# Raising houseflies in 32oz pots.



## PhilinYuma (Jun 28, 2009)

CareyI have set up the House Flies in Pots project, and it has been running for a week, so far with satisfactory results.

Many members have suggested that the "easiest" way is to keep HF maggots of pupae on hand and feed them as necessary. I don't argue the point. The reason that I have gone to the trouble of raising my own is as follows:

1)	I want about a hundred flies a day that I can feed live to my mantids.

2)	I want a really simple medium that I can set up in a few minutes, is very inexpensive and that doesn't stink.

3)	I want to be able to harvest the flies by chilling for a few minutes and serve about fifty pots in half an hour or so, every day, or every other day.

Food: A quart (~1L) of dog food pellets. 2qrts water A few pinches of bakers' yeast.

Preparation: Simmer the dog food and water, stirring occasionally, in a large pot until the pellets soften to make a smooth mixture. You can help the process with a potato masher, the kind that uses a flat metal plate with slots, or a food processor. Spiderpharm Chuck, recommends putting in wood chips, for oxygenation. I did, but shall try without for the next batch to simplify the process.

When it is cool, ladle it into the pots to make a one inch (2.5cm) layer and sprinkle the yeast on top. It should be moist, but not runny. Cover each pot with a mesh, not fabric, lid (see Mantis Place for pix of the two types) which has a hole cut in it inside the inner ring of holes. Block with a sponge stopper. Add about six flies per pot, check over the next two days and add new flies to replace any that die.

Store the leftover food boxes or freezer bags, put it in the freezer, and then clean up! If you don't, the mess will harden in a few hours to something like brown concrete and you will have to soak whatever it's on and scrub it off!

After a week, some of the maggots have started climbing the walls of the pots, getting ready to pupate. In two, they had crawled up to the very top, which is a bad sign, and for the first time, I could smell a faint rotting smell and a hint of ammonia. I stirred the mixture to aerate it and removed the bungs and two hours later, the smell had dissipated and they had climbed down into the medium. Looking good!

_To be continued..._


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## worldofmantis (Jun 28, 2009)

why not just the dog food or like chicken?


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## PhilinYuma (Jun 28, 2009)

Flies tend to lay eggs on a moist substrate because the soft skinned maggots need external moisture and though they have very tough rasps in their mouths, I suspect that a dog pellet would be way too togh for them. Also, the yeast needs moisture to get going. Come to think of it, I know that's true, because they have never laid in my open dog food bags.

There is no doubt that suitably rotted, moist chicken (you could add papain meat tenderizer to speed up the process) or liver (used in the infamous "bucket" method") would work fine, but they both stink pretty bad and cost rather more than the dog food mixture.

Actually, I did once culture flies in a whole dead chicken. I had set it out in March, where turkey vultures roost, in the hope of luring them within close camera range. It didn't work, but when I went, all unsupecting, to take the bag containing the chicken to a garbage can, the whole thing fell apart, displaying thousands of bluebottle maggots and giving a stench that rated 11 out of 10 on the disgusting scale! Ain't nature grand?


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## ABbuggin (Jun 28, 2009)

Sweet idea. I'm going to start doing this.


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## d17oug18 (Jun 28, 2009)

whats does, "removing the bungs" mean? do you really need that much water to boil 1LB of dog food? your setup seems really nice, is it specificly for house flies only, have you experimented with blue bottles yet? if you want me to ill do it with my BB's


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## PhilinYuma (Jun 29, 2009)

d17oug18 said:


> whats does, "removing the bungs" mean? do you really need that much water to boil 1LB of dog food? your setup seems really nice, is it specificly for house flies only, have you experimented with blue bottles yet? if you want me to ill do it with my BB's


The lid of each wire mesh pot has a hole cut in the center, just like a feeding port in the side of a pot and blocked with the same kind of bung.* You can remove it to add fresh flies, stir the mixture with a dinner knife** to aerate it, smell whether the mixture is getting stinky or not and say encouraging things to the maggots.

I thought the same thing about mixing 2 parts of water by volume to one part of dog food, but that's what it takes.  

