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## Synapze (Jul 1, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 1, 2018)

If there are lots of live maggots that probably also means their are unhatched eggs too. Yes, your culture does have a chance of recovery but it might take a while. If you are able to introduce more adult flies that would help greatly.


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 2, 2018)

I’m wondering if there’s a way to prevent the filter from directly contacting the medium so it can’t absorb moisture from it.


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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 2, 2018)

While you could do that the main reason for the filter/excelsior is so the flies are able to climb to and from the medium without getting stuck so it really needs to be touching the medium.

In the case of the filters they would eventually collapse when they absorb too much moisture and keeping the filter away from the medium doesn't solve the issue of them being weighted down with flies. The only way I see to solve the problems with using coffee filters is to make the medium a little drier &amp; see if you can find thicker sturdier coffee filters.

I once bought a culture that used green plastic mesh and that seemed to work okay but not optimal. The medium didn't stick to the mesh at all so I had to keep pushing it down into the medium to maintain contact. This pic was taken right after it arrived in the mail, the mesh was still pushed into the medium but because the mesh was springy, the medium was kinda watery and I would tap the container while getting flies out, the mesh would retract over time. It would stay pushed down for 4 or 5 days before coming out again. Maybe this issue could have been solved by making the medium thicker and less watery.

View attachment 10315


...Of course you can just use excelsior. It works really well and why fix something that isn't broken?


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## Synapze (Jul 2, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 2, 2018)

Synapze said:


> I'll need to do more experimenting. This error has caused a fruit fly deficit. ?


To prevent this from happening next time you experiment, make a regular backup culture at the same time just in case the experimental culture goes horribly wrong.


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## Synapze (Jul 2, 2018)

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## Synapze (Jul 2, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 2, 2018)

It's ok, making mistakes is how we learn. I don't mean to discourage you from experimenting, who knows you could eventually discover something that works even better! However, an experiment needs a control group to compare against to see if it really is better or not. The control doubly serves as backup insurance should the experimental culture fail. Good luck with your experiments, the water cup thing sounds interesting.


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 6, 2018)

Synapze said:


> When in doubt, I always check to see what the dart frog guys do:
> 
> *Fruit Flies: Coffee filter vs. Excelsior*
> 
> One person writes, "Another advantage to coffee filters, BTW, is that they suck up excess moisture in the media, and slowly dose it back out in the course of the culture's life, and so I've found that cultures with coffee filters don't get as dried out near the end of their production."


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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 6, 2018)

One really great tip I got from DeShawn. He said to use Repashy Superfly medium. It works better than any other commercially available medium, it produces more flies and they actually use up all the culture by the end of the month making it worth the money. I can see a huge difference in my yields now, the maggots and pupae end up on every surface in the cup and the excelsior, I actually had to make another culture because there were too many flies in there at one point.


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## Synapze (Jul 6, 2018)

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## Synapze (Jul 6, 2018)

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## hibiscusmile (Jul 6, 2018)

I make my own and always have, I have more flies than u can shake a stick at!


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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 7, 2018)

hibiscusmile said:


> I make my own and always have, I have more flies than u can shake a stick at!


Do you mind sharing the recipe or do you have the medium for sale on your website? 

I've tried several commercially available fly mediums and a couple of simple recipes I found online and almost always had similar results, the last one I tried from Josh's Frog's also left tons of medium unused at the end of culture. Repashy surprised me at how well it works, it made me realize I was only getting mediocre yields of flies before. It was enough to feed the mantises I had at the time so that's not really a bad thing but now that I expanded my collection and have several ooths due to hatch soon I need something more productive. The other alternative would simply be to make more cultures but that seems like a waste of medium and space if I can accomplish the same amount of flies in one deli cup with Repashy.


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## MantisGirl13 (Jul 7, 2018)

Yeah, what is the best recipe for the medium? 

- MantisGirl13


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 7, 2018)

Predatorhousepet said:


> Do you mind sharing the recipe or do you have the medium for sale on your website?


Once again, from the frog folks:

Best Homemade FF Media

_.......Pretty much all the media sold in the hobby is one form or another of what is referred to as the "carolina biological supply mix".  They are variations of what is used in labs to raise fruit flies......._

_.......the simplest media recipe is based on nothing more than potato flakes, brewer's' yeast (dead), confectioner's sugar, a mold inhibitor and water. This is what is commonly referred to as the "carolina biological supply" recipe. It is the industry standard and is used in fly labs around the world because of it's reliability......._


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## Krissim Klaw (Jul 7, 2018)

I make my own media and use 5 coffee filters. The filters do tend to slowly sink down with the weight of the hydei (mel cultures rarely have this issue). Usually about mid way through I just add 2 additional filters for the adult flies to climb on. Despite how it looks the maggots don't seem to have a problem getting around the sunken ones and pupating. Not saying a certain portion of the yield isn't lost, but I've always produced way more than I need. At one point I tested things like a small cut off plastic cup for the filters to rest in so they weren't laden with moisture. It was the worst producing culture I ever had. I think the moisture drawn up helps keep the pupae from getting too dry as pupae will often cover the filters.

