dyed green, makes an annual appearance as the "grass" in Easter baskets, or did in earlier decades before the prevalence of plastics.

Traditionally used in stuffing Teddy bears[1], it is still used in stuffing the muzzles of some collectible bears.

The term excelsior is sometimes used more generally, for any clean, loose material for shipment-packing of boxes or crates, such as styrofoam packing peanuts.


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## Rick (Dec 22, 2006)

Its a straw looking stuff. Some believe putting it in fruit fly cultures will yield more flies. Didn't make any difference to me. That large culture was just started before the pic so thas why there are not many flies. Enlightenment your ooth should hatch after three or four weeks.


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## yen_saw (Dec 23, 2006)

> Well it's an ooth, a Chinese Mantis


Be ready to feed hundreds of hatchling, you'll need lot of fruit flies.



> What is excelsior?


It looks like the pic below. I use them for smaller fruit fly (D. Melanogaster), and Raffia (another straw thingy that is wider than excelsior) for larger fruit flies. What excelsior (or raffia) did was to increase the surface area in a 32oz container for maggots to pupate. I also put some inside an incubating ooth so hatchling has more area to hang on when the ooth hatched.






P. Wahlbergii hatchling in excelsior


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