Moving fruit flies

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jonpat83

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Has anyone got an easy way of transfering fruit flies into deli cups from their culture tub, ive put them in the fridge and they are still to active to handle easily and when I put them in the freezer there's a fine line between active and dead!

 
i had the same problem as you but i've found a good system. put the whole culture in the freezer for 2 minutes, 3 minutes max. DO NOT FORGET ABOUT THEM! i forgot about them one time, and left them in for 20 minutes and they all died. then just tap the culture upside down into a bigger plastic container and the fruit flies will fall into it. when they're in the plastic container, you can just tap the container each time they start crawling to the top. when i'm putting them into the mantid' containers, i just tap as well and have them roll down into their dungeon of death. :D

 
You must really be putting them in the freezer for a long time to kill them. I put em in there and in less than 30 seconds they are at the bottom not moving. In a few minutes they start moving around again. Have yet to kill any. But when I culture a new deli cup I just hit the side of the container the flies are in to get them down at the bottom and then just pour them into the open deli cup. Then quickly put the lid on. I don't cool them down just to put a few into a deli cup to start a new culture.

 
-or what i do... cut a lemonade bottle in half, stick in culture medium or mashed potatoe mix so it sticks in the bottom... tape up the two halves... and now you have a more convenient nozzle from which to pour them out... - great if you hav vials to tip them into...

either way, best thing to do is tranefer them to a TALL container... - then tap it on the ground and it gives you enough time to use a few before they would have climbed to the top again

 
Lately all the fuit fly cultures that I have received aren't so flightless and sticking them in the fridge (I don't have a freezer) doesn;t do much good. :x

 
try turning the temp down on the fridge???or stick em in a cooler with ice?

 
can you buy ice?, yeah it seems like a pain if you have to go through all that trouble. can the flies completely fly?if you're just trying to move the flies from their holding container to the mantid's container, a metod a friend of mine devised works really well.if the flies are in a deli cup. take a second lid that will snap on the cup, cut the center from it, and glue a funnel to the top( so the funnel is pointing up, out of the cup, you can use paper for this. then, cut a hole in the mantid's cup, that can be plugged with foam or cotton, Like Rick does. and when you need to feed the mantis, tap the ff cup, change to the funnel lid, put the funnel tip into the hole you cut in the mantid's cup and let the ff's walk/fly up into their "death chamber"tap the ff's cup again replace the solid lid , and plug the hole in the mantid cup. done. ff's will usually walk straight up, right up where you want them. hope that helps.

 
Ive taken to using the funnel method and it works really well, its cut my nymph feeding time by about 1/2 an hour!

Justin I know what you mean about fruitflies not being so flightless, every culture I buy is now half flightless and half fully flighted. What I do is put a little banana in some of the nymphs containers and leave them open slightly. The flies find their own way in and it saves you fiddling around trying to catch them.

 

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