KevinsWither
Well-known member
How am I going to feed that many mantids?
Lineola ooth hatches
- Thread starter KevinsWither
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guapoalto049
Well-known member
Let 'em thin each other out. Mantids with huge hatch rates typically don't have great survival rates anyway.
How many are you talking about? With simply that sentence and the title "Lineola ooth hatches" it is hard to judge.
Although with any amount you feed them the same as usual. I've had eight ooths hatch lately around 400 nymphs, and I fed them all Melanogasters then Hydei, and now larger prey as they aged.
If you are incubating any ooths it is good to have at least two 32oz cultures of FF producing, and make more cultures as needed. I had 8 Melanogaster and 4 Hydei cultures going staggered in sets of two or four about a week apart, that way I had plenty for all my nymphs. At times when I was incubating even more ooths I've had about two dozen cultures.
If you do not have enough fruit flies for your nymphs you will have to get some and start cultures. In the meantime you can tear apart crickets and feed to the nymphs. Indeed there were be some cannibalism as there is even under the best circumstances, let alone low food.
KevinsWither
Well-known member
I am talking like 100-300 per hatch. How do I manage that number to house and feed them all?
Ah ok, for big ooth hatches the best thing is to house them together in a large container (I do it for my Tenodera sinensis nymphs as they hatch 100-200 per ooth, and I just put two ooths worth of hatches into one awhile back). I use a large square 5 gallon container I modified with plenty of ventilation of fine mesh so FF can't escape and plenty of sticks for perches. You can also use the large cheeseball containers UTZ brand is a popular one, a 10 gallon aquarium with a appropriate made cover, or the larger Sterilite plastic containers.
I find the larger containers are better for giving the nymphs plenty of room to move around/flee if needed, and have plenty of space for molting. Also as it can handle many nymphs in later instars as well a good plan in case they are in there longer than I anticipated.
I use to separate them all into 3oz containers within a few days of hatching, but found that keeping them together till L2 or L3 made things much better. As with the larger ooth hatches, many nymphs won't make it to L2 or L3 anyway so it is wasted time to separate/feed them, plus if kept together the nymphs that I separate later are much stronger/hardier (not sure if it is due to cannibalism or what). I then separate them at the L2 or L3 stage into nymph cups, or 32oz containers.
Regarding feeding, I feed mine about 2 Melanogaster flies for each nymph daily, there is no trick to it - just ensure you have plenty of FF cultures setup for it. That is the amazing thing about the fruit flies, you buy one culture and can separate 20-30 flies into several new FF cultures and in about 7-10 days they are ready to use.
Here are some photos of my larger containers that would make good nymph containers.
As mentioned on feeding you need to setup enough fruit fly cultures, here are mine currently...
View attachment 7484