Ogiga sold me 801 BB maggots (thanks for the shipping notification, mate), so I'll be setting those up next week, but of course, try it for yourself and let us know how it is getting on! The big difference between this animal protein medium and the largely carbohydrate FF medium is that, unless you give it plenty of ventillation (which is why I removed the bungs today; I don't need the flies any more) and stir it occasionally, anearobic bacteria will produce bad smells and worse, ammonia, which will kill the maggots. If things start to get unpleasant in the medium, the maggots will let you know by climbing up to the lid.

* A number of the flies died in the first 24 hours of the first batch. They constantly jostle each other in such a small space, and I think that they died of exhaustion. I shamelessly stole Katt's idea of putting a drop of honey on each bung for 'instant energy" and cut down on losses dramatically.

** I use a "dedicated" knife for this, but if you are using one of mom's knives, be sure to lick it off before returning it to the cutlery drawer! :lol: :lol:


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## Katnapper (Jun 29, 2009)

I'm interestedly awaiting further developments and reports...


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## Cosmic (Jun 29, 2009)

Another good couple media for raising house flies is Layers pellets (for chickens  ) and chick crumbs, obviously both with added water, don't smell to bad either.

Good luck with yours.


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## d17oug18 (Jun 29, 2009)

GROSS!!!! lol lick it lol oh man thats so gross lol, well i dont know anything about plugs nor do i have any. I also only have clothe lids which i am guessing will get nasty and unusable. ill do what i can though.


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## PhilinYuma (Jun 29, 2009)

d17oug18 said:


> GROSS!!!! lol lick it lol oh man thats so gross lol, well i dont know anything about plugs nor do i have any. I also only have clothe lids which i am guessing will get nasty and unusable. ill do what i can though.


Perhaps you're used to calling the "foam stoppers" or "plugs" instead of "bungs", like Ricks pic in this thread: http://mantidforum.net/forums/index.php?sh...c=14329&amp;hl=

Instead of putting them in the side, though, I cut a hole in the lid. When you get all that aluminum mesh screen, you can soak the cloth off your lids and replace it with a disc of the mesh. In my limited experience, a cloth lid without a bung is likely to kill all your larvae.


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## PhilinYuma (Jul 2, 2009)

It is now 11 days since I started this experiment. The plan was/is to let the whole process from mating to eclosure take place in the pot. This will happen in two of the pots, where the maggots have already started pupating. I seperated out the maggots from one pot yesterday, though, counted them (223) and put them back in the cleaned cup with some moist paper towel crupled in the bottom so that the maggots could easily climb under and over it. By this evening, about 85% had pupated, and I seperated them out. A second pot was beginning to smell a bit -- not nearly as bad as crix in a moist enclosure, but bad enough for me to want to clean the pot out -- and I placed the maggots as before. The wood chips are a nuisance though, since they won't go through a sieve with the dog food mix, and I think that I shall do with out next time. The other two pots scarcely smell of anything, and the maggots are beginning to pupate there, all in the substrate instead of on the sides. It is interesting to note the different times until pupation in the four pots under what would appear to be identical conditions.

Someone mentioned that HFs can be raised in FF medium, so I started a pot of regular FF medium at the same time. It has produced no HFs, but a nice crop of wild FFs


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## ABbuggin (Jul 2, 2009)

Phil, have you had any success with BB's? Also, how did you use the sieve to separate the maggots? Did you run water over them?

I have some HF pupae coming and I am going to give it a shot.  Seems easy enough.


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## d17oug18 (Jul 2, 2009)

nice findings, i want to try this but i dont know how the heck you are seperating and cleaning without having any escapees or problems. If i can read this post over again and understand it better i will try it out myself. Great job though man, seems to be working out with ease.


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## OGIGA (Jul 2, 2009)

Wow, so it is actually working? I might need to start doing this. Paying lots of money and having maggots shipped to me in this hot weather isn't working. The maggots I bought are mostly dead, so the ones I sold to you and Doug probably aren't doing any better (so I contacted the supplier to see if they'll reimburse). Please keep us updated. I probably even have to buy your flies, Phil! ...that's if you decide to sell them.  

update: Looks like they're just going to leave it as it is and not be of any help because I didn't choose next-day shipping.


