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raising food stock

Besides my plants I have decided to invest in flightless fruit flies and wax worms. I have breeders set up for both. Give me a couple of months and then feel free to ask for some. I have to keep them breeding every three to four weeks or they will die off. I will never use that many on my own, but I would rather breed them than buy and wait for them every few weeks.
 
The fruitflies are easy I can give you the link to my culture & supplies guy if you need it. He sends a great kit with you everything you need for 10x 32 oz cultures, including the initial 32 oz culture of large or small sp. flies, fly media and raffia but I do not use the yeast he sends it causes my cultures to get funky way faster than without.

I did wax worms once but the moths they turned into don't fly around like regular moths, they just sit in one spot so my mantids didn't eat them - the wax moths died in the mantis cage of old age! LOL But if you are just gonna stuff em into pitchers then I guess it wouldn't matter. I was hoping for an easy source of moths cos they're far bigger than Blue Bottle Houseflies and the mantids just love a big old moth from outside flapping around like crazy.
 
I am hoping that the mantids sill go after them in the frb stane
 
My fruitfly cultures would get mites and it would crash. I gave up on them.

Waxworms are easy. I've got a ton of them right now.
What are you using the waxworms for, CPs?
I know they are fatty and should only be used occasionally as treats for lizards.
 
My fruitfly cultures would get mites and it would crash. I gave up on them.
I also have temporarily. After ~1.5 - 2 years of growing FF's (new culture started every month or so), the cultures stopped reproducing & I lost them.

While I guess that it's not the worst thing to restart with new flies, how do others keep them going permanently? If I had large numbers of PDFs, this die-off would have been a crisis. :0o:
 
@ Swords. Lol this was written after taking night night meds. I have no idea what I was try to say.

I am going to use the wax worms on the large plants (pitchers) and the flies for the smaller (drosera) I am research nematodes for the utrics.

I think that I will change the media at least once a month to keep up nutrition. Hopefully that will keep them going.
 
But Whyyyyyyy? Just feed them fish flakes. So much cheaper and easier.
 
Mealworms are so much easier and less messy then waxworms.
 
  • #10
But Whyyyyyyy? Just feed them fish flakes. So much cheaper and easier.
When I was feeding my D. schizandra's, everything I used got mold & the mold ate the leaves. With the WFF's, I could clean them off with IPA just as they would start to mold and the leaf would still be ok. With all the fish powders, flakes, etc, I couldn't get the stuff off, so it always created holes in the leaves.

In addition, late last fall a small jumping spider somehow found it's way into my office & I didn't notice it until things were frozen outside. I'd toss him a WFF and watch him stalk it - they're amazingly fast...
 
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