Mantis auto feeder

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gadunka888

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Singapore lah.... then where?
Here is a mantis feeder that feeds mantis nymphs mosquiotes. Zoom in if you can't read the notes.( if there r any fatal errors, tell me.)i think i wrote carbon dioxide wrongly.

 
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Would you mind explaining your design, Gadunka? Is the yeast used to attract the mosquitoes? How will you retain the warmth of the water?

Also, I think the nymphs may be able to fit through the gauze if the holes are big enough for mozzies to crawl through & they themselves are small enough. They shouldn't be able to get out of the container should they do this, but they may fall into the cup.

Vinegar flies (Drosophila sp.) are probably the way to go if you wanna create an auto-feeder for your mantids but you should check out previous posts for more info on that.

James.

P.S. Write the '2' of carbon dioxide in subscript. Superscript indicates charge.

 
Cool idea, presumably based on the fact that mosquitos are attracted to mammals by the carbon dioxide that they exhale. It's also a very smart idea to let a little time go by before building something that is completely new, and to ask for other's opinions.

Let's suppose that there are enough mosquitos in the air in your 8th floor apartment in Singapore, to provide a steady supply of food for the mantids and that your yeast solution creates CO2 (sorry, James!) for 12 - 24 hours.

1)The mosquitos will fly into the enclosure where they will be killed in the CO2 rich atmosphere (that's how mosquito traps in places like Florida work).

2)Those, if any, that survive won't go into the mantis side of the enclosure because the CO2 concentration is lower there.

3)There is a good chance that there will be enough CO2 in the enclosure to kill your nymphs.

So back to the drawing board, but don't give up! :D

 
Give me a bit more credit than that Phil! I use yeast in experiments all the time! But mosquitoes attraction to CO2 is new to me.

 
jameslongo said:
Give me a bit more credit than that Phil! I use yeast in experiments all the time! But mosquitoes attraction to CO2 is new to me.
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No, no James! I added the pace because I didn't add the "2" as a subscript! lol!

As you probably do know, expired air contains about 4% CO2 and that's what attracts the little buggers. In Florida, which boasts around 75 species of mosquito, half of which like to bite, you can waste hundreds of dollars on carbon dioxide traps which attract and kill with the gas. They work perfectly well, but they just don't attract over a sufficiently large area to be very useful.

SWAT!

 
I think it'll attract ants and fruit flies/flies though.

I'm not sure about cockroachs as they usually come out at night and the mantis wouldn't be able to see them.

and where are you gonna put the set-up?( next to a garbage dump?)

 
All these self feeder ideas have never really worked...presumably even if they did, it really takes just as much effort. Very creative though! Love the Co2 idea

 
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Probably not the best idea for an auto-feeder. Maybe you should think about making a culture of flies/crickets/roaches & linking the mantid enclosure to the breeder via a plastic tube during feeding time, then you put a foam-stopper in the holes of each enclosure when you're done to prevent escapees.

The two-in-one idea, like Mantidian & Asa said, is a lot of work & not really rewarding.

Forgive me, Phil. It's very rare that I can unleash my chem knowledge onto someone, since Olga wants to hear nothing of it <_<

Also: Gadunka, why didn't you draw the mantis? ;)

 
Nightlurker said:
Im not good at drawing mantises :( I also don't have any mantises :(
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He's a witch! Heretic! Burn him at the stake! :D Jokes man

Are you going to get one soon? You're making an auto-feeder for an imaginary mantis?

 
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I think dumping the feeders into the mantid's environment with a source of food is really all you need to do... lol

 
Zephyr said:
I think dumping the feeders into the mantid's environment with a source of food is really all you need to do... lol
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once again, ants are going to overrun that thing if you leave it outside. N ants aren't too nutritional (formic = ants). You have to control the environment so that it doesn't go to waste.

 
I like your ideas but I am not sure about how practical they are going to be. One of the biggest chores about mantids is feeding and I can see why people want to try to find a way to make it easier. You're going to attract fruit flies over mosquitos I believe. They are attracted to CO2 but that is when breathed out of another animal.

 
I have a easier solution maybe take 2 of those 32 oz or such cups or tubs and some rubber tubing or surgical tubing and stick one end into the tub with fruit flies and the other into the mantid container and maybe that could work and can always clip off the tubing from the mantids side when refilling fruit flies!

 

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