How I make fruit fly medium!

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DARKSPEED said:
Ive been using mashed potatoes yeast and Sunny D. There was a thread around here where one of the elite original members of the board was talking about how to add the yeast to warm water to "jump start" it into growing quickly and out competing any chance of mold. I have searched for that thread for hours using every keyword in the thread to no avail, But I suspect that allot of threads on this board become victims of the delete button for one reason or another. Nevertheless, I went one step further and heated the sunny d in the microwave, providing the yeast with moisture, heat and an instant sugar source to grow like crazy. It works well and so far no mold without vinegar. Since I am currently also using wild fruit flies I had several escapees recently and found them hovering around a glass of koolaid a while later. So I decided to get the lil buggers to work for me and set up an open culture using a empty 20 oz bottle. There are now maggots in the culture, so at least the fugitives weren't a total loss.
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Good idea, I like the flying ones for the gong's cause they like the flying food better.

 
In July there was literally an outbreak of fruit flies here. They were in everyones face and causing a major nuisance, so much to the point of them making the local paper. They even would pester you if you had insect repellent on, which actually killed them, and you ended up with dead ff's all over you :angry: That is when I figured it was as good a time as any to start a wild culture and not only did I get one heck of a culture, but there is actually two or three different sp. of ff's in my culture. some are very large, larger than golden hydei, and some are as small as melanogaster. They are in varying stages of development now, with big maggots, small maggots, casters, and new flies emerging daily. the main trouble with them is you usually lose a few during transfer to the mantids. I usually transfer 5-10 at a time from the fly bottle to a small vial that just barely fits onside the mouth of the bottle. Moving quickly is the key to keep them from escaping, but they are crafty and will take any opportunity you give them to escape. I actually dropped the vial once and released 15+ at one time. :rolleyes: Nevertheless, there are wild ff's that come in the house from outside as well, so even if I dont lose any there are still cantseeums buzzing about the house. Now that my open culture has been proven, I'll just use them to my advantage untill winter kills them.

 
yeatzee said:
and im trying to find where to get non flying ones <_<
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PetCo, PetSmart, lots of places have them.

DARKSPEED said:
In July there was literally an outbreak of fruit flies here. They were in everyones face and causing a major nuisance, so much to the point of them making the local paper. They even would pester you if you had insect repellent on, which actually killed them, and you ended up with dead ff's all over you :angry: That is when I figured it was as good a time as any to start a wild culture and not only did I get one heck of a culture, but there is actually two or three different sp. of ff's in my culture. some are very large, larger than golden hydei, and some are as small as melanogaster. They are in varying stages of development now, with big maggots, small maggots, casters, and new flies emerging daily. the main trouble with them is you usually lose a few during transfer to the mantids. I usually transfer 5-10 at a time from the fly bottle to a small vial that just barely fits onside the mouth of the bottle. Moving quickly is the key to keep them from escaping, but they are crafty and will take any opportunity you give them to escape. I actually dropped the vial once and released 15+ at one time. :rolleyes: Nevertheless, there are wild ff's that come in the house from outside as well, so even if I dont lose any there are still cantseeums buzzing about the house. Now that my open culture has been proven, I'll just use them to my advantage untill winter kills them.
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If you still have the large ones, I'm interested in getting some. ;)

 
DARKSPEED said:
Yes, but I dont really have a way of separating the big ones from the little ones. :unsure:
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Hi,

If they are in a vial, jar, etc, cool them down in the fridge. Then separate them. I am currently culturing 4 different types of flies including Golden hydei and have experimented with 10 different formulas so far. I have seen some pet stores sell them for $21.00 when you can usualy get them off Ebay for $4.00. Look around.

Regards ;)

 
My son was cooking today and took an onion and cut into it and it had little maggots in it. I didn't tell him it was probably from the wild fruit flies in the kitchen, cause right away he will be wanting me to get rid of my flies :p . I know that is what it is cause I have been bringing in pears for outside and leaving them on the counter to ripen and they have had a lot of flies in here and I just cleaned it all out and they didn't have nothing else to eat.!!!

