Housefly breeding kit from spider farm

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jcal

jcal

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Has anyone tried this before? The PDF from their site seems pretty straightforward.

 
No, but it's fairly easy to make your own.

Just buy all the supplies you need from MantisPlace and you can save some money.

 
Is that something folks can do indoors in the northeast, or does it smell too much? I've seen examples here on the forum, but its usually a SoCal fellow with a culture in his garage or something.

 
Houseflies can be cultured indoors without much smell at all. It is the Blue Bottles that need to be more smelly.

 
Chuck at SpiderPharm is one of the most experienced HF breeders in the world. He advised the Norwegian team that investigated the effect of larval food on tritrophic preadtors, like 'slings and mantis nymphs a few years back. Some of their papers were disvcussed on this forum earlier thios year.I bought and used his kit about three years ago. I use a different setup now, based on my specific needs, but it provides a great starting point. Properly aerated, so that you are not culturing anaerobes, media will not smell.

In the name of transparency, I should note that Chuck paid me a gazillion semolians (remember Roger Rabbit?) to write this.

 
With my first small HF culture from a small container of about 12 oz. of dog food, I was able to harvest over 1K pupae which now have been eclosing as I wanted, less than one hundred at a time, and those that are not eaten, are laying eggs in a new culture of dog food medium in an 80 oz container. They are all over it. There will, no doubt, be thousands of pupae this time around. Thanks Phil for your suggestions and Rebecca for the original stock. I used a small nut grinder or coffee grinder to make the DF kibble into a powder and add water as needed and heat in the microwave for less than a minute.

 
Rich S said:
With my first small HF culture from a small container of about 12 oz. of dog food, I was able to harvest over 1K pupae which now have been eclosing as I wanted, less than one hundred at a time, and those that are not eaten, are laying eggs in a new culture of dog food medium in an 80 oz container. They are all over it. There will, no doubt, be thousands of pupae this time around. Thanks Phil for your suggestions and Rebecca for the original stock. I used a small nut grinder or coffee grinder to make the DF kibble into a powder and add water as needed and heat in the microwave for less than a minute.
Click to expand...
.......and you keep the culture indoors?

 
I keep the culture indoors in the bug room and inside the community net cage. Presently there are HF all over the medium and I keep it wet with spraying and dripping pure water through the net lid. I will add wood chips today as a mulch and this allows moisture retention and a place under which the larva to hatch and thrive. The daytime temp is about 80-82 degrees F/ at night down to 74-76 degrees F. At first the only odor is that of the dog food. Later that seems to lessen. There is no odor from the flies when they are cultured in this way without the formation of anaerobic bacteria.

 

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