Lots of dead fruit flies in the culture

[Sauromayne]

Hey Guys,

I went to feed Dante tonight and noticed that there were a lot of dead fruit flies in the culture. I last fed him on Monday and there were no dead flies.

My culture recently exploded. Last Friday I could only see maybe 10-15 flies and now since Monday I can see 100s of flies. I'm assuming this behavior is normal though, just this is the first culture I've had of this size as I'm new to this so not positive.

Is it normal for there to be some dead flies in the culture. If not, any ideas what might be wrong? Is it okay to continue feeding from this culture?

I bought it from local pet shop so not sure what they used for the media but I can ask tomorrow.

I attached some pics of the culture and the dead flies.

 

[Predatorhousepet]

Is that all the dead flies there were? As far as I can tell there is nothing wrong with the culture. When you get a population explosion like that it means the culture is healthy. Fruit flies go through all their natural life cycle in the culture. That means you will get dead flies from time to time, they have a very short lifespan.

The culture is started by placing 50 to 100 flies in the cup with fresh medium. The flies mate then lay eggs, those eggs hatch and turn into maggots and the maggots pupate then turn into adult flies. At some point the original flies the culture was started with are going to die, that's expected. Cultures generally last about a month and will have 2 to 4 explosions in population. When this happens I use the extra flies to start a new culture. The date on the cup it looks like the culture was started on June 26th so it's about halfway thru its viability. You'll probably get one or two more explosions in population then the culture will start to go down in yield until it finally dies entirely. Make a new culture before that happens so that you won't have to keep purchasing them, that gets expensive and fruit flies are ridiculously easy to culture.

 

[Sauromayne]

There may be a few more dead ones in there but that was the majority of them at least.

I'll look into doing the next culture myself.

Thanks for the info, I figured it was probably normal but just wanted to be sure.

 

[Darth Mantis]

When a culture has a lot of flies in it CO2 can build up and kill them. If you have a huge wave of flies that die all at once it may have been CO2 but the amount of dead in that picture dosent really look like enough to cause that kind of problem. The best way to prevent CO2 deaths (assuming thats what happened) is to get a more ventilated lids or to remove flies regularly so they dont have so many in at a time and to just open the lid to let the CO2 out but like Predatorhousepet said its normal to have dead flies since they dont live very long.

 

[Sauromayne]

There are definitely more dead here's a new picture. I think they are probably suffocating like you're suggesting.

So should I just poke holes in the lid of the culture or should I let some go?

 

[Darth Mantis]

As long as you still have enough flies to feed with it shouldn't be a problem but poking more holes could help but removing flies when there are a lot in at once will help for sure (just remember you cant release them outside). Generally speaking most people dont need the hundreds of flies that can be in a culture at a time but if you remove to many of the flies from the culture  at one time that might make fly amounts  go down since the adult egg laying population needs to be in the cup to lay the eggs. I keep 7 mantids right now and I keep to fruit fly cultures going at a time and dont worry about them killing themselves because even when most of them die from CO2 I still have plenty to feed with and if I dont more always hatch in just a few days anyway. Maybe you could find lids with bigger air holes with a screen or something to keep the flies in. I dont remove flies but to feed and I open the containers every other day usually and I rarely have a ton of flies die all at once but when I do I just feed with what else I have and wait for the next fly boom. If worst comes to worst you have to wait for some more flies to come but mantises dont really starve very fast so you should have plenty of time to either wait for more flies to hatch or buy more. You can also get pinhead crickets or something small like that from petsmart. petsmart also has little fruit fly cultures you could buy if it was really an emergency.

 

[Synapze]

Oops... I asked a question that has already been answered. Apparently I'm unable to delete a post.

 

[Predatorhousepet]

When you get a big bloom of flies just open the lid at least once a day to let the CO2 out. A screen lid won't work, the holes are too big and will let the fruit flies escape. Poking extra holes in a polyfiber lid is iffy, you have to be very careful to keep the holes small for the same reason. 

