breeding feeder insects

[robo mantis]

I was thinking of breeding crickets and fruit flies do you guys know how to sex them and start breeding them and for crickets how do you get places for them to lay eggs?

 

[Rick]

You don't need to sex them. But if you want to know then the female crickets will have a long ovipositor coming out their back end. It's what they use to deposit eggs. They will also be very fat just like a mantis when they are full of eggs. To breed them I just put a dish of moist dirt into their tub. Make sure it's a few inches deep. I leave it in there for a few days. After that I put the dish into its own container with a 50 watt heat lamp about a foot above the dish. Make sure the dirt stays damp. Less than a week later you will have crickets.

No reason to sex fruit flies. Just get you some medium and mix it with water and put it into a container. Dump some flies in there and in a few days you will see maggots.

 

[hortus]

i like this site on raising crickets

http://www.skylab.org/~chugga/cricket/

 

[infinity]

Fruit flies can be *encouraged* to lay if you put some apple juice or grape juice in the medium... Also, don't forget a sprinkling of yeast! - that also *really does* help - it mimics the fruit on which they would normally have laid on..

 

[robo mantis]

can i just put like a banana in there?

 

[Joe]

all i do is put mashed banana in the fruit fly's container and thats all, eggs are laid normally and the maggots prevent molding. all i smell in the container is yeast for some reason. and i also feed my crickets peice of banana they love it!

Joe

 

[robo mantis]

i buy special cricket food it is cool

 

[garbonzo13]

Cricket food I use dry milk powder and mix it with cornmeal. Thay seem to love it. I just got my first hatch of about 200 or so nymph crickets from a starter culture of about 10 adults. I tried using vegetable trimmings but it was too messy. The powder method keeps mess to a minimum. I have them setup in a 92 Qt. container. Also I use "water pillows" for water. They are fantastic and cheap. I also use the seperate egg laying dish with soil...that was good advise Rick, thanks. As soon as I put the soil dish in they were laying.lol