# Drosophila melanogaster "Wingless"



## happy1892 (Dec 23, 2011)

I think Josh's Frogs media makes the fruit flies big!

















This is a culture.


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## frogparty (Dec 23, 2011)

They will get smaller as the culture gets older


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## more_rayne (Dec 24, 2011)

Cool, I hate my winged mels from Petco. They can jump and glide to freedom, very frustrating.


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## jcal (Dec 24, 2011)

I just picked up one from petco. Pricey but seems to be producing well.


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## gripen (Dec 24, 2011)

No fair! My petco only has D. Hydei! Awesome pics though! It is really cool to see them up close.


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## agent A (Dec 27, 2011)

gripen said:


> No fair! My petco only has D. Hydei!


same with my petco!!!


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## Termite48 (Jan 7, 2012)

We all need to be careful when we buy cultures from PetCo. The ones that I have looked at have sometimes been spent and the people there do not know much about the cultures other than what day of the week they arrive. I look very carefully inside the jar to see if the culture is on the rise or has it been there and done that. They are pricey, but if you are lucky enough to get a good culture, you are ok!


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## twolfe (Jan 7, 2012)

The Petco in Minnesota doesn't carry any fruitflies. When I ran out once, I called several reptile and pet stores, and some of the people who answered the phone didn't even know what I was talking about. I last bought cultures in the summer and have kept my own going from those cultures.


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## ZenViouS (Jan 9, 2012)

frogparty said:


> They will get smaller as the culture gets older


Where are you getting that information from?


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## frogparty (Jan 9, 2012)

Almost a decade of experience adding up to well over 1000 fruit fly cultures. As the nutrients run out stunted flies are the norm. In the frog hobby we keep old cultures around on purpose to provide young froglets with small food items besides springtails. I can link you a bunch of literature. Stunted fruit flies are great because they are easier to dust with calcium/vitamin powder than springtails


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## PhilinYuma (Jan 10, 2012)

Yeah, and the same priciple applies to house flies. The easiest way to provide small HFs is to provide them with less food than you give them for normal sized flies. Chuck at Spiderpharm routinely does this for his 'slings.


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## crucis (Jan 11, 2012)

u know, they do look kind of.. delicious.

The number of times I've seen fruitflies get eaten is really getting to my brains..


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## Termite48 (Jan 11, 2012)

If you observe flies in the wild, you can notice, every once in a while, a huge fly going about and bumping into the others of his species. They are intimidating and more of a nuisance than anything else, if you are trying to trap them. Who knows how such a fly can be so large in comparison with the others of his apparent species, but they seem to be like some people, they do not get it all from heredity. Perhaps they eat more than others of the same hatching. Diet obviously makes up some of the difference where heredity leaves off. If the environment is the same as with other flies, and their heredity is a lock from the numbers of flies showing the exact same traits, then that leaves diet to be the main influence and that is not something one fly passes on the it's next generation. As this diet become less nutritiously advantages, then the positive effects of it are diminished and size can be one thing we see diminish.


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## frogparty (Jan 11, 2012)

this is exactly why fruit fly formulas designed to provide a nutritious fly as a feeder produce larger and more flies than a simple media designed to just produce flies in a lab for genetic research. For example, the carolina ff media cant come close to comparing to repashy, power mix etc.


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## happy1892 (Jan 11, 2012)

frogparty said:


> this is exactly why fruit fly formulas designed to provide a nutritious fly as a feeder produce larger and more flies than a simple media designed to just produce flies in a lab for genetic research. For example, the carolina ff media cant come close to comparing to repashy, power mix etc.


I just got repashy! I thought it would make normal sized fruit flies!


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