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.
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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 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.
lol
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.
@ 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.
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.
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...