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## PhilinYuma (Jul 4, 2009)

Success! On the thirteenth day since I set up the pots, some of the flies have started to eclose! I have about six hundred pupae from the batch, though the one pot that I kept as I originally promised, without seperating out the maggots, dried enough to destroy the larvae and only yielded about a dozen pupae, which I still had to sieve out from the culture medium.

I have four pots in culture, which will probably not survive my absence starting next week, but on my return, I shall set up for refgular flies, small ones (intermediate between D. hydei and regular HFs for the mantis connoisseur) BBs, and flightless flies if anybody is interested in learning how it is done.

It turns out that it is possible to raise HFs in a FF culure medium, but the few maggots are still not ready to pupate, and I wonder why anyone would bother.


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## Zephyr (Jul 22, 2009)

Will house flies pupate in carefresh animal bedding?


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## superfreak (Jul 22, 2009)

what a strange question :huh: 

what gives you that idea?


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## Zephyr (Jul 22, 2009)

superfreak said:


> what a strange question :huh: what gives you that idea?


It has large granules of material.

Perhaps some one could rig a system in which some of the carefresh rests on some wiring above the fly medium, so that one doesn't have to sort the pre-pupating maggots out of the medium.


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## PhilinYuma (Jul 22, 2009)

Zephyr said:


> It has large granules of material.Perhaps some one could rig a system in which some of the carefresh rests on some wiring above the fly medium, so that one doesn't have to sort the pre-pupating maggots out of the medium.


Yes, that's that absorbent cellulose, "flush it down the toilet" stuff, right? The idea sounds good; house fly maggots (and FF maggots, too, on a much smaller scale) greatly reduce the water content of their hemolymph before pupation, by "flooding." In big setups, you can use a towel for the same purpose.

I was trying to keep the process as simple as possible, though, with a minimum of equipment. I can dump the subtrate in a large sieve and have clean maggots and a few pupae cleaned in less than a minute.

Since my last entry, I have come up with a similar substance to yours, Lizard Litter, which is fine wood shavings, which are absorbent and, being wood, give the maggots something to nibble on before they pupate.

Incidentally, I set up four pots a few days before I left on vacation, and when I got back, each one had produced about 70 full-sized flies without any attention whatsoever.


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## dino2 (Jul 22, 2009)

lol


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## superfreak (Jul 24, 2009)

oh so the animal bedding is used instead of tissue, not instead of dog food. phew, high temps are scrambling my braaains...


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## massaman (Jul 29, 2009)

wonder if using rice would work instead of dog food if ground up or mixed real well with the water


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## PhilinYuma (Jul 29, 2009)

massaman said:


> wonder if using rice would work instead of dog food if ground up or mixed real well with the water


Probably not. House fly larvae apparently need animal protein, though there is a fair amount of vegetable filler in dog food. Following someone's suggestion, I tried raising a batch using the potato-based substrate that I use for ffs, without success.


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## mythal (Aug 18, 2009)

Does this work with bluebottles too?

I don't know if those are available here locally, so I'd like to try raising a few batches before winter sets.


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## cloud jaguar (Aug 18, 2009)

Phil do yo have any pictures of the process? I need to start doing this but i cant wrap my head around it without pics


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## PhilinYuma (Aug 18, 2009)

Arkanis said:


> Phil do yo have any pictures of the process? I need to start doing this but i cant wrap my head around it without pics


I've got to make up a batch tomorrow, so I'll take some pix and post 'em!


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## PhilinYuma (Aug 19, 2009)

Not sure how helpful this will be Arkanis. Photojournalism was never one of my occupations.

1) Assume that you have simmered 2 cups of dog food and 2 cups of water in a large pan. The dog food will slowly break down and you can help the process by mashing it with a masher, like the one shown below.

2) When you get tired of doing this, dump the whole mess in a food processor and turn it on (no need to pulse unless you like to).

3) When all the lumps have been smashed, remove the sludge to a large bowl. Immediately clean everything to get rid of the leftover sludge before it petrifies. In front of the food processor is a defrosted bag of the stuff to give you an idea of the consistency. I also left a few splats on the wall behing the processor to show that I'm not kidding around.







