# FEEDING AN EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF MANTIDS!!



## Nick Barta (Jun 22, 2007)

I've had many requests for pictures of my set-up for housing and feeding 100-200 mantids at a time. This will give you a pretty good picture of my housing, and if you check the feeding section of the forum, you will see how I complete my feedings. The methods that I share are not the only way to do it, but it works alot better than what I used to do.

Picture 1: The mantids are divided into small vials that eat d. melanogaster flies, large vials that take hydei fruit flies, houseflies, and blue bottle flies housed in 24 oz. insect cups. Each container has a sticker (round 1" from office depot) that tells the mantid species and in-star level. I work one food source at a time, and then remove the tray from the table. You might notice that this is not done in my house, and having trays using the same height containers allows me to stack and carry them out to my garage in one trip. This keeps peace in the house.

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/ni...dfeeding001.jpg

Picture 2: When feeding fruit flies I shake them from the 32 oz. fruit fly container, into the five inch funnel, which drops them into the graduated cylinder. As the fruit flies climb up, I tap the cylinder onto the table, which knocks them down to the bottom. If the process is stopped, I cap the graduated cylinder with a 2 oz. portion cup.

For house flies and blue bottle flies, I put them in the freezer until they fall to the bottom of their hatching container which is usually several minutes (don't leave them in too long or they will die!); the refrigerator will slow them, but not knock them down which gives you less time to handle the flies. I use the funnel and graduated cylinder for all the flies, however the blue bottles do tend to get bunched up in the funnel, just keep tapping the funnel to get them to fall down. The graduated cylinder gives you the control to keep the food contained during the process.

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/ni...dfeeding002.jpg

Picture 3, 4, 5: On the vials, the lids are flexible enough that you can bend them to about a 90 degree angle to tap the fruit flies into the container from the graduated cylinder. On the insect cups, I pop the lids before I freeze the flies, but leave them on top of the container, so it is quick and easy to shake the food into the container. On the four inch by four inch, by 10 inch high mantis mansion; the graduated cyliner fits into the hole in the side of the container that has a foam stopper in it. This gives you even greater control because the cylinder blocks the escape of any flies that have regained the ability to fly.

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/ni...dfeeding003.jpg

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/ni...dfeeding004.jpg

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/ni...dfeeding005.jpg


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## OGIGA (Jun 22, 2007)

Nice. How long does it take you to feed them all?


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## Rick (Jun 22, 2007)

Great ideas. I use some of the same ideas currently.


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## Nick Barta (Jun 23, 2007)

It depends on the percentage of fruitfly mantids I have compared to hosefly and blue bottle flies. Fruit flies are FAST, while the others take trips back and forth to the freezer. Luckily I have a freezer in the garage.

If I have 70 large fly mantids, and 150 fruitfly nymphs, it takes about 1-1/2 hours. But then again, if I need to transfer to larger containers, that can double. Like Rick, I feed every other day.


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## athicks (Jun 24, 2007)

Pretty streamlined process


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