ANTSTORE World of Ants

[jartok]

i was wondering what worm are like to feed Harpegnathos venator will they give suffiecent protein etc as i was thinking of buying a wormery and breeding them as a stable food and then using crickets etc a few times a week


thanks

[baumarkthammer]

Harpegnathos venator won´t eat worms of any kind. Mealworms and Zophoba are to hard they don´t even pay attention to them. Most other worms don´t get eaten, too. I once had to force-feed mine because the crickets I had were poisoned, and I had to push a larvae of a wax moth into the nest so they would kill it (as defence), they ate it because it was in the nest.
Best feed crickets you breed yourself. Don´t feed crickets from shops!
The crickets in the shops may be deadly for insects because they get treated with some chemicals so they don´t get mites. Those chemicals aren´t a threat to most ants but Harpegnathos venator take great damage from that (btw Harpegnathos saltator strangly don´t)!
Mostly the brood gets affected and in most cases dies.

[Antchrist]

Tried maggots (Houseflylarva)? Do they like that? Bought from sportfishing shops.

I did not know that "they" sprayed crickets........

[jartok]

YEH i didnt know spray crickets either i had a tub arrive today which i can breed from them on but will take time as i need to feed before that - they just arrived still in tub waiting for the nest silicon too dry up over ngiht so put them heat pack - i was thinking of getting some maggots but i dont drive and nearest tackle shop is miles away

[jartok]

if i dip all crickets in lemon juice before feed will this clean them completly?

[baumarkthammer]

It is a good option to buy live maggots in a sports shop. They like flies... however they aren´t masters in catching them.

The basic thing is that Harpegnathos isn´t build for killing worms.
It is a fast ant with great eyesight. They hunt mostly fast prey such as jumping spiders and crickets.
Worms get generally ignored. You can of course try but mine never even touched them.

I don´t know why nobody in this community knows of crickets being sprayed but the big sellers seem to do that quite often. It is well known in communities of Mantis-keepers. The better mantis keepers always tell not to feed crickets and now I can say that, too! Never feed crickets to anything when you have an other option. My problem is that I often don´t have a choice and crickets are all I can feed, which had great influance on my Harpegnathos venator and killed about 15 of my Gongylus gongylodes.
By the way I have some friends who have shops that sell petshops and they told me that they don´t really have control about what food they get. More precisly they order from a company that doesn´t breed the food and also buys it. Sometimes the crickets come in boxes from the Netherlands sometime French. If I could I only would buy food from private persons.

I also don´t belive that the crickets can be cleaned and most of all I wouldn´t do that with lemon juice. O.o
Much rather I would wait some days or a week until they skin so the chemicals from their skin wouldn´t be that damaging. I belife that the problem with Harpegnathos is that they also eat the skin and the shell of the insects and have the tendancy to take a insect and just put it on a pile of larvae.
Harpegnathos venator are really annoying when it comes to such things like food and the nest.

[jartok]

well ill let these crickets age and i will start breeding them so then the offspring are my own only thing is for now i need to feed them - unless they take woodlice ? i have thousands of woodlice i breed myself and there high in protein just not fast

[jartok]

would woodlice be ok for these?