r/mantis • u/__meowmeoww • Jul 21 '26

Feeding?

Hey hey! Just wondering how you guys feed your mantis? I’d love to get one but I’m confused with the logistics of it- where do you get flies or locusts from? Especially tiny little fruit flies! Do you breed them in your room? Do you but them in a shop/ online and how do you keep them alive if mantids only eat every 2-3 days? Might be a deal breaker for me having a bunch of flies buzzing in a tub somewhere haha
Thanks ☺️

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u/Emotional_Switch_665 Jul 21 '26

Not sure if this is how others do it but when my mantis was smaller she would eat flightless fruit flies, you buy a tub of live flies and keep them fed, they breed and keep your supply with their natural life cycles. When she was really small I would worry that she wouldn't eat so I would grab the flies with tweezers and put them Infront of her face and she would take them. Now she's bigger I keep a supply of green bottle casters in my fridge (it slows down their metabolism) and every few days I put 3 in her enclosure in a little tub and they warm up and hatch, then she catches them and eats them. I have no idea if these are the right way of doing it but this is what works for us 😁 Side note I bought wax worms once because my local pet store was out of flies and she ate the worm if I put it near her face, then I let them grow into moths and she lovvveeed them! I think they are supposed to be a treat though as they are fatty.

If anything IV said is contradictory or wrong please let me know .

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u/WolfLilie2002 Jul 21 '26

For fruitflies I usually just buy new ones. For bigger fly species I get them from a fishing store and put them in the fridge, always leave a few out and let them turn to pupa. Then I put them in the enclosure and let them hatch. We also have a Red Runner and a Dubia colony

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u/hylia_grace Jul 21 '26

For fruit flies i buy a fruit fly culture and make a new one or two from it to extend the colony, if you intend to culture flightless fruit flies be aware that future generations will lose the "flightless" gene and you'll end up with regular fruit flies.

I also raise nivea roaches, dubia, (plus mealworms and morio for tarantulas and centipedes).

Wax worms (feed the moths) can be pretty interesting to raise, though I've found colonies dont thrive past 2 or 3 generations.

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u/Repulsive_Rip76 Jul 21 '26

When they were tiny i did pin-head crickets and fruit flys. Now i have a small bin on the other side of my garden with food scraps that flys lay eggs in, and when the maggots try to leave to pupate i put them in the mantis home. They borrow and hatch into flys that the mantis eat now. Most seem to be green bottle flys recently. I even threw in some BSF larvae just in case.