Food for baby nymphs
- Thread starter Krystal
- Start date
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Sarah K
Well-known member
Most people feed baby mantis nymphs fruit flies. You can buy fruit fly cultures from online retailers, and sometimes local petstores.
All depends on the mantid species you are referring to and their instar level, as it can widely vary. As neither are listed in your post, I'm just providing a basic overview.
The most common is to start smaller species with Melanogaster fruit flies, then after a molt move them onto the larger Hydei fruit flies. Some species may need to be fed springtails for the first instar (L1) though, and others can take Hydei FF from the start. It all depends on the mantid species, but after L2 to L3 all mantids should be moved up to larger prey as fruit flies will no longer be appropriate sized prey (providing little if any nourishment). After fruit flies the most common feeders are houseflies or stable flies, and moving to larger prey afterwards.
