mesquito hawks

[rs4guy]

Now I know the don't have much of a body or "meat" on a mesquito hawk/crane fly for the mantis to actually consume. My question is if fed copiously, do they contain the nutrition needed for the development of the mantis? There are a ton of them lately around my house , and very easy to catpure. One of my Orchid females goes nuts for them. So really, I'm talking about the mantis having it's fill of many of these critters. Most all of my other mantids enjoy them as well. So in essence, what's the scoop on mesquito hawks for feeders?

Cheers,

Josh

 

[Bryce08]

Honeslty...im not sure about how good they are as feeders, but I could NOT get any of my mantids to eat them...from idolos, to budwings, lineolas...

Thats awesome that your orchids like them, maybe I will try to feed some to my orchids, because I have tons around the house like you said

 

[sporeworld]

Ohhhhhhh, man! My critters all LOVED those things!!! All the fluttering and fussing about! Agreed - not a lot of meat, and quite a bit of debris - but if you can get enough of them - go for it!!!

 

[CoolMantid]

My creo will chase them around his cage. I once put him in a large 5 gallon for cleaning his deli cup and I also put a crane fly in too. Once it started flying it would not stop. My creo literally went the other side of the cage and pounced on it

 

[petoly]

I just found one and threw it in with my ghost. We'll see. right now she seems curious.

EDIT: She devoured it.

 

[dlemmings]

I feed these any time I find them, some of them have plump abdomens but even skinny ones get taken nearly immediatly afterc placed in with mantids.

all my guys love crane flies and also damsel flies which I have not tried catching in a while but used to get by skimming a mesh net along the tops of shrubs.

(since my collection has grown it is too much work "catching" food so I use BBF and HF and sometimes crickets.

But cranefly/mosquito hawks can often be found on the walls inside and outside my house and it is irrisistable to watch my mantids take them...Creo female is very agressive reminds me of my Lineola when she was less fat...lol

 

[petoly]

more like mesquite hawks! budum cssh!

 

[Chivalry]

Funny, I have a couple of mantids that go for the flutter on these, but my ghosts, idolos and several others will not touch them.

 

[sporeworld]

Wait. What instar are they? It might just be a size issue. My ghosts that were up to Blue Bottles, were handling large Crane Flies.

 

[Chivalry]

They're sub now but it was last instar... Plenty big enough, they just didn't care to eat them for some reason.