My flightless fruit flies are no longer flightless... Help?! How do I feed my mantis now?

[Kimyona]

I have a Spiny Flower Mantis and I'm not sure of it's age because the website I bought from said it was either L3 or L4 and he has molted once since then. 

Since I only have one mantis, I bought a really tiny vial that only keeps about 30 FLIGHTLESS Hydei fruit flies at time. After a month, the colony was about to die off so I made my own culture and placed them in a small Tupperware container. 

It was going well and fine for another month... Until all of a sudden they can fly now. I'm assuming some fly's genetics ended up producing just a couple that could fly, but in only a week, they have taken over. 

Now, I know what you're thinking: Just release a few flying ones into the enclosure and your mantis will catch them... Some problems: I have holes too big for fruit flies in the enclosure. I have tried countless times to put him into a different container (I've tried all sizes) and release fruit flies into that, but he just won't catch them on his own. I always have to feed him with tweezers. However, now these fruit flies can fly, so I can't catch them with tweezers. 

The solution I'm thinking about: Heck all of these fruit flies, I'm going to go ahead and get regular flies (but I don't know what species to get? Is bluebottle too big?). I'm thinking about freezing my fruit flies to death once I get a new reliable food source. However, still some problems: My mantis has only eaten about 3 fruit flies in 5 days (and two of those days were spent towards molting). I can tell he's hungry but I can't just get these fruit flies out now because he won't catch them by himself and I can't catch them with tweezers (I have tried countless times to do so but now I have like 20 fruit flies flying around my room). So, even if I bought regular flies, it will probably be a few days until they got here, thus being over a week since he has eaten a good amount.

AND second problem, it's staying around 30°F outside where I am. Even if the seller puts a heat pack with fly larvae, will they survive through shipping? Are there even any places that will sell to me?

What can I feed my fruit fly in the meantime? He likes bananas so I was thinking a small treat of a banana might help at least a little bit. There's no other bugs around me because of how cold it is. Is this solution a good idea (though I need answers to my problems)?

Tl;dr - Please help me control these fruit flies before they control me.

Sincerely,

I have developed a new fear for fruit flies

Edit: I still want some answers to some of my problems and if my solution is good even though he's fed now.

 

[River Dane]

@Kimyona

sorry this happened. But one thing I used to do to prevent this that you may be able to use in the future, is I would let the fliers out simply by opening the container outside and giving the thing a little bump.

You could try this with your flies to see if any flightless one’s remain, but if not, you could try refidgeraring them, and when they’re motionless you can catch them, or you could put them in a separate feeding container without holes for the flies or mantis to escape through, and viola. A lot of people use this method anyway. 

If you choose to get a new culture, they might have some at a nearby pet store. Perhaps they have bluebottle flies, too.

Bananas a snack might work. 

Hope everything works out.

—D.E.

 

[Kimyona]

@Kimyona

sorry this happened. But one thing I used to do to prevent this that you may be able to use in the future, is I would let the fliers out simply by opening the container outside and giving the thing a little bump.

You could try this with your flies to see if any flightless one’s remain, but if not, you could try refidgeraring them, and when they’re motionless you can catch them, or you could put them in a separate feeding container without holes for the flies or mantis to escape through, and viola. A lot of people use this method anyway. 

If you choose to get a new culture, they might have some at a nearby pet store. Perhaps they have bluebottle flies, too.

Bananas a snack might work. 

Hope everything works out.

—D.E.

Thanks, I went outside in the snow and let the flying ones fly out. Though of course, it was cold so a lot of them just went motionless which gave me enough time to catch them and feed him.

 

[Connor]

I’d recommend to get BB flies ASAP. They are much bigger therefore you are able to feed less often. The pupae can survive really low temps so you most likely won’t even need a heat pack if you ship them. And you don’t reallt have to deal with moving food because you can just put pupae in the container for them to hatch.

 

[CosbyArt]

@Kimyona Personally I use a modified baster and it works great with flightless or flying FF just fine - see the build guide here. A simple feeding/extraction hole is added to the FF culture, and plugged with cut sponge. The flying variety is my more common nymph feeder anymore as mantid nymphs seem to be drawn more to their flight.

Why the flightless flies began to fly is debatable with several possibilities. The more commonly suggested cause is the culture was kept too warm and negated the flightless trait. In reality I have not seen any good data on the theories.

Besides using what flies you have (see baster above) another option is to visit a pet store and get some mealworms, waxworms, or such and break them into small pieces to feed your mantid directly.

Buying fly larvae can be dicey, and most keepers just order fly pupae to avoid the whole larvae (aka maggot) stage. The only local source for fly larvae that I have ever found was bait stores, but that is a seasonal item. I personally have not found fly pupae anywhere, and I've searched at dozens of local stores for over 50 miles around me without luck.

Buying online depends where you are located, as the more common sellers can not ship outside the US. If you are in the US here are the more common mantid and related feeder sites BugsInCyberspace, MantisPlace, PanTerra Pets, and MantidKingdom. They all have different cold weather shipping requirements/methods so you will have to check with them.

 

[River Dane]

Thanks, I went outside in the snow and let the flying ones fly out. Though of course, it was cold so a lot of them just went motionless which gave me enough time to catch them and feed him.

Awesome! Glad I could help. 

 

[Ocelotbren]

As you discovered, you can cool the fruit flies down to make them easier to catch.  In winter I sometimes take my feeders outside to handle to slow them down, such as last month when my blue bottle pupae hatched in transit due to being delayed a long time, probably as a result of Christmas backlog.  I froze them for a bit and then handled them outside on the deck which gave me lots of time to separate them out as needed before they started waking up.

I live in Michigan and so far have not had a problem with shipping pupae without a heat pack in winter.  It's shipping in the summer with pupae hatching in transit that becomes the problem!