Search results

for easy capture of escaped flies i made a pooter. essential equipment for anyone with fruit flies in his life. if any ff get away (and they always will) its quite efficient way to capture them. they are usually attracted to the window by the light so no worries if a few get out. its also how i...

hi, what temp do you keep them at may i ask. development is quite slow at room temp, i definitely dont see maggots in 3 days. see them after 2 weeks more like. they get there eventually though

too many variables to predict, but mainly it depends how long the adults were laying eggs for and how much medium there is for them to eat. if they layed eggs for three weeks before they died then the new flies will hatch out over three weeks not accounting for competition for lower quality food...

mine are still not smelling bad which is pretty amazing as i made them ages ago. bit of mold growing on top not much tho. the new flies seem to keeping alive for along time in there too

not roam -thats a bad idea but one summer i put two adult female asian mantids on twigs , loose on the windowsill. they did not move around much on the twigs for weeks* and it was warm n sunny so it was fine. very ornamental. *you can guess how it ended. one very fat mantis and one very...

i tried keeping idolomantis once but both eventually failed as subs due to lost grip of the hind leg claws. they missed prey and impaled the front legs on the mesh, and must have pulled forward and strained the hind claws so they stopped gripping. i did see this happen a few times. i was using...

when outside winter temp is 0 to 10 degrees c its not very practical to heat a house to 20 c all day for a few insects. ok i admit its a big house lol. i think i need a bigger heat mat as the one inside my small glass mantis cage can only manage a puny 15c at the moment, thats just 5 c above...

I'm going to start on a bigger version today, to fit inside a medium sized glass vivarium for heat/humidity retention - ( i live in uk where its COLD). hope to get a colony of those rose mantids or other non aggressive mantids if i can find anyone selling any but theyre pretty rare...

this mixture is brilliant. i made 3 jam jars full two weeks ago following your measures exactly, and have thousands of maggots in each and lots of pupae from about 20 parent flies in each. it doesnt smell at all yet, apart from being a bit vinegerany. you can get that 'masa' stuff in sainsbury's...

thought i'd post some pics of the small fabric cage i made for some baby 'gambian' mantids. it was a bugger to make but the mantids seem much happier than in the crappy plastic sweet jar they were in before. even the fruit flies seem happy -for a while anyway ;) looks really good back lit...

the bird (dead) is glued on. look, its not even gripping it.

beautiful clear pics. the best ive seen of a hatching ooth.

hi does anyone know how long these ooths take to hatch. it was laid about july 30th so about 5 1/2 weeks ago now. the female was mated successfully. Should i mist the ooth or use a heat mat. im worried this will dry it out too much so im keeping at room temp so far. thnx

my african flower mantids could fly quite well too. not just short flights to escape, mine got ready to fly by vibrating their wings for a minute or two, before zooming round the room a few times. this happened at night which makes sense as theres no way they could escape birds etc. not agile...

hi have you tried placing the first female on a horizontal surface. if shes already started she should carry on going, like my heirodula female did in the thread 'some ooth laying pics'. in her case, she had damaged feet and kept slipping, which was putting her off laying.

hi rob. is that the 'giant african mantis'? never heard of them till now. how big do they get then? are they easy to keep

hi rick im wondering if this can only happen if mating behaviour has already been triggered. in my males case it hadnt, ie the male hadnt recognised the female and wasnt, er, horny, and he was just wandering off when she grabbed him. it would have been interesting to see if his abdomen was...

i didnt think that was possible either. thats its really interesting. its funny but if id have known it may have been useful yesterday. i was trying to mate my last female, but she wouldnt let him approach. so i put him on her back, thinking he might get on with it but she attacked him again...

hi on the subject of attracting wild fruit flies, a few days ago i was getting into a panic about getting food for my soon to hatch asian mantis ooth. luckily the plum tree in the garden this year have produced millions of plums (well nearly :) ) must be the hot summer caused by g warming...

if i have to move one, or pick one up i encourage it to walk forward onto something by tickling its bottom with a paint brush :lol: i never pick them up by the body as they just grab on to something which could damage their claws