Aphid culture?

[Zapins]

I was thinking... I have noticed quite a few aphids on one of my plants that if I were to grow more aphids I could use them as a food source for freshly hatched chinese mantids?

I have read that sprouting beans is a good food for aphids. Any idea if this is true or an easy way of culturing them?

 

[Reptiliatus]

I'm sure it would be very easy to culture them. Half the time we do it by accident. I remember I once had an tropical milkweed I was keeping indoors until I noticed that it was overwhelmed with yellow aphids. The thing you might want to consider is that aphids don't really move much. Unless you are going to brush them off the host plant and force them to walk around in the mantid enclosures, you wont have much of a feeding response from your nymphs. Good luck brushing them off the host plant without popping half of them . They are very fragile.

Just my 2 cents...

 

[lancaster1313]

I'm sure it would be very easy to culture them. Half the time we do it by accident. I remember I once had an tropical milkweed I was keeping indoors until I noticed that it was overwhelmed with yellow aphids. The thing you might want to consider is that aphids don't really move much. Unless you are going to brush them off the host plant and force them to walk around in the mantid enclosures, you wont have much of a feeding response from your nymphs. Good luck brushing them off the host plant without popping half of them . They are very fragile.

Just my 2 cents...

I agree that they are a pain to harvest and feed.

Mantids don't really notice them when they are attached to the plant.

Also, depending on the species of aphid, they can cause injuries to the mouths of predators. I have had a few nymphs killed by aphids from my area. When the mantids attempted to eat them, the aphids somehow sealed or ruptured their mouths causing the mantids to starve. The mouths of those nymphs were noticeably expanded.

 

[shane]

i tried them before but i didnt like them... most of the aphids were infected by wasps... wasps hatched and killed my lace wing larvae... just becareful you dont have any wasps...

 

[Paradoxica]

Be careful of what the host plant is, milkweed is toxic and makes the aphids toxic as well.

 

[mantid_mike]

all i know about aphids is that they secrete some sort of sweet liquid that ants really like. ants sort of "herd" the aphids, so the aphids are like little cows.

 

[Introvertebrate]

The dart frog guys have been experimenting with pea aphids. There's obviously some movement there: