Fruit Fly Culturing
Fruit fly culturing is easy to do if you follow a few basic
principals, and keep the process simple.
1) Decide which species you want to culture, if you want them
"flightless" or not, and the size you need. Most common cultures are
Melanogaster, the smaller fruit fly, and Hydei which is about three
times the size of Melanogaster. Getting fruit flies from your fruit bowl
is not generally a good idea unless you want fruit flies everywhere! Buy
from a seller who can give you good starter cultures, we stock them here
at
HiMantisplace.com.
2) Most fruit fly food (called "medium")
is pretty much the same type of ingredients, a base of usually potatoe
flakes, or a meal, sugar or honey, yeast, white vinegar or another mold
inhibitor and water or fruit juice or mashed fruit added. Some of the
mediums sold on the market today already have mold inhibitors and yeast
in them. Which ever culture you use is basically up to you. Our
MilkHails Mighty FF Mixture has been
used by a number of people on one of our Mantis forums with much
success. We
NOW offer the
ingredients for
Mikhail's Mixture
which a lot of people haven't been able to find up till now!
3) Preparation is fairly easy; with each order we include the recipe and
the link to the forum with
Mikhail's pictures of
how he makes it so you can follow along. The recipe is very simple and
easy to make. Although there is debate regarding should the flies have
extra surface to climb on, we have found that if you have excelsior ( an
extruded wood fiber) or coffee filters or the plastic grid production is
increased.
Once you have added the climbing surface, add the flies, about 50 or so,
put the insect lid on tightly, and let nature begin her work.
4) Raising fruit flies is all about temperature. At 68 degrees, you will
have fruit flies multiply, but not at a great rate. At 78 degrees you
will get maximum reproduction. As too approach 90 degrees production
will drop off. It must be noted also that direct heat on the container
will dry out the medium and kill the culture.
5) Feeding fruit flies to your beasts has some tricks. If your beasts
container has a wide opening, you just take the lid off and shake some
in the beast's enclosure. On smaller openings if you don't want fruit
flies EVERYWHERE, use the
funnel and graduated cylinder found under "General
Supplies." After you dump some fruit flies in the cylinder, just tap
the cylinder on the counter to knock them back down to the bottom. We
call this "tapping" and you will get GOOD at it after a while! Have
several cultures going so you are not dependant on one culture to feed
your beasts. If you feed off most of the adults the culture will die
off-you stopped the "Circle of Life." If you feed flightless flies
indoors to your beasts, escapees will die within a few days as long as
there is no food source near enough to crawl to. With winged flies, I
would suggest you feed outside to keep the
peace!
6) Over-production of flies can also cause the death of the culture. If
you have a culture that is really producing a lot of flies, and then one
day all the adults are dead, you over-produced the amount of flies that
could be supported by the space in the container. To avoid this I have
several cultures starting up, and after feeding my beasts, I add more
adults to the new cultures. If I still seem to have too many adults, I
dump some outside.
7) If you get any other colors growing on the medium other than beige or
brown, you probably have mold. Red, green, yellow, and black molds
should be thrown out as the spores can contaminate your healthy
cultures. And, who knows what those spores do to your beasts, or you!
(It is normal for cultures in the 4-6 week range will begin to get some
molds, and I don't discard them unless it looks like an epidemic in the
container)!
In summery, let me share a few final thoughts.
HiMantisplace.com
makes and
offers some of the best fruit fly food that is available. We make
this food and offer it to you so that you can make the culture for your
own use too, Without an excellent source of food, the flies you feed to your
beasts do little good. It is much cheaper to start several cultures and
keep adding cultures as old ones die off, than to buy new cultures,
which typically cost
$9.00 to $11.00 each, plus shipping which is about $10.00.
You can buy reusable containers that are washable, but if the container
isn't sterile, you risk contaminating the culture before you have even
started! We use the 32 ounce insect
cup
that costs $0.43, and throw them away when done- the medium stinks
really bad toward the end!
The Hydei produce at a much slower rate, so be prepared to wait longer
for feeder flies from that culture.
Many of the images on Mantis Place are from Igor Siwanowicz.
Click here for his fantastic work!