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How Long Does A Fruit Fly Culture Last?

triniian Apr 09, 2007 10:47 PM

Hello everyone. I am completely brand new to this. Excuse my ignorance.

I just recently bought a culture last week. I used at least 400 adults from the culture and made 6 additional cultures. In 5 days it seems this culture has rebounded to its original size. I can't believe it myself...

Anyhow, the container is almost completely covered in egg casings. Any idea how long a culture will last for? Any good tips to transfer adults to allow cleaning of this container? Should I not transfer since there are so many egg casings inside?

Thanks for any help!

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-Iman

1.1 BRBs (Ying and Yang)
1.1 JCPs (Striker and Sheila)
0.0.2 BPs (Spot and Speck)
5.5 Fish (Insert your favorite names here)
1.0 Miniature Daschund (Rue)

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Replies (5)

PHWyvern Apr 10, 2007 08:36 AM

Looking at the size of the cultures.. each one should last about 3 months (unless it crashes for some reason). Towards the end of the 3 months, if you see the media drying out (dry larvae tunnels), you can add very small amounts of water to freshen it up and it should hold long enough for the very last of the larvae in that culture to finish growing large enough to pupate.

Now, unless you have a ton of small herps or inverts to feed the fruit flies to, you should try to stagger the making of your new cultures. Make one new culture one week... wait 2 or 3 weeks (depending on how many animals you are feeding) and then make a second new culture, and so on. If you make a bunch of new cultures at one time, you are just going to wind up with millions of flies from all cultures at one time and no where to put them. As you found out, just because you removed the flies from the original culture to make new cultures doesn't mean you won't get any new flies from that original culture... the larvae are numerous and continue to develop and pupate into new flies.

I typically don't like the natural colored media as it can be difficult to see how many larvae you have until they are almost large enough and ready to pupate. I normally use the standard blue media from carolina biological and only use natural colored media when I have nothing else. If all I have is natural media then I'll add blue or green food coloring to the water before I add it to the dry media mix.. so that it helps make it easier to see the smaller larvae... off course the food coloring method makes the media look a bit gross (as it's not a true bright color) compared to the pre-colored types of media but it works for me.
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PHWyvern

triniian Apr 10, 2007 06:33 PM

Thanks a million!

This is exactly what I was looking to find out. I'll be getting in the neighborhood of 4 to 6 poison darts and that's it!

My cultures are in 32oz containers... do you think 6 is sufficient?

I was considering getting another culture next week and splitting it up 5 more times.

Thanks for the help!
-----
-Iman

1.1 BRBs (Ying and Yang)
1.1 JCPs (Striker and Sheila)
0.0.2 BPs (Spot and Speck)
5.5 Fish (Insert your favorite names here)
1.0 Miniature Daschund (Rue)

Loving to Learn
Learning to Help
Helping to Love

Stimulate debates, stifle arguments.
Please be nice always.

PHWyvern Apr 10, 2007 07:14 PM

>>My cultures are in 32oz containers... do you think 6 is sufficient?
>>

sufficient? You don't have enough frogs to feed that many flies to - 6 cultures going at one time is way too many. You only need to make 1 new culture every 10-14 days and even then you will likely have more flies than you can feed off. Remember.. even though you are only making one culture every two weeks, you still have your earlier cultures each producing tons of flies and will continue to produce flies until all of the media in them is used up.
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PHWyvern

triniian Apr 10, 2007 09:14 PM

Ha ha ha!

This is going to be fun!

Thanks for the info... better get on and get my froggies then!

Thanks for the help!!!


-----
-Iman

1.1 BRBs (Ying and Yang)
1.1 JCPs (Striker and Sheila)
0.0.2 BPs (Spot and Speck)
5.5 Fish (Insert your favorite names here)
1.0 Miniature Daschund (Rue)

Loving to Learn
Learning to Help
Helping to Love

Stimulate debates, stifle arguments.
Please be nice always.

PHWyvern Apr 11, 2007 09:46 AM

>>Ha ha ha!
>>
>>This is going to be fun!
>>
>>Thanks for the info... better get on and get my froggies then!
>>
>>Thanks for the help!!!
>>
>>
>>-----
>>-Iman

Yup lots of fun. I learned the hard way about producing more than needed LOL. Just keep a supplier on hand for emergency shipments in case you go through a period of culture crashes. It does happen sometimes. I myself don't need a lot of flies (as i have treefrogs that are able to eat 1/8-1/4" crickets too), but I usually have 4 staggared cultures going at any one time in case one or two cultures decide to go bad. I like to have the flies on hand since crickets grow too dang fast and the baby treefrogs can't eat them all before they are too big. Having the flies keeps the frogs happy until the next cricket shipment arrives which depending on the timing of the week could be overnight or as much as 5 days away. Of course I am expecting 4 ootheca from a preying mantis to be hatching soon, so I'll probably have to up my cultures to support those ravenous beasts lol.
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_____

PHWyvern

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