sschind
Well-known member
I just had two female D. diadema pop out a total of 54 babies so I had to come up with an easier way for feeding. I raise them through the first 3 molts in trios in 32 oz. deli cups and I had to come up with a better way to get the fruit flies into the deli cups. I saw Cosby's baster and I might give that a try as well but here is what i came up with.
cut the top off a 2 liter bottle just where it stops curving.
cut the center out of a 32 oz deli container lid,
use hot glue to glue the "funnel" to the lid. in my case the bottle was just a bit to big around to fit into the ridge around the top of the lid so I cut a slit in the side of the "funnel" and folded it back on itself and pushed it down into the lid before gluing. You could also cut the top a bit further up on the curve making a smaller diameter but I wanted to keep as much of the curve as I could but that has caused its own problem as I will describe later.
To use just tap the flies down into the rearing container. Remove the mesh lid and replace it with the funnel lid. invert the container and tap flies into to the container you are feeding.
The above picture shows it with the funnel just sitting on top of a closed FF container that is why it looks like there are two lids. To use I would remove the FF lid. One problem I ran into was that the curve allowed the FFs to collect near the "shoulder" so I had to tip it quite a bit and if your media is runny there may be an issue. So far with the way I keep my media it has been working fine. I'm going to make another one with a different "funnel" that is more tapered like the bottle in t he last picture. that should make it so I don't have to tip the container so much. The problem is that diameter is too small to fit all the way to the edge of the lid so I have to look for a different bottle.
I also made a transfer coupler to put between the funnel and an empty 32 oz water bottle so I can transfer the flies from the container to an empty bottle easier and that might work better. i haven't tried it yet.
cut the top off a 2 liter bottle just where it stops curving.
cut the center out of a 32 oz deli container lid,
use hot glue to glue the "funnel" to the lid. in my case the bottle was just a bit to big around to fit into the ridge around the top of the lid so I cut a slit in the side of the "funnel" and folded it back on itself and pushed it down into the lid before gluing. You could also cut the top a bit further up on the curve making a smaller diameter but I wanted to keep as much of the curve as I could but that has caused its own problem as I will describe later.
To use just tap the flies down into the rearing container. Remove the mesh lid and replace it with the funnel lid. invert the container and tap flies into to the container you are feeding.
The above picture shows it with the funnel just sitting on top of a closed FF container that is why it looks like there are two lids. To use I would remove the FF lid. One problem I ran into was that the curve allowed the FFs to collect near the "shoulder" so I had to tip it quite a bit and if your media is runny there may be an issue. So far with the way I keep my media it has been working fine. I'm going to make another one with a different "funnel" that is more tapered like the bottle in t he last picture. that should make it so I don't have to tip the container so much. The problem is that diameter is too small to fit all the way to the edge of the lid so I have to look for a different bottle.
I also made a transfer coupler to put between the funnel and an empty 32 oz water bottle so I can transfer the flies from the container to an empty bottle easier and that might work better. i haven't tried it yet.