I remember seeing someone had a lot of success with cotton balls so maybe sticking some on the bottom might help keep the filters form drawing up so much moisture? I'll admit I've been pretty lazy with testing things out because I produce more than I need with ease so I've adopted a bit of if it ain't broke don't fix it mentality.


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## Aristalochia (Jul 23, 2018)

I personally have never got around to finding excelsior, so I've tried a other options. With the coffee filters, I had good results, but they tended to collapse if the media is too watery.  I like to use the more rigid cone shaped filters, since they can't collapse. I also like to use pieces of paper plates jammed into the substrate. They work great, and they never get too soggy.


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## Introvertebrate (Jul 23, 2018)

At the very least, paper plate pieces would suspend the coffee filters above the medium, preventing them from getting too saturated.


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## Synapze (Jul 24, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 24, 2018)

Synapze said:


> Thanks for the tip. I'll give that a try. I'm getting frustrated with excelsior. Few things are worse than trying to tap out a few flies and having an entire wad of excelsior fall out! ?


I know the feeling but it usually happens with cultures I bought from others. When I make a culture I roll the excelsior in a ball, shake out any loose pieces then push the ball a good 1/3 of the way into the medium and it does a pretty good job of staying put.


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## Synapze (Jul 24, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 25, 2018)

Lol, yep. I try to get rid of all the loose pieces beforehand but it's not 100% effective, sometimes one or two will stay behind &amp; show up on me later. However, it's not nearly as bad as it used to be before I took to shaking the loose pieces out. What I used to do when that happened I'd just shake out some flies into an empty deli cup, add a small amount of 50/50 powder mix* to coat the flies &amp; keep them from escaping then use my feeding tongs to remove any loose bits of excelsior that fell in. I could take my time pulling the pieces out since the flies weren't going anywhere. But yes that was still a pain so I now I do my best to make a ball consisting of only long strands of excelsior to add to the culture so I don't have to pick pieces of it out everytime I need flies. 

Hopefully your experiments go well and you find a solution that works a lot better. 

_*powder consists of a mix of 50/50 honey powder &amp; bee pollen. (I think I originally bought some from MantisPlace.com but its not hard to make your own, I had to put it through a coffee grinder a couple times to get the powder fine enough for this purpose.) Then you shake the cup to coat the flies in the powder and it weighs them down so they can't climb out of the cup. I don't even need a lid or to keep tapping the cup to keep the flies in, they just stay at the bottom of the cup on their own, it's like magic. I learned this trick from a video about making ff cultures for frogs but they used calcium powder which mantises do not need so I tried to find something to coat the flies in that would be better suited to a mantis &amp; happened across this supplement, I believe it's called Yen Saw's mix._


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## Synapze (Jul 25, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 25, 2018)

It did take me a while to figure out what to substitute for the calcium powder but bee pollen is a good choice since it is full of vitamins and is in a form mantids would encounter in the wild since they prey on pollinator insects such as bees and butterflies. Bee pollen is pricey but as you said you are only using a very small amount so it's not like you need pounds of the suff. I suppose you could use honey powder on it's own, I believe that is cheaper but the main reason for including bee pollen is for the nutritional value. Maybe you could make a 25/75 mix instead so you don't use so much bee pollen?

While powdered sugar might work it's refined processed sugar and I don't know how healthy that would be to feed to a mantis at every meal. The cornstarch I would skip completely since it gets to a weird consistency when wet.


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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 25, 2018)

I wonder if baby cereal would work if you ran it through a coffee grinder to turn it into a fine powder? It has lots of vitamins. I already add baby oatmeal to a mix I give my feeder roaches, so it's something the mantids get second hand from gut contents. Baby cereal comes in these super thin little flakes that could be broken down into dust quite easily in a blender or coffee grinder. Not sure if it would be heavy enough to weigh the flies down though. 

Another option may be brewer's or nutritional yeast? This is already an ingredient in many fruit fly culture mediums and is also highly nutritious.


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## Synapze (Jul 25, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 25, 2018)

Worth a try. Once you find some type of fine powder to weigh down the fruit flies it makes them a thousand times easier to deal with....many things would work but the trick is to find something that is also healthy for your mantis to consume.


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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 25, 2018)

Also I wanted to add that flour is not a good choice. Earlier I watched a video on YouTube about eating raw cookie dough &amp; why it is dangerous. Turns out raw eggs are not the main cause of food poisoning from cookie dough but rather the flour because bacteria grows very easily on raw flour. It needs to be cooked before humans can safely consume it so the same would go for mantises as they can become sick from bacteria too.


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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 26, 2018)

I made a video of the fruit flies staying at the bottom of the cup for over 2 minutes so you can see how effective the powder coating method is. (They stay down a lot longer than 2 minutes but a 30 minute video of fruit flies crawling in a cup isn't very interesting.)


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## Synapze (Jul 26, 2018)

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## Predatorhousepet (Jul 26, 2018)

Wonderful! This trick has saved me so much time and effort, I am glad I could pass it along.


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