The next pic shows a 32 oz pot with a lid which will only be used while the flies in the pot are active and then at the end after the ff maggots have pupated. I have a bung in the lid for adding more flies if necessary or spraying water if the mix looks too dry. The pot contains a small amount of excelsior to give the flies somewhere to rest between bouts of copulation. I should have a massive HF eclosure tomorrow, and shall put about ten in each of six pots. The three in the pic just happened to be in the kitchen and volunteered to help me out. The whiskey in the glass supporting the pot is not for the flies. The medicine vial is one of 16vthat I use for catching bees and HFs.






In the last pic, you see an open bowl which shows the consistency of the medium when the flies are nearly ready to eclose. The pupae are in the medium, and it is important not to let it dry out. This is an even easier method for those who keep their flies in a net cage. Just put a bowl of the medium in the cage and leave it for a few days, then take it out and keep it moist with your mister. Mine becomes contaminated with wild mels, and after they have pupated (and if you do this in your kitchen, you are going to get an Amusing Surprise when they do), it is time to put a cover over the bowl for when the flies eclose in the next few days, or you can shovel it into a few pots like that in pic 1.






I really hope that this helps, though I am not sure how!


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## PhilinYuma (Aug 28, 2009)

Just when you thought that this thread had been put to rest, I have a special announcement. I am going to launch a contest between Carolina Biological and humble

[SIZE=8pt]PhilinYuma[/SIZE]. While going through their on-line catalogue to buy some FF medium, I found "Instant House Fly Medium 1L" for 12.50. Not too bad, I thought, until I saw the final invoice. Unlike the FF medium, this had to be shipped Express, for $16.95 plus another "living material fee" for $2. But that's not all! They add tax, not just on the item itself but on the item plus postage! I wouldn't have noticed this except that I have two invoices. The HF medium costs less than the FF medium, but with Express, the total comes to twice as much and so does the "tax." I called Sam, the customer service guy, and asked him just what the "living material is in the package, and all he could think of was yeast (he said that his CS catalogue did not have the ingredients listed) and we agreed that treating it as "living material" is utter nonsense and he is going "to look into it." Sure. I'll call him again in two weeks when the experiment is over.

My mix costs less than 25c/L, so on price, I am well ahead.

Ease of preparation: The bag contains a simple mix of powder and wood chips. I tasted the powder* which appeared to be powdered milk. Preparing it meant just adding 1L of water, so it was substantially easier and faster than preparing the dog food mix.

Carolina wins round two.

I made up six 32oz cups of this medium, put three in the fly cage and will leave them there for 24 hrs. Then I'll put in three pots of my medium and rotate until I have exposed all twelve jars of the medium. Wish me luck. I'm afraid that I shall keep you informed of their progress.

*If you have said "what a stupid thing to do. He'll kill himself one day," remember that I have done it all my life without a mishap and that I am most likely older than you.


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## sbugir (Aug 29, 2009)

Hey PhilinYuma,

I left a pot of dog food mixed with water outside about a week ago... and now it's cover in maggots. Uh, how do i sort the maggots I'm kinda grossed out by the way they move...should i wait till they pupate or sort em out now? Thanks in advance.


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## PhilinYuma (Aug 30, 2009)

Good for you!

If the goop is in some kind of bowl, transfer it to 32oz cups. Put in a layer about 2" deep. Then leave the pots outside if weather and spouse permit. In my experience, ff maggots will climb up the side of the pot and pupate, though for some reason, very few eclose. When that happens, cover each pot with as well ventilated a lid as possible. The metal mesh tops that Hibiscusmile sells are better than the cloth covered ones, or you can use plastic screening or whatever comes to hand. Keep the mess moist, but not wet and well ventilated. You should have only a very slight odor. If you smell a strong smell of ammonia (unlikely) turn over the substrate so that the anaerobic bacteria are killed by contact with the air. At about the end of another week, your pots should "explode" with flies, all dedicated to feeding your mantids.

A second method is to put the whole nasty mess in a sieve fine enough to retain the maggots, and keep running water through it (use a garden hose if you can) until only the maggots are left. Put them in one or two 32 oz pots with sawdust or fine wood shavings and keep them moist until they pupate. Then wait for the pupae to eclose. I often sieve the pupae, let them dry on paper towels and then keep them in a sprinkling of flour.

Hope that helps.