 
It shouldn't take much to find a reptile store in or near temecula that carries ff's, that's where I get mine from.

A large, 32 oz, jar is ten bucks. With that and the right culture medium you can fill several of the same size jars, or so I would assume, and will see.

 
hibiscusmile said:
That should be good for quite a few cultures, put about 50 flies in each and wait!
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In the Phoenix area I get ff's from the Arizona Reptile Center. The sell the large 32 oz cups full of them. The petco and petsmart only have small tubes of the flies.

I started the masa applesauce culture on dec 23 and no maggots are visible, but the flies seem to be thriving well.

I put several coffee filters in, maybe too many, and am curious how many filters that successful breeders have used in the 32 oz cups?

 
a local brew pub should have some good yeast in the mash they toss. I may look into trying this, mash included, in a culturing medium.

I am proofing a batch of bakers yeast right now, before I add it to the medium culture. Proofing is getting water to around 100 degrees farenheit, and adding yeast. A temperature over 115 degrees will kill the yeast. I'd rather have it too cool and take longer to proof than too hot and kill the yeast outright.

I watched a cooking show that taught how to do this, and they added a pinch of sugar for the yeast to feast on. They said the sugar sped up the proofing.

The yeast is 'proofed' when bubbles start rising from the yeast/water mixture, thus 'proving' it's a viable batch of yeast.

 
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I am very excited about the Masa mix, I whipped up 6 of the 32-oz. containers the other night. We can easily find it here in Las Vegas. I used the Masa, apple sauce, lemon juice, yeast, honey and coffee filters. Actually I figured out everything but the Masa I can buy at the Dollar Tree from now on!

Has anyone tried to add a slice of fruit in with the mix? I always add some fruit to my flies, before I did the mix, they tend to lay their eggs on it. I've had success with apples, peach slices I dried in the sun and bread. They laid their eggs on all of them.

I'm going to try to whip up another batch today because right now I have a lot of adult flies. And it's fun! They have their own room, 2 light sources, filtered water mist, containers, etc. And I'm raising 3 types of mantids, so hopefully this makes them happy. I tried crickets and they really were not too interested in them, surprisingly.

Thanks for all the advice on here!

 
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Thanks for the Masa recipe!

After about 9 days, 5 of the 6 cultures have maggots laid in them. Many are on the sides of the containers, is that ok or will they dry out?

I also added small apple slices with honey in them, it was right after that the egg laying started. I also have them under a heat lamp, not too hot tho.

 
asylum23 said:
Thanks for the Masa recipe!After about 9 days, 5 of the 6 cultures have maggots laid in them. Many are on the sides of the containers, is that ok or will they dry out?

I also added small apple slices with honey in them, it was right after that the egg laying started. I also have them under a heat lamp, not too hot tho.
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That's the place for the maggots to be! You can gauge whether your medium has the right moisture content from where they pupate. If it is too wet, the maggots will climb onto the lid so that they can pupate away from the moisture. If they start to pupate on the medium in an old culture or one that was just made without sufficient liquid, I give the pot a couple of jolts from the mister.

What is all the excitement about masa flour (masa de harina)? It is very common here, of course, so close to the border, but I checked out its nutritional value on Google and wasn't impressed. I think that soy bean flour (thanks for the idea Yen!) has about three times as much second class protein as masa flour. If you are really hot for the stuff, you should probably try to find some masa nixtamalera, which has more niacin and more calcium for the ffs' tiny bones.

Wasn't it Rick who said that making ff media is a simple process? These flies are so successful partly because they can eat almost anything, so unless someone can show me a substantially larger hatch, longer culture life and/or sturdier mantis nymphs as a result of some of these epicurean delights, I shall stick with a nice simple recipe like that in the sticky on this subject. I should add, though, if ever it is late at bight and you know that you have to make some cultures but are felling too lazy, try adding a little whiskey to each pot. Not only does it speed up fermentation, but it is necessary to sample the whiskey before adding it to each pot as quality control. Think I'll make up a few pots tonight... :D

 

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