:lol: that would be me!
Interesting. I plan on making my own mashed potatoes soon and trying them instead of the flakes. They should be cheaper and provide more consistency. I wonder if anyone has ever given up raising mantids so that they could just concentrate on raising fruit flies?With hydei, I discovered that the potato flakes made all the difference. I always got the cheap kind, but not all cheap kinds are the same. There was this one kind that was giving me huge success. When it ran out, I used another kind and didn't work at all.With that going on with the hydei, my melanogaster cultures experienced no difference.
When I started this hobby roughly 3 months ago I got my first FF culture from a reptile shop down the street. They charged me $14.95 for a 32oz FF Culture. I still have it and it's still going. No, not as strong as it was originally going and actually.. it doesn't smell bad at all. It was producing a not-so-great number of fruit flies and the lid and the sides of the cup were so dirty, I could barely see inside. So, I pulled out my foam plug and used my misting bottle to spray inside of the fruit fly culture to get some of the gunk off. It actually worked OK. No, it wasn't perfectly clean but... it did clear it up quite a bit. More interestingly, the water caused the fruit fly culture to re-explode with life. I found a few days later that the culture was filled with baby fruit flies! It's never been back to Day #1's population count but it's still alive and I like to use it first before I hit up my new culture.Interesting. I plan on making my own mashed potatoes soon and trying them instead of the flakes. They should be cheaper and provide more consistency. I wonder if anyone has ever given up raising mantids so that they could just concentrate on raising fruit flies?
Yeah! But Methyl Paraben is pretty expensive! Don't know how well the vinegar works. I'll try it with (real) mashed poatoes and see!Mold inhibitor: Methyl Paraben or vinegar!
You can get it at just about any supermarket that sells regular flour.Hey, can you buy Masa at king soopers or safeway...never looked ?
[SIZE=14pt]Hey Phil did you every find anything out about the vinegar, also are you still useing this same way of makeing culture?[/SIZE]Some while ago, Christian mentioned using vinegar in his hydei cultures. Mija and I have used this routinely with no spectacular results and last month when the issue of "vinegar flies" came up, we wondered if he was using "old fashioned" vinegar, so recently, I bought a bottle of "cloudy" vinegar from a health food store with the "mother of vinegar," which contains the microbial culture that converts alcoholic apple cyder to vinegar. Nowadays, cyder vinegar is filtered and pasteurized before being bottled for supermarket stores. I got a pint (~1/2 liter) for about $6.00 and titrated the top fluid off and used the gunk at the bottom. The medium consisted of potato flakes, brown sugar and two mushed bananas to make eight cultures. I added about 1 tablespoonful (15ccs) of the vinegar to the top of the medium and let it soak in. Each culture also got a thin slice of apple and a sprinkle of dried yeast. I prepared eight pots, four of "pure" mels and four "pure" hydei from bought stock. Three of each species had the vinegar added and one did not. The flies were introduced on the third of this month.
The hatch was a huge success, one of the best I remember, but the mels in the vinegar-free pot did as well as those that had it!
The situation was different in the hydei series. Here, the hydei in the three pots with vinegar had all eclosed yesterday, after only eight days, while those in the control pot are all still in the larval/pupal stage with a preponderance of the former. This, too will yield a good number of flies, but the vinegar seems to cut down substantially on the life cycle of this species, at least in culture.
I'll repeat the process today with a variation. I shall set up another eight pots as before and introduce the flies tonight (so as to prevent the chances of conmtamination). Last time, though, I let the pots stand for two days while awaiting a shipment of fresh flies, so I shall set up another eight pots and let them stand for two days before introducing the flies. It may well be that I have accidentally discovered a method of speeding up the flies' (particularly hydei) life cycle!
Incidentally, Christian, if you read this, can you tell us what type of vinegar you are using and what success you are having with your hydei cultures??
No. Masa can be made from a variety of cereals, corn, wheat and maize, but it has to be treated with slaked lime. Don't even try it!Hey,If i grind cornmeal into a fine powder, will that essentially be masa?
I've used plain cornmeal and it worked fine.Hey,If i grind cornmeal into a fine powder, will that essentially be masa?
Thanks Phil for the very informative answer , way to be educational! I've been using Orin's staple recipe and it seems to be doing well. I'll just stick to that for now. I've only got 7 nymphs whom i feed every other day so it ain't too bad. Anyway, Thank you very much Philinyuma, very much appreciatedNo. Masa can be made from a variety of cereals, corn, wheat and maize, but it has to be treated with slaked lime. Don't even try it! If you keep a number of nymphs, you will be making up pots of ff formula every week, at least. You want the process to be as simple as possible and the materials to be easily available. I still think that it is hard to beat Orin's formula in the sticky at the beginning of this section, though you can make the procedure even simpler -- at a price -- by buying a prepared medium like that sold by Carolina Biological. One item that might be useful and is only mentioned by Hibiscusmile, is brewer's yeast (not to be confused with active yeast that is always used). This has been used by labs that need ffs for nearly 100 years.
Alright, Thank you berry much AmandaI've used plain cornmeal and it worked fine.
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