Melanogaster super culture

[cloud jaguar]

I made a mel culture on 10/9 with my wife. It was one of the first ones we made and the recipe called for masa, applesauce, vinegar, and yeast. My wife mistakenly threw in A WHOLE PACKET OF YEAST. Of the two cultures we made at that time, one turned into a hard lump of slimy bread with zero fly activity and the other one seemed lifeless until recently when it appears to have lost most of its volume. Odd thing is that i never really saw any flies on this one and then i put a lid on it with no ventilation - i am out of the ventilated ones and needed it for something. A couple of hours later i noticed TON of maggots migrating up to the top of the deli cup. When i ventilated the lid they returned back to the bottom of the culture and the next day there appeared like 1/4 inch of pupae all around the coffee filter base that once held culture but is mostly empty. It has produced more maggots and pupae than i have ever seen in my cultures and i wonder if the yeast helped? Whatever the case, as they hatch out i add them to our other cultures or start new ones.

 

[Rick]

Sometimes you just get one that really produces well. I use a pinch of yeast in commercially made medium which is what I prefer.

 

[hibiscusmile]

It could be, but most likely what happened is that is where you first put in the fruit flies and they laid eggs in it first, so when u moved them, even if it was a day or so, they were getting older, remember a day for something that lives a month would be a lot, they were laying less and less as the days went on. Or when you moved them, they were laying but not as much, maybe I am thinking tired from the move. Just a thought, I really don't know anything!