How to Have more Feeding Diversity For My Orchids?

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Mantis Man13

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My orchid mantises can only eat flying insects, first of all, since they are flower mantises with specially functioning mouth parts. I have mainly been feeding them moths. I need to feed them more of a variety or else they will be unhealthy, right? Should I put food outside to attract flies and then catch them? Any other things you would suggest me feeding them?

 
Houseflies and blue bottle flies are really good for them and pretty easy and cheap to come by. I used to sell housefly and blue bottle pupae when I kept mantids. You just keep them in a small container in the fridge and take some out and put a few in the mantid containers every other day and let them hatch out into flies on their own. They usually emerge within 1-3 days at room temp depending on how old the pupae is. The pupae usually last a month or so in the fridge. I am unsure of the rules for posting links to other sites on this forum (yeah... im one of those "click agree without reading the rules" people), so feel free to pm me and I can tell you where to purchase the pupae for low prices.

 
You can feed crawling insects to them easily, like waxworms, hornworms, silkworms, or mealworms (although they don't really like mealworms much due to low moisture content and the exoskeleton). Orchid mantids (and all mantids really) can eat anything they can catch, unless it is toxic of course. None of them have specialized mouthparts (unless you count pedipalps, which aren't unique to mantids), and people mainly feed flying insects because the mantids take them easily without hand-feeding and their raptorial arms are much better adapted to capture prey without the obstruction of ground.

Anyways, waxworms IMO are the ideal prey for mantids if you want to feed them more infrequently. However, many mantids aren't attracted to them unless significantly hungry, so you should make a small puncture in the waxworm (which is very easy to do) or cut off it's head. Either way, fluids will seep out when the waxworm tries to move and you touch the worm to the mantis's mouthparts. They'll testing it with their pedipalps, then nibbling temporarily, then they'll grab the worm from you and start eating like there's no tomorrow! Not to mention, one of my favorite things about them is you can either feed the fatty, water-providing, soft larvae or the fatty, extremely tempting moth!

Also, roaches and locusts are great food too! Although they're harder to feed than waxworms due to it being harder to expose their flesh without being disgusted, and you'll generally need to feed more frequently due to their lower fat levels. However, depending on the type, you might not even need to "prepare" the food. I've noticed mantids have an extreme fetish for green prey, so you could get a colony of Panchlora nivea or find some green orthopterans! I'd recommend not feeding crickets though. WAAAY too many strange stories about them.

However, remember, mantids all have varying levels of aggression and hunger and you might not need to prepare the food or the mantis may reject it totally for a minute and if so, try again after any small amount of time.

TL;DR: Feed any invertebrate to your mantis as long as it's not toxic or warned against. Green inverts and moths are nearly always preferred. Mantids will take nearly anything with adequate coaxing, however remember that mantises vary greatly in terms of enthusiasm over food and physique.

 
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So for my mantis to be healthy can I just keep feed them moths now and blue bottle flies later in the winter? Also can you get blue-bottle flies at the pet store that are flightless? Also, I posted a message after my message but it got deleted :huh: . Did I say something wrong? All I said was that I needed an answer soon since it had been 12 hours since I posted it and no response.

 
Moths should be just fine for now. I would get some other food in there when possible... even crickets from the pet store every now and then would be good.

I have never seen blue bottle flies at pet stores, but you can usually find them locally at fish bait shops. I am unaware of any flightless blue bottle flies. I usually just put the pupae in a container to hatch some out and when its feeding time I place the container in the freezer for a minute or two. The flies will be motionless for two to three minutes, usually more than enough time for me to feed the mantids. Once the flies warm back up they start flying around again. Any unused flies left in the bottle can be placed into the fridge and will stay alive for many days. It is easier to just place the fly pupae directly into the mantis containers and let them hatch out on their own though.

 
Oh ok. Disregard what I was saying about my post getting deleted that happened on another post so I was confused. It never got deleted XD.

 

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