# Food 101 please



## nursemelody (May 6, 2011)

Im sure this has been talked about over and over again, but what is the general consenusus of what to feed grown chinese and larger mantids? Crickets? Mealworms? Bluebottles? Do bluebottles get out and have wings? Someone give me the basics...


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## PhilinYuma (May 6, 2011)

nursemelody said:


> Im sure this has been talked about over and over again, but what is the general consenusus of what to feed grown chinese and larger mantids? Crickets? Mealworms? Bluebottles? Do bluebottles get out and have wings? Someone give me the basics...


Crickets, cockroaches, bluebottles (and yes, they do "get out and fly"!) large bodied moths (the wings don't count!) bees and wasps if they don't worry you. Only feed mealworms occasionally and don't bother with caterpillars.


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## alicenwnderlnd (May 6, 2011)

my Chinese mantis eat mostly blue bottles from L-4 on up. i have a wasp nest in my front yard and when they start bothering me, the also get some of those. also found a couple horse flies in the yard that they happily ate. Chinese mantis are great as they will eat anything that moves! I personally stay away from crickets for my mantis though, but that is just my personal preference. I have also fed my Chinese silkworms in a pinch.


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## nursemelody (May 6, 2011)

Are paper wasps okay if you pull out the stinger? How in the world did you "catch" them?

As of now I regularly have crickets, mealworms of all stages, waxworms and wax moths, earthworms, and the smaller hydei/melanogaster flies... I think they are about to get to be too small for the flies....

So maybe crickets, wax moths, but it looks like I need to go for the blue bottles, huh?

I have a lot of frogs too.. Im sure they will eat them as well...

Does a culture last long? Do you prefer to buy spikes? What is most practical and kept longest?


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## warpdrive (May 6, 2011)

personally, I just buy the spikes and keep them in the fridge.

then I pull out a few each day to replace what I'm going to feed off.

they take a week or so to turn into flys, so always remove them from the fridge a week or so before you need them.

Harry


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## PhilinYuma (May 6, 2011)

I think that buying spikes is the best idea for most folks who want to feed BBs, they are full grown maggots ready to turn into pupae, so you don't have to feed them. A very few people, Carey and I are the only two I know off had, grow their own, but it is not for the squeamish and most folks have trouble the first time they try and end up stinking out the house and enraging significant others. Fortunately, my only SO is Tucker, and he doesn't get a vote.

If you are interested in trying to start a fly culture in a 12" cube, talk to Carey who has, I think, a care sheet, and sells the medium. If you put "kova" into the search engine, you should come up with some of mine.

Wasps can be captured by leaving a little jam in a jam jar with some small holes -- large enough for them to crawl into the jar but not large enough for them to fly out. They do not respond well to chilling, though, so be careful. There is no need to remove the stinger, though, fortunately. Large mantids will catch them in nature, as the French naturalist Farbre has described, without any harm.

If honey bees are abundant in your area, they are an excellent natural food because in addition to animal protein, they also carry more pollen than most insects. You can catch them, and wasps, in a medicine jar. Be aware, though, that Rick has a strong emotional objection to feeding honey bees to mantids ( he cites CCD, but obviously the capture of a few bees in any given area won't affect that one way or the other) and, as a forum correspondent recently pointed out, isn't above silently deleting references to this subject,


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## Rick (May 7, 2011)

Crickets and roaches are most common. I catch wild caught food as well such as moths. A large species like that needs large food, especially the females. You can feed them bluebottles but they will need a lot of them. Adult males could probably do ok on just bb's.


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## poke (May 7, 2011)

Sorry to go sorta off topic but what are spikes that you guys talk about?


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## kitkat39 (May 7, 2011)

poke said:


> Sorry to go sorta off topic but what are spikes that you guys talk about?


maggots


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## PhilinYuma (May 7, 2011)

Yeah, more specifically blow fly = bluebottle maggots just before they pupate. The term is used in bait shops.


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