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## [email protected] (Aug 30, 2009)

[SIZE=14pt]tax on shiping thats not cool I didn't any one adds tax on out of state orders, isn't just in state when you add tax but then there is I just need to look tax laws again its late for me.[/SIZE]


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## Orin (Aug 30, 2009)

Have you considered using the flightless fruit fly cultivars?

The medium I know of for house flies is just dry dog food soaked in milk.


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## Orin (Aug 30, 2009)

Oops.



Orin said:


> Have you considered using the flightless HOUSE fly cultivars?


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## PhilinYuma (Aug 31, 2009)

Orin said:


> Have you considered using the flightless fruit fly cultivars?The medium I know of for house flies is just dry dog food soaked in milk.


Yes, I use a flightless strain of hydei. I use wild mels, though , for two reasons. First, I find that they distribute themselves better over a net cage, and secondly, I can start new cultures just by leaving pots of medium exposed indoors. To prevent contamination of the hydei pots, I have to make them up on the patio in the evening.  

And yes, my own housefly medium is soggy dog food with a little yeast on top. I have no idea what Carolina puts in theirs, milk powder, certainly, with protein powder perhaps? I think that their main goal is to ensure that it is not too stinky when used in classroom projects. I shall be interested to see the results when I compare the yield from theirs with that from my medium in a couple of weeks.


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## Orin (Aug 31, 2009)

Sorry Phil,

I made an error and corrected it the subsequent post. I was asking about the flightless house fly cultivar (fruit was a typo). Have you tried working with flightless Musca domestica?


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## superfreak (Aug 31, 2009)

so would you recommend using milk or simply water for the dog food mixture then? does milk smell very strongly when it goes off?


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## PhilinYuma (Sep 1, 2009)

Orin said:


> Sorry Phil,I made an error and corrected it the subsequent post. I was asking about the flightless house fly cultivar (fruit was a typo). Have you tried working with flightless Musca domestica?


Ah! I wondered about that! No, I haven't, partly because I have never seen a flightless strain of houseflies for sale, but also because without wings, they'd be little different from small roaches. I can't speak for the mantids, but I get a lot of enjoyment from watching a mantis snatch up a fly on the wing. ave you tried them with mantids?

"so would you recommend using milk or simply water for the dog food mixture then? does milk smell very strongly when it goes off?"

I don't use milk powder myself. My mix is just about identical to yours with the addition of a little yeast. I was surprised to find that after thee days, the Catalina pots have a strong ammonia smell, though.


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## tonyi (Sep 1, 2009)

PhilinYuma said:


> Ah! I wondered about that! No, I haven't, partly because I have never seen a flightless strain of houseflies for sale, but also because without wings, they'd be little different from small roaches. I can't speak for the mantids, but I get a lot of enjoyment from watching a mantis snatch up a fly on the wing. ave you tried them with mantids?


I used to culture flightless house flies. Those suckers sure can run, let me tell you that. My orchid is too lazy to ever snatch anything that actually flies, he prefers to wait until they walk past him. For some bizarre reason, all the house flies would walk to the exact same spot. My orchid noticed this rather quickly and after that sat there most of the day, eating them as they practically walked into his mouth. He would only climb down to drink from the leaves and then up to sleep at night. I later stopped culturing house flies because the stench and because they're filthy little critters. I'll take moths over them any day of the week.


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## sbugir (Sep 1, 2009)

Hey Phil,

I decided to go with a different idea when sorting maggots. I made a mesh cube and cut a small hole so i could fit a funnel through it. Then i attached the funnel to the pot where my maggots were, in the mesh cube i put a tray of honey in there. Sure enough, the maggots crawled through the funnel into the cube and have begun to pupate. When they hatch they'll also have a food supply. Idk but it seems to work so far, im just gonna have to see if i can make sure the funnel doesnt get over crowded with maggots crawling through.


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## sbugir (Sep 14, 2009)

Phil,

Every single one of my maggots died and I can't figure out why! There was no horrible stench of ammonia. I think the worst thing might have been venitilation but all they had to do was crawl to the mesh cube! Ahh, any help or advice is much appreciated  . What sucks is I haven't seen any flies on my patio recently, and it hasn't even frosted/snowed yet! Poo!

