Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my chameleons seem to be outgrowing fruit flies so i thought it would be a good idea to make a house fly culture but i looked in a few places and could not find anyone that sells them so i was wondering if any of you guys made and fed house fly cultures to your chameleons and if so how do you like them. is there anywhere that sells them or a website that could tell me how to make one?

awhile ago I asked a zoology fiend at UNH about raising house flies and here is his response to me:

"We have raised house flies and other dipterans in the past, but, other than Drosophila, we've found it rather messy to do, though easy. If you simply catch a few house flies, blue or green bottles, etc. and put them in a cage like the one you had the late Stella in, along with sugar, a container of water (with wood chips in it so the flies don't drown when they go to drink), and a can of cat food or something comparable, the
flies will eat sugar and cat food, lay eggs in the cat food, and then you'll get a load of maggots growing in the cat food. That's when it gets messy and smelly, but as I say it is easy. What we do now is order house fly or blow fly pupae from Carolina Biological Supply and wait for them to emerge. It's less messy and far less smelly. We also raise fruit flies in
the usual manner and that's not messy either (to feed very small spiders).
Good luck with your chameleon. Mark"

The cage he refers to Stella being in (she was a spider of mine) is a 12x12 energing cage from Bio-Quip. Personally, raising house flies quickly became not an option(!) but you might want to check out Carolina Bio for maggots (EEEEWW!)

hope this helps!

lele

man the timing on this question couldn't have been better! does Carolina Biological Supply have a website and if so could you list it for me?

thanks
dennis
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compasscreek backcountry adventures

heres the link to the website you were looking for
https://www3.carolina.com/

.
www3.carolina.com/

that's what I get for spending time on other forums

Niles Biological sells some stuff, too. They generally sell to teachers so it is small amounts but check them out anyway

lele
Niles Bio -Animalia

I stumbled across this company that sells house fly pupae by the ounce (2000 house flies per ounce, I think!) at a reasonable price. They prefer larger orders, I think their minimum order is 2 ounces. With shipping, these 2 ounces (about 4000 houseflies) costs about 11.50.
They ship the pupae via USPS priority mail in a cardboard mailer, using a pvc pipe section as a spacer (so the flies don't all get squished in the mail. And you need to get various containers (ie deli cups) for your house flies, as they simply ship the flies in a cloth bag. You end up with a good number of squished pupae in the mail, and you have to scramble to find good containers if you didn't plan right (I did this!), but you can't beat the price!
Click here to visit skipio's website.

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Victor Gomez
gomezvi.tripod.com/sdchamkeepers/
gomezvi@yahoo.com