Reptile & Amphibian Forums

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? This one has been going since March 25th. Any good tips to transfer adults to allow cleaning of this container? Should I not transfer since there are so many egg casings inside?

Any other tips any of you could offer?

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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Learning to Help
Helping to Love

Stimulate debates, stifle arguments.
Please be nice always.

Nice job,

I have 14 darts and they usually eat up about 1 can of fruit flies every 2 weeks. My cans usually last about 1 month until all of the culture mix is gone. They last quite a while but I keep double due to the weird weather in CA. If it gets too cold they do not produce at all. Good luck

cresty

When the cultures are spent, after about a month, or sometimes more, they are usually fairly well dried out. I dump the contents on the compost pile in the garden, wash them out, sanitize and re-use them. Some of the heavier plastic cups and lids can be microwaved, but the thinner ones will warp. The sponge plugs don't recycle as well, in my experience, but there is a very nice heavy lid with multiple holes with a tight mesh glued over them that can be washed and re-used several times. Ed's Fly Meat carries these.

Use active mid-age (about 15 days) cultures for renewing, as the flies in the older ones won't reproduce as well.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

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

I would start two new cultures on the first day that I opened an existing one. It seemed to work well. That way I had a schedule, as it is too easy for me to lose track of when I planned to start another culture or two otherwise. Another benefit seemed that the fruit flies were pretty balanced out with males and females and higher fertility levels.

I just dumped the culture cups when they were used up, never tried to recycle them. I figure that I saved a lot of money by making my own cultures, so I could afford to use new cups and lids every time.

The cultures didn't seem to do well when it got too hot here. I HEARD (don't know if it is true), that their fertility drops way down in higher temps.
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phflame
kingsnake.com host

Thank you both for the helpful info...

I split my single culture six ways on the first day each one is full of larvae squirming around...

Guess I'm in for more flies than I bargained for!

Thanks again!
-----
-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.

Always better to have too many than run out of them.

I only attempt to recycle the cups because I feel guilty about discarding so much plastic, and there are no recycling places within a 100 miles of here, which would take more gas to get to than it would be worth. We really have a catch 22 about this.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

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