What to feed L5+ Chinese Mantids?

[Chalc]

I'm looking for feeders that I can potentially breed for my soon to be L5 tenodera sinensis mantids. I read hydei fruitflies will be too small for them at that point. I'd like to avoid using crickets as I've heard a lot of horror stories of them killing mantids.

I've been breeding mealworms for 2 years now, would the darkling beetle be a good feeder for them? I tried breeding waxworms but they all died unfortunately.

What do you guys feed your adult chinese mantids? Any other suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[Sarah K]

I feed all my adult mantises house flies or blue bottle flies. Many mantis keepers also feed roaches. Personally, I try to avoid roaches. LOL

 

[CosbyArt]

Yes at L3 Chinese nymphs should be moved to stable flies or very small crickets, L4 at the very latest, as the FF become much too small for a appropriate feeder. Any beetle isn't a good choice, their hard exoskeleton makes it a near impossible feeder for most to eat (in the wild most are toxic due to their food source too).

Personally I feed mine crickets (from my colony or wild caught too), wax moths, bottle flies, wild moths, grasshoppers, etc. depending on what I can capture or my current culture statuses.

Other options are BSF (black solider flies), various cockroaches, may flies, butterflies, and other wild prey. The limiting factors are what you can/care to keep and culture, what you can find and capture, and know what to avoid (such as beetles, arachnids/bees/wasps can be used but best avoided, and brightly colored insects/bugs as they eat toxic plants and are toxic to mantids).

Over the last few years I complied a list of common feeders and organisms (insects, bugs, bees, etc) found locally or online and their use as a feeder based from my mantids reactions. A main factor though is to feed appropriate sized prey to the mantids, even if it is a favorite feeder but is too large or too small it will not be of use.

Commonly ate
-------------------------------------------
Bees (Various)
Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) as flies
Blue Bottle/Blow Flies (Calliphora vomitoria)
Brine shrimp (Artemia Sp.)
Butterflies (Various)
Butterworm (Chilecomadia moorei) as moths
Camel/Cave Crickets (Rhaphidophoridae Sp.)
Cicadas (Cicadidae Sp.)
Crane flies (Tipulidae Sp.)
Field Cricket (Gryllinae Sp.)
Fruit Flies (Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila hydei)
Grasshoppers (Caelifera Sp.)
Green Bottle Flies (Calliphoridae Sp.)
House Cricket (Acheta domesticus)
Houseflies (Musca domestica)
Hoverfly (Syrphidae Sp.)
Indian/Pantry Mealmoth (Plodia interpunctella) as moths
Katydids (Tettigoniidae Sp.)
Lacewings (Chrysopidae Sp.)
Mayflies (Ephemeroptera Sp.)
Mosquito (Culicidae Sp.)
Moths (Various)
Phorid flies (Phoridae Sp.)
Roaches (Various)
Silkmoth (Bombyx mori)
Spiders (Various)
Springtails (Collembola Sp.)
Waxworms (Achroia grisella and Galleria mellonella) as moths

Picky (Only few mantids)
-------------------------------------------
Bean Beetle (Epilachna varivestis)
Beetles (Various)
Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) as larva
Butterworm (Chilecomadia moorei) as larva
Firebrat (Thermobia domestica)
Grain Beetle (Oryzaephilus surinamensis)
Indian/Pantry Mealmoth (Plodia interpunctella) as larva
Isopods (Isopoda Sp.)
Ladybugs (Coccinellidae Sp.)
Mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) as larva or beetles
Rice Flour Beetles (Tribolium confusum)
Silverfish (Lepisma saccharina)
Stink Bugs (Pentatomidae Sp.)
Superworms (Zophobas morio) as larva or beetles
Waxworms (Achroia grisella and Galleria mellonella) as larva

 

[Chalc]

Yes at L3 Chinese nymphs should be moved to stable flies or very small crickets, L4 at the very latest, as the FF become much too small for a appropriate feeder. Any beetle isn't a good choice, their hard exoskeleton makes it a near impossible feeder for most to eat (in the wild most are toxic due to their food source too).

Personally I feed mine crickets (from my colony or wild caught too), wax moths, bottle flies, wild moths, grasshoppers, etc. depending on what I can capture or my current culture statuses.

Other options are BSF (black solider flies), various cockroaches, may flies, butterflies, and other wild prey. The limiting factors are what you can/care to keep and culture, what you can find and capture, and know what to avoid (such as beetles, arachnids/bees/wasps can be used but best avoided, and brightly colored insects/bugs as they eat toxic plants and are toxic to mantids).

Over the last few years I complied a list of common feeders and organisms (insects, bugs, bees, etc) found locally or online and their use as a feeder based from my mantids reactions. A main factor though is to feed appropriate sized prey to the mantids, even if it is a favorite feeder but is too large or too small it will not be of use.

Thank you for the list! I'd like to raise houseflies but I don't think my roommates would appreciate the smell, or the noise from the adult crickets!   Unless I buy some fly maggots from a bait shop and somehow allow them to pupate with minimal smell (i've heard some people using wet dog food). BSF may be my only option then. Do you know if an L4 chinese mantid will take black soldier flies?

I feed all my adult mantises house flies or blue bottle flies. Many mantis keepers also feed roaches. Personally, I try to avoid roaches. LOL

Do you catch your houseflies or buy them as maggots and let them grow up?

 

[CosbyArt]

Thank you for the list! I'd like to raise houseflies but I don't think my roommates would appreciate the smell, or the noise from the adult crickets!   Unless I buy some fly maggots from a bait shop and somehow allow them to pupate with minimal smell (i've heard some people using wet dog food). BSF may be my only option then. Do you know if an L4 chinese mantid will take black soldier flies?

Flies besides fruit flies most keepers simply buy as pupae, available from Peter here, Rebecca here, and Sarah here. However, Chuck at SpiderPharm sells housefly pupae and wild Melanogaster fruit fly pupae even - which is a great option, especially for emergency FF's.

A adult soldier fly is 5/8" (16mm) so it would be much too larger for a L4 nymph.

 

[Sarah K]

Thank you for the list! I'd like to raise houseflies but I don't think my roommates would appreciate the smell, or the noise from the adult crickets!   Unless I buy some fly maggots from a bait shop and somehow allow them to pupate with minimal smell (i've heard some people using wet dog food). BSF may be my only option then. Do you know if an L4 chinese mantid will take black soldier flies?

Do you catch your houseflies or buy them as maggots and let them grow up?

I buy the maggots in bulk from a supplier (and at wholesale prices, since I have a business), let them pupate, then sell the pupae on my website to other hobbyists, but also use them to feed to my own mantids. 

 

[Teamonger]

Most of my Chinese Mantises are at L4 currently and I had to upgrade them to crickets mostly because my Hydei cultures were taking forever to do much of anything.

I had my first molt to L5 last night and I'm going to try to see if he'll take a black soldier fly tonight. Unfortunately the BSFs are a bit large, perhaps twice the length of a house fly so they might still be too big til L6. I'll let you know how I make out.

Phoenix worms (BSF larva) are available in a lot of places online and likely locally but they are pretty costly. So while its easy as pie to get some and feed them til they pupate and become flies its an expensive option unless you try to breed them yourself.

BSF are a bit finicky to get going but if you can get them breeding they have nearly no smell (just an earthy coffee smell, I can stick my face right in a container of the maggots and it just smells like coffee) as you can breed them in used coffee grounds. This is vastly superior to any blow fly that requires rotten meat or the like. If you haven't see the thread of my journey to try to get a stable breeding population of BSFs it can be found here.