# first fruit fly experiences



## nympho (Nov 24, 2005)

Hi all, just wanted to share my first experiences at growing fruit flies. This was a 'practice' run using some wild caught flies just to see what happens. I will get some flightless ones when i get some small mantis nymphs next year.

Although it is November and pretty cold weather i still managed to catch two (what I think) were fruit flies by putting out a rotten banana and some mashed up porridge. I also caught lots of other tiny flies which looked similar (but quite black on top and not so stripy) but behaved a bit differently. i dunno what they were - maybe they were attracted to the oats rather than the fruit?!

Anyway, to get the culture going i put all the flies and a small piece of the banana in a jam jar with a grain of yeast on top (like they say) and covered the jar with cloth and put it in my heated mantis cage. i carefully watched what happened next.

The 2 fruit flies stayed on the banana and seemed to be eating from the yeast. Then i noticed them laying eggs on top of the banana - i could just about see what was going on. They seemed to be extending an 'egg tube' which they pushed into the fruit. On pulling this out they left what seemed to be (very small) white threads sticking out, presumably the breathing tubes for the egg for when the egg is in the rotten food. I noticed lots of new eggs appearing in the same place (the drier top part) which together look a bit like a fungus growing on the food. They appeared to lay an egg or two every ten minutes or so and then rested.

The other type of flies did not seem to be laying any eggs or doing much except walk around the glass aimlessly so i decided to let them go and just keep the two proper fruit flies. After a few days i eventually saw the first tiny grub and then more and more appeared over the next few days. They grew up quite fast just like they say (although longer than the three days!) and after a while there were a lot of maggots of all sizes crawling around in the now quite alcohol smelling mush,  maybe hundreds but hard to tell.

A few days ago the first pupa was formed on the side of the glass and today there are about 15 formed. Now I have got to my question. I have noticed the pupa have two long tendrilly things coming out of the head end, about two thirds as long as the pupa itself - see pic. This is very different to the pics ive seen of the 'normal' fruit fly pupa which only has two very short tubes. So I got the 'wrong' sort of fruit fly or do all 'wild' fruit flies have these? The interesting thing is how the 'tendrils' grow. I decided to watch the pupation of a maggot to see what happened (I sound a bit like david attenborough here lol). After watching one crawl around on the side of the jar for ages the soon to pupate maggot slowed down and found a spot to pupate. It finally stopped crawling altogether and stayed in one place and after a few minutes of not moving much except its head, these tendrils suddenly shot out of its head all at once and the thing also changed into the stubby pupa shape. I was surprised all these changes don't take place slowly over an hour or so but are so sudden. Be interesting to see what they emerge as, maybe the other flies were laying eggs too afterall.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/macu...uitflypupae.jpg


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## hortus (Nov 24, 2005)

you must have amzing vision i cant even see all that stuff with my hydei (giant fruit flies)


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## Rick (Nov 24, 2005)

I guess thats one way to do it. I prefer to order some flightless ones and then start my own cultures with commercial medium.


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## hortus (Nov 24, 2005)

NOTE:: if you make your own dont use food coloring

i think my melanogastor culters crashing, well one of them


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## nympho (Dec 2, 2005)

quick update. many pupa were formed (at least 100) from breeding from the first 2 wild caught fruit flies. As they hatch out i'm putting all the adults into another jam jar with half a banana, yeast and some paper for them to cling to. Pretty easy to get more in the jar without losing any by placing the new culture jar horizontally and bottom side facing a window and placing the first jar so that new flies fly out into the new jar towards the light. They are so stupid! At the moment there are about 20 adults sitting on the banana, eating and laying eggs. i occasionaly see them mating - they're not too worried about incest obviously lol. I wonder how many maggots i'll get with this little lot. :lol:


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