How much do assassin bugs eat as nymphs?

[Flammendehaar]

I'm planning to delve into the world of invertebrate keeping soon, starting out with Psytalla horrida, and I'm trying to do as much research as I can and be as prepared as possible.

I've been trying to figure out how much food is going to cost me and how often I'll have to top them up. I've seen a lot of places saying they can be fed once or twice a week as adults, and that the nymphs should be fed more often (I'm planning to start out with 6-9 nymphs).

The problem I'm having is that although it's great to know how often they should be fed, this isn't really giving me much to go on as to how much they should be given. For nymphs, how often and *how much* should they be fed? Like, one small cricket per nymph? Two?

I don't really have the capacity to breed any feeder insects right now. I don't have much space for a setup like that, I can't afford any additional heat requirements and frankly I think my wife would be very unimpressed if I started breeding cockroaches in the spare bedroom... As such I am planning to buy food regularly. I have two real options here. I can go out to my local pet store once a week (it's only a few minutes' walk away) and buy a tub of crickets/roaches/mealworms/whatever, and feed them those. If I can buy one tub a week, that would be great, and I'll just tip it all in if that's what's needed.

Otherwise, I could probably just about swing having a small enclosure somewhere to house feeder insects bought in greater numbers, but still less than a breeding setup, and just take some out every so often to feed them.

Either way though, I need to know roughly how much they'll eat to figure it out.

Thanks!

Ps.: Springtails in the enclosure - okay idea?

 

[Isopods others]

I think your over- estimating costs here, it will probably cost you less than 30 of your currency for a year if you are buying from your petshop, there will be a slight negligible cost of gutloading them ( use veg you eat yourself to make this nul)
Consider buying from the Internet ei amazon or eBay as Petshop crickets are chilled for delivery and so begin to die days from purchase

 

[Flammendehaar]

I think your over- estimating costs here, it will probably cost you less than 30 of your currency for a year if you are buying from your petshop, there will be a slight negligible cost of gutloading them ( use veg you eat yourself to make this nul)
Consider buying from the Internet ei amazon or eBay as Petshop crickets are chilled for delivery and so begin to die days from purchase

This is helpful info, thanks. So buy feeders from pet shop, feed them some veggies, feed them to bugs? Any idea how much each bug will need to eat when fed? Would it literally be like one cricket/mealworm/whatever of appropriate size per bug every few days? I know you can check their abdomen size to see how well fed they are.

 

[Isopods others]

I can't answer specifically not owning assasin's but I can say that the nymphs will need to eat more than adults and suitably sized prey so I would make sure you pick the smallest lot of crickets

 

[kingshockey]

type in Psytalla horrida into the search function and then read boy from la's assasin bug diary thread