Looking for housefliy culture

[ShieldMantid1997]

I am looking for a cheap housefly colony that nobody wants. Any body have one?. PM me please with information.

 

[d17oug18]

What? lol.

 

[ShieldMantid1997]

I am looking for a culture of house flies that somebody is willing to sell to me.

 

[Termite48]

Breeders of houseflies sell either the spikes (ready to pupate) or the pupae which quickly eclose into adult flies. There are not cultures as in fruit flies where it is contained in a deli-cup. Maybe I am wrong, but this is what I understand and I am active in the acquiring of feeder insects. You can catch wild flies and culture them in a vessell but it is some work to keep up with it.

 

[PhilinYuma]

If you have just a few mantids, breeding flies would probably take more time and effort than it is worth. I have left instruction on grow to raise them here before, but suggest that you try 10G of pupae from Chuck at SpiderPharm. A major paty of your mantis keeping budget is often purchasing live food.

 

[ShieldMantid1997]

Ok thank you very much for your insight i appreciate it a lot, and i only have five so i guess its not worth it :/ But the thing is i only see the option to buy 100 at a time and i will probably on use about 30 a week and i read that after a week the number of pupae hatches start plummeting. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Ok thank you very much for your insight i appreciate it a lot, and i only have five so i guess its not worth it :/ But the thing is i only see the option to buy 100 at a time and i will probably on use about 30 a week and i read that after a week the number of pupae hatches start plummeting. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

No doubt there is a hatch drop off that increases with the time that the pupae spend in the fridge. I find that the best way is to let them sit out for a day or so before refrigeration, then to remove a portion to eclose, and continue on a daily basis. Letting the pupae get very close to eclosure before they are chilled seems to extend their life, but YRMV

I did notice that you are feeding your mantids slightly less than one fly per day. Do you supplement with other foods? Until fall has fallen ("season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and the end of the fly season") you can catch yr own and suppose, by that time, yr current mantids will be large enough to be knocking off a couple a day and/or you will have added enough to your collection to make a regular order worthwhile.

You are very smart to consider yr options now, though. Round about the time of the first black frost, I'm sure that a lot of mantiseers who catch wild food will suddenly have to start looking at cultured sources.

 

[ShieldMantid1997]

yes i do have other sources such as moths and crickets and some wild caught caterpillars. But the problem is there are no big gathering places of flies where i can put the lures. So i rely on moths for flying food. I have just tried putting the lures for flies out in my yard but i get no fly visitors to them. Any suggestion on a way to get more interest? (i use raw meat and vinegar).

 

[PhilinYuma]

yes i do have other sources such as moths and crickets and some wild caught caterpillars. But the problem is there are no big gathering places of flies where i can put the lures. So i rely on moths for flying food. I have just tried putting the lures for flies out in my yard but i get no fly visitors to them. Any suggestion on a way to get more interest? (i use raw meat and vinegar).

Usually, when the Old Hands give advice on here, it is well tested and worth trying. Ismart pos6ed a while back about keeping a pot with dry and wet (canned) dog (or cat, i guess) food. He suggested putting it in a shady spot and keeping it moist. I don't reall need to do this, but I put a pot like that in the shade provided by my table saw and it worked like a charm! Give it a try.

Two years back, I think, I gave a method of culturing bluebottle maggots outside that was so gross that no one who read it once will want to read it again

From about October to March, we get a lot of migratory turkey vultures who use the Colorado valley corridor. I spent hours photographing them, but I wanted some closeups. There is an old unpaved lane, a covered canal, and the last in the area, not far from Sunny's house, and I reckoned that if I tethered a (dead!) chicken there, I could get some pix when they came down to check it out. I trussed the chicken and applied it to a tether and put it in a plastic bag and left it on the patio to ripen up a bit.

Wow! did it ripen! Early on the morning of Photo Safari day, I went out and grabbed the bag. It fell apart and disgorged about 10,000 bluebottle maggots (no. I didn't count 'em) all over the patio. I cleaned up the mess and swabbed down the patio with bleach, but I didn't keep the maggots because they smelled so bad, and I never did get my vulture pix. So that's a way to culture BB spikes if you don't mind the smell!