Emerging Monarchs Help!

[cliff4kelly]

I'm in Tampa Bay Florida and we are having an El Nino winter with lots of heavy storms and rain. I have about 50 Monarchs that should be emerging from today through Sunday. The weather is supposed to be stormy for the next 30 hours. I want to move my emerging Monarchs inside to an aquarium I have bleached and set up.
Questions are:
What should I feed them?
How can I make the time inside the aquarium better for them?
How long can I keep them inside?
I have more eggs and cats, so this should be a BIG help to my piece of mind.
THANK YOU!!!

[texas butterfly]

How big is the aquarium? Do you have a small pup tent? If you had room for a kiddie tent in house or garage then if you had some artificial plants and then put some dishes around with the cotton ball gatorade that might buy you some time til good weather.

You could feed them gatorade. Take some cotton balls and wet them in gatorade.

Some thoughts, although I haven't done this but these seem to be a possibilty:
Keep them in a dark area so they are calm and don't tear their wings.
Maybe a cooler area out of wind like garage?

I'd think they'd be okay for several days, so if weather will be good soon you might be okay.

good luck,

t. butterfly

[cliff4kelly]

Thanks for the ideas. I found others on line also. However, as worried as I was yesterday, none of the monarchs emerged from their crystalis. I just checked my "cage" outside and there are already seven Monarchs that emerged so far this morning and all look good. The cats that were going to crystalis have morphed and appear well. It seems that they (the cats going to crystalis and emerging monarchs) "waited" as long as they could for better weather. Is this possible?
The rain should be over later today, and I will release them then.