3 replies to this topic

[drubbletubble]

These guys are what I feed my spiders and they are super protein rich and easy to culture, are there any risks with feeding them to ants that arent solved by dipping them in boiling water?

[ANTdrew]

They’ll like the adults better than the pupae I bet.

[rptraut]

Hello drubbletubble;

 

I don't feed fly pupae to my ants, but I do feed drone bee pupae, and I've noticed something that might be helpful.   When the bee larvae pupate, their insides are quite liquid while they rearrange the cells to the adult form.   My ants don't seem to like this liquid state; they seem to prefer the pupae at a stage where the bee is just about to emerge from the cell as an adult, when the inside cells are firm and well developed.   Spiders take their food in the liquid form, but my ants seem to like their drone bee pupae a little more solid.

RPT

[OhNoNotAgain]

The live larvae are really really really tough.

The pupae if liquid some ants will eat, some ants won't - it is NOT their favorite. Exactly as rptraut wrote above.

They will eat the adult flies (unless you have stupidly picky ants), but you'll have to incapacitate or kill the fly (easily done in a ziploc). I never boiled the flies I used to feed - the reason I boil my feeders these days is to avoid annoying mite infestations that are so common from fruit flies (also it denatures whatever enzymes turn frozen crickets black).

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, Yesterday, 10:58 AM.