Colorcham427
Well-known member
any1 purchased a lot of spikes from them and have success at storing them for a long time????
forked tree ranch
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Colorcham427
Well-known member
I wouldn't store either the spikes or pupae for over 2 weeks. That seems to be the limit for me for them eventually hatching.
I recommend you set out about 1/2 of the total amount of spikes you got to pupate. I do it in net cages... just pour them out on the bottom and wait. Once they pupate, you can either let them all, or just some of them continue with hatching (and store the rest of the pupae for up to a week).
With the second half of the spikes, I wouldn't wait over a week to start the pupation process. And I wouldn't store the resulting pupae in the fridge at all... I'd let them all hatch. I have better success rates this way, and am able to keep the adult flies alive for about 2 or maybe 3 weeks if fed and misted.
I've waited to pupate the maggots, and stored the resulting pupae longer than I outlined above in the past... and I've had several failures of those bunches to eclose. If stored too long, the older maggots may seem to pupate fine, but I've had them fail to hatch too many times by storing them too long. I hope this helps.
I recommend you set out about 1/2 of the total amount of spikes you got to pupate. I do it in net cages... just pour them out on the bottom and wait. Once they pupate, you can either let them all, or just some of them continue with hatching (and store the rest of the pupae for up to a week).
With the second half of the spikes, I wouldn't wait over a week to start the pupation process. And I wouldn't store the resulting pupae in the fridge at all... I'd let them all hatch. I have better success rates this way, and am able to keep the adult flies alive for about 2 or maybe 3 weeks if fed and misted.
I've waited to pupate the maggots, and stored the resulting pupae longer than I outlined above in the past... and I've had several failures of those bunches to eclose. If stored too long, the older maggots may seem to pupate fine, but I've had them fail to hatch too many times by storing them too long. I hope this helps.
Colorcham427
Well-known member
Thanks for the info. I recently heard that it is better to hatch out all the flies, like you said, keep them well hydrated and fed properly. But, I also heard that you can extend their adult life by storing them in the fridge for a couple weeks. 40 degrees.
PhilinYuma
Well-known member
That's new to me; are you going to give it a try? I imagine that it might be a problem to maintain a refrigerator at 40F, and it certainly wouldn't be much good for keeping food. Are you going to use one of those little ice box thingies? This is something else that I would much like to hear about. Right now, off I go to Amazon to check the price of icebox thingies.
Edit: Checked small refrigerators on Amazon. Only thingy under $100 is the $40 Koolatron KWC-4 Coca-Cola Personal 6-Can Mini Fridge advertised twice on one page with very different customer reviews! Try it out for us, Brian!
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Colorcham427
Well-known member
Wow long time, haven't gotten around to this, sorry Phil.
My pupae always hatch out in my chameleon/bug room. 80ish ambient temp during the day, 69ish at night.
I put my pupae in a paper bag, I tape the bag closed and cut out a 2 inch circular hole on both sides. The bag is standing up.
I switched from having the pupae in a deli cup to a paper bag because the shells don't seem to come out as much as they do when they are hatching in a cup.
I place 2,000 pupae in each bag, per 1 ft. cubed net cage. All the flies eventually climb out of the bag, leaving the shells behind, as long as they don't drag the bottom half with them. They sometimes do!!! :0 lol...
They get a cup of 50/50 mixed powdered food, which is sugar and powdered buttermilk. I recently started to put A MUCH SMALLER AMOUNT. This mixture hardens up within a day!
I then put a wet paper towel in the powdered mix and make sure it gets nice and mooshy. There isn't nearly enough to make more than 1/2 inch layer of moosh.
And I now mist them instead of having a water bowl. Misting is a whole lot dirtier, but it is a lot better than one little bowl. Flies surprisingly drink a lot, especially BB in my experience from observing.
I let mine eat and drink it up for 2 days. Then they are off to the fridge. My fridge is always between 38-43 degrees. It's an old fridge, so I bet the 2007+ fridges are much more stable.
The flies are left in the fridge for 3-4 days at a time. Taken out, given more fresh moosh food, misted throughout the day for water sessions. I let them warm up, and eat/drink for another 3-4 days. Then they are back off to the cold fridge.
I've had BB's live longer than 6 weeks doing this. As long as they crawl, they are eaten by any mantis from my personal experience. Even adult Violins take crawlers willingly.
The only species I've ever noticed who truly need some sort of flying stimulation are the Idolomantids. However, they pick off the crawling flies without hesitation as youngsters, but once they are pre-sub and older, they really don't go after their food any longer. From what I've seen, the pre-sub and older Idolos really wait for their "fliers."
I provide my older Idolos flying BBs by letting them hatch inside of their own enclosures. I put a small cup of that mooshy sugar/milk food in the Idolo's cages for the flies to keep going on, buzzing around nicely. The wet paper towels easily hydrate the flies.
Having the fly food in the cage with them is great! Less work =
Right now I am working on making something very similar to Rebecca's "fruit fly bottle" (also used for BBs and house flies).
This design is a little different. It will look like a gun with an hour glass bottle attached.
Same idea with the fruit fly bottle, but it will have a small compartment where I can easily pull a trigger, and release some bee pollen powder so I could shake the bottle with the flies already in it. Dusting them with bee pollen is a must in this house!
I'm currently having a friend design this for me.
Now my main goal is working on a better substrate for the maggots to pupate in. Separating them from the Saw dust is insane. Every time I separated them from the saw dust, 97 % of the maggots rotted.
sporeworld
Well-known member
Thanks. Great info!
Colorcham427
Well-known member
Thanks dood.
Hey, any of you feed your BB flies something other than what I feed mine? I've only read that house flies eat this mix.
Do BB flies do better eating some sort of meat or high protein food? Such as dog/cat food? Crude protein good for the adults?
