Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have any good sites or information that would help me with culturing fruit flies? How difficult is it, and how quickly does a culture replenish itself? Thanks for any help.

Ryan

amphibiancare.com has an article about how to do it. here's what you need and how to do it.

tall delicup and lid or canning jar with a coffee filter
potato flakes and white vingear
thats it

first get a culture
put about .5-1 in of potato flakes in
put half water, half white vingear (mold inhibitor) in with it until it's very moist
write date on top of lid
put 20-40 flies in new containter
shut it

from adult fly to egg to adult fly takes about 3-4 weeks with Drosophilia melaoogaster and a week or two mroe with d. hydei.

good luck and please feel free to contact me at otis07-@hotmail.com if you have any more questions.

Both Ed's fly meat, http://www.edsflymeat.com and Saurian at http://www.saurian.net have great starter cultures, complete with containers (recyclable) and escape-proof, ventilated lids, as well as different strains of flightless fruit flies and advice. I've used both, and still use them in lieu of making up my own. Raising fruit flies, although not rocket science, can be a bit frustrating at first, especially when you misjudge how many you will need and how often to re-culture them, and dealing with occasional total crashes of a culture or more at the wrong time of the year when nothing else is available.

I would recommend going for a dependable start, rather than fooling around with the 101 home recipes for fruit fly media in a Mason jar and coffee filter ventilation system,--at least as a first trial. After that, experiment and decide the ultimate economics of doing your own vs. paying someone else for more or less fool-proof systems that you will also learn from. In doing your own, it may get discouraging when the little fruit fly larvae manage to eat through the coffee filter and there is a general jail break, as well as an invasion when wild flies get in to interbreed, to cause a nearly fully flighted second culture to emerge, and you have them all over the house, in your ears and salad. Not that this is a fatal experience. I've been there, done that, just told guests that those black dots crawling in their salad were just extra lively fresh pepper, or to at least try to imagine that they were.

Fruit flies pose no danger to health, but they can be very annoying to some people with special personal and social sensitivities, who don't particularly care to have them crawling up their noses, clogging up the computer keys and gathering together for a general assembly over the fruit salad.

So unless you have a great relationship with your spouse who is also casual about home made fly cultures, start with the commercial sources, learn a bit, then go more cheap and home-made from there.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

4 D. auratus blue
6 D. galactonotus pumpkin orange splash back
7 D. imitator
6 D. leucomelas
6 D. pumilio Bastimentos
4 D. fantasticus
6 P. terribilis mint and organe
4 D. reticulatus
4 D. castaneoticus
2 D. azureus
4 P vittatus
2 P. lugubris