Lemmiwinks


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## Eldur (Sep 27, 2009)

I tried this but my maggots always crawl up the sides even when the mix is new :huh: 

They don´t go all the way to the lid but are on the sides but many also at the bottom.

How long does it take for a maggot to become an adult?

When you seperate the maggots/pupae from the dogfoodmix, do you put it in something and rinse the dogfood away with water or?

Could it be ventilation? I have not got good ventilation because I can´t buy the lids you are using with the mesh but I was hoping it was ok.

Also I have smaller cups because the 32oz are not available here.


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## PhilinYuma (Sep 27, 2009)

Sachiko said:


> I tried this but my maggots always crawl up the sides even when the mix is new :huh: They don´t go all the way to the lid but are on the sides but many also at the bottom.
> 
> How long does it take for a maggot to become an adult?
> 
> ...


Yes, ventilation and keeping the mix slightly moist are the two most important things. It sounds as though your maggots are trying to escape from the gases, like ammonia, that are created by anaerobic bacteria, which develop if there is not enough oxygen in the air above the mixture. If you have the pots out of the way, you might want to keep them uncovered. Depending on temperature, your flies should emerge in just over two weeks.

Yes you can separate them by putting the whole mess in a sieve and running water through it until only the pupae are left. Let the pupae dry in the sieve. I have kept them in jar with a little flour, but I have gone back to just letting them hatch from the pot when they are ready. I don't think that the pot size matters. Unlike fruit flies, the maggots pupate in the medium. Hope this helps!


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## d17oug18 (Oct 19, 2009)

i made this and it seems as though after only 24hours there is a lot of mold growing, any ideas why? and the consistency is like peanut butter, should it be smoother?


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## Colorcham427 (Feb 11, 2010)

d17oug18 said:


> i made this and it seems as though after only 24hours there is a lot of mold growing, any ideas why? and the consistency is like peanut butter, should it be smoother?


bringing up an older thread?

check this out guys, idk if any of you have seen this or not...

http://www.adcham.com/html/insects/insects-fly-rearing.html


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## PhilinYuma (Feb 14, 2010)

Brian Aschenbach said:


> bringing up an older thread?check this out guys, idk if any of you have seen this or not...
> 
> http://www.adcham.com/html/insects/insects-fly-rearing.html


Yes, this is the "granddaddy of them all" site. Thanks for bringing it up again. I still have a 5 gal bucket modified according to these instructions. The liver that he recommends, though, really does get to smell really nasty, really quickly as Christian mentioned recently. I used my notorious panty hose cover for the bucket (better visibility) and one day it popped off releasing 5gals of flies. Thank god my SO is only a dog -- I couldn't even use insecticide!

I have finally (today!) "perfected" a smell free, mold free, hassle free way of raising large numbers of house flies in two weeks from setup to eclosure. I have covered much of this before, but here is all the info in one go.

*Equipment*: Set up a 1' net cube with several layers of moist paper towel on the bottom (do not place this on varnished wood!). Place a 16oz delicup (size is not critical), full of peat moss and water (or as Katt has suggested, water crystals) and cover it with a standard cloth lid to raise the humidity. Also add a petri or other shallow dish of sugar and powdered milk (or buttermilk as the AdCham article suggests. It is sold with baking supples). I also keep a small pad of very wet paper towel in the cage for drinking water. I was somewhat reluctant to smear honey on the top of the net for the flies as Yen and Katt recommend, but it really does bring a smile to their little faces (the flies', not Katt's and Yen's), and though "gut loading" is not an issue here, the flies tend to live longer.

*Medium*: The following is not the ideal medium for raising houseflies -- I don't know what is and do not plan on spending the next six months trying to find out -- but it is very successful.

Place about 1/2 gallon (or your desired amount) of dry dog or cat food with the highest % of animal protein that you can afford in twice its volume of water and heat it in a large pan on the stove, or let it soak over night. Mash it with a potato masher, pour off the excess liquid and reduce it to a soupy, homogeneous mass with a food processor if you have one (or are allowed to use mom's). Be warned that over filling the processor can make a most impressive mess and that the mixture sets hard, like cement. Good luck!

Congratulations, you have now completed the hardest part of the task by far and will have enough medium to last you for over a month (depending, of course, on how many flies you use), in a freezer bag in the freezer.

