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LOOKING FOR Bluebottle Flies

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I get most of my feeders here: www.grubco.com

 
Fishing/tackle/angling shop will sell the maggots, just leave them in a dark cupboard for a few days! If warm, in a few days or so they will be adult flies!

 
Trojon, I figured tackle shops would have it, but I can't find any around here. I called Wal-Mart, since I know they stock Canadian nightcrawlers in small mini fridges, but alas no fly maggots.

I did, however, place an order with Rebecca through mantisplace. :rolleyes:

 
how do people culture blue bottles cleanly?
i cant see it being worth it..for how cheape casters are at fishing shop its cheape enough to hatch a load and feed them honey.i get a massive bag for 5$..enough to last me ages.

 
I kept my batch of pupae from Rebecca (thanks for the other sources too guys who posted) in the fridge, and took them out for three days, and 12 metamorphosed. A day later and none of their wings have fully uncurled, but I have them in an 20 oz. cup with a slab of raw kielbasa from the freezer, and some honey in there. How long can I expect the adults to live?

 
I kept my batch of pupae from Rebecca (thanks for the other sources too guys who posted) in the fridge, and took them out for three days, and 12 metamorphosed. A day later and none of their wings have fully uncurled, but I have them in an 20 oz. cup with a slab of raw kielbasa from the freezer, and some honey in there. How long can I expect the adults to live?
i do not recall the time, however mantisplace has a feeder insect care page you can check ... i thought i saw how long they live on there .. if not my apologies for wasting your time ... :)

 
so basiccally you buy loads of maggots wait for them to pupate and then stick em in da fridge and take them out whenever you need them, but how can you be sure they will hatch that day or do you take a lot out and keep them in a tank with the food and use them that way?

 
so basiccally you buy loads of maggots wait for them to pupate and then stick em in da fridge and take them out whenever you need them, but how can you be sure they will hatch that day or do you take a lot out and keep them in a tank with the food and use them that way?
pupa magots that u have put in fridge when u take them out there not going to hatch in 1 day..more like 3 days ..

 
so basiccally you buy loads of maggots wait for them to pupate and then stick em in da fridge and take them out whenever you need them, but how can you be sure they will hatch that day or do you take a lot out and keep them in a tank with the food and use them that way?
No. You keep the maggots in the fridge and take however many you need out and let them pupate. Then when the flies are running low you get out more maggots and do it again. You keep the maggots in the fridge. For me they take 5-7 days to hatch.

 
Blue Bottle Flies Blue Bottle fly larvae (re: maggots) can be stored in the refrigerator, but REQUIRE only minimal air, so keep them in the shipping container, in the medium they shipped in. When receiving Blue Bottle maggots, you can refrigerate the maggots and they will go into a dormant state, and will be viable approximately 2 months under refrigeration. Take out what you want to pupate; leaving them in the container (and in the stinking sawdust medium) they came in, at room temperature. Once they pupate, keep out what you want to feed off, and they will hatch in about 5 days. Due to the nasty smell, once they pupate, dump the pupae and media into a course strainer to separate most of sawdust medium from the pupae. Put the rest of the pupae back in the refrigerator, refrigerated pupae are viable for about two weeks. The adult flies will live about 7 days with honey and water.

Once the pupae are running out, take out more maggots to repeat the process again. The challenge is in estimating the pupation time, and hatch time, without running out!

Please see Cup-O-Flies Hatching Container.

(Source)

There's an excerpt from mantisplace. Thanks for pointing that out.

 
Yep. Mirrors what I said.

 
I will tell you in my experience with them (Yen has had them longer, I used him as our guinea pig) No offence ment & none taken, (but I digress) ha ha, I take them and put them in the cup o fly container (really I don't because I am using one that I made on a much larger scale due to Bugatorium mantis explosion) but theory is the same. I use paper towell folded in fours and put my pupea on it, in about 3 to 4 days they all hatch. I have in one container my fly food, in another wood chips with a paper wick for water draws and in the other with the paper towells the pupea. This cuts down immensely on the smell. As long as no water get on the old pupea there is basically no smell. The water splashing around was the problem, and I will say, my first order of bbs hatched and lasted until yesterday, when I got tired of them and put them in garage to get cold and spooned them into new container so I could clean this one and reuse. Ok I just looked at my first order and it was dated nov 14th. So they lasted till the 3rd of dec. That was about 19 days from pupea till I scooped them out. So if I would of left them in there we could say possibly they lived almost 3 weeks in the container with the fly food and the water system. I am trying to make one available on the site and hopefully it will be availabe soon. I have the wood chips available too. But I digress again! ha ha (Sophia, Golden girls) :p

 

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