Besides letting CO2 out during a bloom, reducing the number of flies in that cup also helps. As I suggested before you can use the extra flies to make a new culture. If there are too many for you to possibly use just let the extras die off or you can take them out and freeze them. As mentioned if you choose to remove extra flies you want to be careful about how many you take out, make sure to leave enough for the culture to keep itself going.

As long as the culture is established and there are new maggots and pupae appearing I generally don't worry about how many dead flies there are. Towards the last half of the culture's lifespan getting lots of dead flies is expected. I just leave them in there. 

 

[PaxALotl]

Is that all the dead flies there were? As far as I can tell there is nothing wrong with the culture. When you get a population explosion like that it means the culture is healthy. Fruit flies go through all their natural life cycle in the culture. That means you will get dead flies from time to time, they have a very short lifespan.

The culture is started by placing 50 to 100 flies in the cup with fresh medium. The flies mate then lay eggs, those eggs hatch and turn into maggots and the maggots pupate then turn into adult flies. At some point the original flies the culture was started with are going to die, that's expected. Cultures generally last about a month and will have 2 to 4 explosions in population. When this happens I use the extra flies to start a new culture. The date on the cup it looks like the culture was started on June 26th so it's about halfway thru its viability. You'll probably get one or two more explosions in population then the culture will start to go down in yield until it finally dies entirely. Make a new culture before that happens so that you won't have to keep purchasing them, that gets expensive and fruit flies are ridiculously easy to culture.

Hi- A beginners question on the same topic, if I may:

So, if a new culture can produce 2 to 4 waves of new flies, does that mean that the entire life cycle of adults mating, producing eggs, maggots, pupae, and emergence of new adults happens each time? If so, I would need to always leave a small amount of adults in the culture to make sure the cycle continues, correct? 

Or is it 2 to 4 waves of eggs hatching from the original adults that laid the eggs in the first place? 

 

[Synapze]

Hi- A beginners question on the same topic, if I may:

So, if a new culture can produce 2 to 4 waves of new flies, does that mean that the entire life cycle of adults mating, producing eggs, maggots, pupae, and emergence of new adults happens each time? If so, I would need to always leave a small amount of adults in the culture to make sure the cycle continues, correct? 

Or is it 2 to 4 waves of eggs hatching from the original adults that laid the eggs in the first place? 

As the new flies emerge they will almost immediately start breeding. Even if you used all the adult flies in your culture, you would still have maggots waiting to pupate, but I would leave in some adults to keep the culture thriving. You want to make sure you always have a healthy backup culture ready just in case of a crash, or a source where you can quickly obtain another. Also, you can switch between the two cultures when adults get low in one until the next wave starts. 

 

[PaxALotl]

As the new flies emerge they will almost immediately start breeding. Even if you used all the adult flies in your culture, you would still have maggots waiting to pupate, but I would leave in some adults to keep the culture thriving. You want to make sure you always have a healthy backup culture ready just in case of a crash, or a source where you can quickly obtain another. Also, you can switch between the two cultures when adults get low in one until the next wave starts. 

Ok, since I'm hijacking the thread, here's another:

In the instructions I received, it said to mist the culture every day. But, that seems like it would really get humid in there, since the media is kind of wet already. Other instructions I found online says not to mist until it looks dry.

I haven't misted at all and it looks perfectly healthy. Any rules of thumb about when the culture needs a bit of moisture?

 

[Synapze]

Ok, since I'm hijacking the thread, here's another:

In the instructions I received, it said to mist the culture every day. But, that seems like it would really get humid in there, since the media is kind of wet already. Other instructions I found online says not to mist until it looks dry.

I haven't misted at all and it looks perfectly healthy. Any rules of thumb about when the culture needs a bit of moisture?

It's always been my understanding that the culture only needs moisture added when it looks dry. I've never had to mist any of my cultures and have never had any issues. So, I think I would stick with the "if it looks dry" rule of thumb.

 

[PaxALotl]

It's always been my understanding that the culture only needs moisture added when it looks dry. I've never had to mist any of my cultures and have never had any issues. So, I think I would stick with the "if it looks dry" rule of thumb.

Sounds good. So far, this is very much like aquarium keeping - there is a lot of info out there about how to make it work, but to really succeed you have to use your best judgement and figure it all out for yourself!