After talking with Chuck, I now add an arbitrary 4 oz of flax seed oil and a few liquified carrots to the mix, followed by three cups of wood chips. These can be the hardest thing to find. I used "T Rex Aspen Bed" from my local store. Chuck uses much larger chips, but my "shavings", which aerate the mixture and also provide food, worked well enough. To be honest, I have had success without using any wood at all.

Next I put about a cup of the medium into a Rubbermade bowl and stir in a 1/2 tsp of Methyl Paraben that is available from Josh's Frogs, and which prevents mold. Finally, I sprinkle some dry yeast on the top and then place the container in the cage. Add flies (or pupae). Lotsa flies for lotsa maggots!

Aside from occasionally pulling out a container to check the progress of the maggots and give them a few words of encouragement, the culture thrives on neglect. As it dries, the medium will shrink and crust over. Country boys and girls will have turned over "cow patties" (

) and found that under the dried surface there is lots of moisture and yummy maggots. That's what happens here. The dry exterior maintains the moisture within. Don't mess with it beyond keeping the atmosphere humid. There should be NO rotting odor, though the mixture isn't completely odorless.And that's it. At between aproximately 75-85F (25-30C) the pupae will start to eclose in 11-14 days (YRMV). This will be more obvious if you transfer the medium containers to a fresh cage, set up exactly like the first.

Some extra thoughts.

1) The flies mate after a cupla days of eclosure and lay continuously thereafter (about 300 eggs/well fed female), so the medium contains maggots of all ages, though see 2) (if you are lucky, you may get to see the older ones tucking up the youngsters at bedtime, or maybe not). It is probably best to remove the media after two weeks and maintain it for two more, though by that time all of the soft food will have probably been eaten. Depending on the number of cages that you have available, you may want to remove several pots after a few days. You can leave them uncovered and mist them once a day or so, but LABEL THEM WITH THE INITIAL EXPOSURE DATE!! I know an old guy who failed to do this once and ended up with a bathroom full of newly eclosed flies.  

2) Although I have not conducted a conclusive experiment, I would guess that the females have laid all their eggs within the first two weeks, and it is a waste of time to use them as breeders for the rest of ther lives (about two more weeks at most). Let them fulfill their destiny in a mantis enclosure.

3) In the setup that I have described, the maggots will not climb in order to pupate, they will simply pupate in the drier medium, where they are invisible. If you wish to see the process, for whatever reason, or harvest the pupae for storage, transfer a mass of maggots between 4-10 days old to a 32oz deli cup with a very moist paper substrate. Without food and in the presence of excess moisture, the maggots will crawl up the inside of the walls of the cup to the lid and pupate. By doing this to 4-5 day old maggots, you can produce smaller flies. Isn't this fun!

4) Finally, this is not an alternative to raising flies in 32 oz pots as I have described in the past. It is very easy for these covered pots to go bad. I can only fully recommend the method described here. I would also suggest that anyone trying this method for the first time follows my directions pretty much exactly before starting to improve it!  

I am very happy about this setup. It should solve my feeding issues for all but the youngest, ff eating, nymphs and the largest adults. I hope that others will try it and report their success.


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## Colorcham427 (Feb 14, 2010)

WOW!! thank you so much for this input dude!

I'm going to start this tomorrow! I have 5 grams of house fly pupae i should be able to get some to hatch soon!


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## Katnapper (Feb 14, 2010)

Phil, thank you so very much for experimenting, defining, and reporting your progress with this set up!  I'm definitely going to give it a go... as soon as I get some wood chips and flax seed oil.


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## Mex_Ghost (Mar 4, 2010)

I did something a little diferent about the mix because I wanted to make a "trap" (I´m not sure if it´s ok that word) that I found in the web, It seems like....







I wanted to catch flies on a bottle, so when I arrived late at home after work, I could take out the flies from the bottle, so I put inside some meat, and after some days I could catch some flies, but after 10 days (yestarday] I saw several maggots, some were "climbing" to the top of the bottle and the most were at the bottom with the meat, there were so many maggots that the meat seem like if It was alive.

Now my question is.... what should I do with those maggots?? do I leave them inside? or do I have to change them to other recipient?? If I change them to other recipient..... Do they need food?


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