How do people keep up with baby/hatchling invertebrates?

[WyrmSwarm]

I've recently been wanting to start breeding and selling different praying mantises and maybe some jumping spiders, and I have a question. How do you guys deal with taking care of so many of the slings/babies that emerge? Is it hard keeping up with possibly hundreds of babies? Also, do you have a special area setup for housing all of them, and where do you buy your delicups for housing each separate one?

 

[jrh3]

I've recently been wanting to start breeding and selling different praying mantises and maybe some jumping spiders, and I have a question. How do you guys deal with taking care of so many of the slings/babies that emerge? Is it hard keeping up with possibly hundreds of babies? Also, do you have a special area setup for housing all of them, and where do you buy your delicups for housing each separate one?

Fruit Flies will become a hobby when you have mantids and jumping spiders. This is what the hatchlings will eat. You can keep cultures producing at different stages so you don’t run out. As for deli cups and such, you can find them on amazon or joshs frogs website.

 

[Crocodylidae]

I have a couple of mantis, I wanted to make them reproduce but because I've read that there can be a ton of babies, I don't think I'm going to do it because I'm too afraid to not be responsible enough for hundred of baby mantises and I don't see a lot of information online on how to keep up with them. :/
For jumping spiders, it looks even harder to me!

 

[mantisfan101]

Not sure what species you’re thinking about, but if the species is rather common, I don’t breed them, especially if they reproduce in large numbers. This is why I don’t keep sphodromantis, hierodula, rhombodera, phyllocrania, etc. There’s already enough of them and there’s always a constant supply and chances are even if I do sell a substantial amount, I’m still going to be left with at least 50-100 babies.

 

[Jenphilly]

What Mantis do you have? Not all Mantid ooths produce oodles and oodles of nymphs. You can do large mesh enclosures and the strongest will survive.... outside of Ghost (Phyllocrania paradoxa), there is almost always a bit of Hunger Games that occurs even in the wild. As for cups, you can find some decent deals online, for Mantis, just invest in 32 oz cups with fabric vented lids, they usually go for about $19 for 50 of them. You can punched a whole in middle of lid and plug with a sponge or foam to make dropping in fruit flies quicker / easier.

 

[mantisfan101]

Ghost mantids are popular enough and in my opinion, not worth breeding and keeping for anyone who seriously wants to get into breeding and keeping insects. I used to keep pnigomantis, tenodera, phyllocrania, creobroter, and polyspilota. Mantids that reproduce in smaller wuantities are a bit harder to find.

 

[WyrmSwarm]

What Mantis do you have? Not all Mantid ooths produce oodles and oodles of nymphs. You can do large mesh enclosures and the strongest will survive.... outside of Ghost (Phyllocrania paradoxa), there is almost always a bit of Hunger Games that occurs even in the wild. As for cups, you can find some decent deals online, for Mantis, just invest in 32 oz cups with fabric vented lids, they usually go for about $19 for 50 of them. You can punched a whole in middle of lid and plug with a sponge or foam to make dropping in fruit flies quicker / easier.

Oh I see. I’m keeping three budwing mantises in hopes that they mature into a male/female pair

 

[Crocodylidae]

I have a couple of Hierodula majuscula, at first I wanted to breed them so that when they die of old age I can still have some of this species left because I like them but I don't want hundred of babies, so I'm not sure..

 

[Smotzer]

Not sure how people will feel about this but if I have a really large hatch that I don’t have set up to sell off you can always decide to do a cull of a percent of them. To make the numbers more manageable. I’ve had to do this with large rhombodera species hatches. I’d rather do a cull then have too many and have them die out of poor condition or inadequate time to take care of all of them. I prefer to put some to sleep then have them suffer. Sometimes this is the best thing to do rather than have a bunch die cause your not set up to take care of 250 nymphs. Especially if you’re breeding multiple species at a time.

 

[Bob Lee]

The answer is to keep em together while they are small
This goes for pretty much everything (Except expensive stuff)

Yeah, sure, they are gonna eat each other, but what can you do.
When they molted once or twice(Depending on what you keep) separate them and take care of them individually in deli cups.

For reference, I know someone who keeps 2000+ true spiders and tarantula, it takes them about an entire afternoon to feed all of them.
If you've only got a couple hundred, an hour or two is probably enough.
For smaller inverts, you can buy those boxes that are separated into a bunch of smaller boxes, the kind that holds nails and nuts and bolts.
When it's feeding time, just shake your feeders all over it...