OT - Fruit Flies NEEDED

Yes, needed. Here's the deal. My daughter caught a Praying Mantis last summer. We kept her in an aquarium, fed her a mixutre of moths, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, etc - whatever the kids could catch. Anyways, she laid 7 eggsacks.

I distinctly remember that "birds and the bees" lesson, so I figured they must all be duds. Well, two of these "duds" hatched today, now I've got about 50-100 (they are fast) little mantids running around the cage with no food in sight.

Called all the pet stores around and nobody has fruit flies. Anyone close to here (Raleigh) know where I might find some or have anything on hand?

Leave a little spoiled fruit in the kitches sink?

friend of mine has pet poison dart frogs. thy get some kind of fly from the pet store they feed them, real small like a fruit fly, but they are wingless. there is a white vitamin powder that gets sprinkled on the fly for the frog. i forget the name of em.

found em here is the link
wingless fruit flys

yeah banana peels work well....I believe that knat eggs come ON the peels. Some times I wonder where else they could come from in a pretty air tight house!

Leave a bunch of bananas out on the counter and pretty soon you will have all you need.

that is great, I believe in natural predators of pests like that. I would let them all go around the house when mature. Good deal!

Railhead, that's the plan... But we got a cold snap here I can't find any live food for them. They won't eat dead food.

Shoot, it was in the 60's last week, could have laid some bananas out and caught all I wanted...

I've found several places online, but I'd like to find something local so I can get them started.

I think those little guys come out of the eggsacks real hungry and if there isn't any food, they will work on each other until there's only one left. I would check out the local pet stores and see if they have any of those bugs that people feed to their Iguanas. Too bad it isn't warm enough for them to go outside.

Tom is right, I believe they eat eachother and only one or two survive. Better look into that before you worry about mass quantities of food for em.

What, you looking for something that will make use of that dead banana?
I've heard cialis is the thing.

Go to a fishing bait store and get some meal worms or maggots those buggers will eat anything that moves.

So this saga came to an end today...

Glennster, thanks for the tip about Petco, all I found were mail order places... Wife went to Durham (45 minutes away) to the Petco to get fruitflies. She got home, we opened up the jar and all but one of the 500 were dead... Yipee...

Called the store and explained what happened. They said no problem bring them back in we have more... Get back up there, and they have scrapped out all the fruitflies. They were all dead. "sorry, they're all dead"... Here's your money back.

Went to another Petco a few miles away. Got a jar of them. These were actually alive...

PUt them in the container with the manids and next thing you know there's fruitflies crawling on the table (they are small enough get get out of the container that has the mantids in it...

Grabbed some of the wife's panty hose and made a "seal" across the top. I've seen a couple of the critters grab a fly, but then he didn't know what to do with it and let it go.

I put about 20-30 flies and mantids in each container. Figure I'll let nature work it's magic for a few days. Should be a few less critters in there in a couple days. Strongest survive. Hoping to be able to release them when they get bigger and it gets warmer. Put the other 5 eggcases in the fridge.

Gal at Petco told me that mantis females and "hold the male seed" for quite a while, so there's a good chance that all 7 cases are good. About 25 in each.

The things we do for our kids.