Reptile & Amphibian Forums

we're just back from the san diego IRBA show. we picked up 1000 med. crickets, 1000 1 wk. old pinheads, a culture of house flies, a culture of fruit flies, 250 wax worms, and a used 20 gal. aqurium for the crickets(i like to see them).

i know how to keep the crickets.

how do i keep the waxworms? can i just put them in the refrigerator like i have done with the meal worms?

and the fruit flies and house flies? how should i keep them so they don't all hatch? refrigerator as well?

dennis

For the waxworms you can try a few things. They can stay in the fridge just make sure they don't get wet at all. They should be ok in there for a few months (I'm not sure exactly HOW long they will live in there, mine are usually gone after a few weeks). you can also keep some out and feed them and let them mate if you want. Mix a bit of water with oatmeal (just enough to moisten it all) then add some honey, and if you want you can also add some beeswax and/or pollen, if you can get some. then lay it out on wax paper, let it harden, crumble it up and put it in a glass jar. The ball up some wax paper and put that in as well, and add worms. You can either tape some screen over the whole thing and let the lifecycle begin, or if you want to fatten some up before feeding them you can drill some small holes in the lid and use that instead. I've not had sucess doing this after they've been in the fridge, but I was also making the food differently, so it could have been that.
As for the flies, I have NO idea. Just don't let them out, or your wife will kill you lol. one of my moths from the waxworms got out one night and my bf almost cried and went home lol he's terrified of anything buglike. Oh, and make sure you take out the garbage. ANY fly found in your house will now be your fault lol

The fridge tends to be too cold for waxworms and fly larvae or pupae. I had a lot of trouble with loss of insects so finally bought a small bar fridge to keep them in if I am buying the bugs in bulk like that. I was also rehabbing injured bats who eat about 25 mealies or other insects twice a day each! I can set the little fridge to stay mid 40's F which works much better keeping them long term, and I can keep it in my herp room too. There are several very small models in home improvement catalogs and appliance stores these days. Mine's about 2 cubic feet and works great! It was about $70 new.

The houseflies you can keep in the fridge (probaly in the warmest spot of the fridge-bottom of the door) and they'll last a while.... If you do it before they hatch, they last a little longer. Then when you pull them out of the fridge, they hatch in a day or two. I got 4 containers of flies in SD and put 2 in the fridge. The other 2 started hatching this afternoon. Once they hatch, you can still put them in the fridge, but try to finish them off in a week or so. I think much longer than that and they'll start to die. I've kept some hatched ones in the fridge for about 10 days and they were ok. To feed them off, just get them cold (fridge for 10 minutes if not already there) and they'll usually group together on the top of the container. Take the container quickly and put it in the screen cage and tap as many off the top as you want in there, and close it up and put the top back on. They'll begin to crawl in about 30 seconds after taking them out of the fridge and will fly after about a minute, so do it quick. If you're feeding to alot of cages, you can also just put like 15-20 pupa in each cage in a small cup and they'll hatch and get eaten when the time is right. I had a young panther that would just sit there and eat the flies right as they came out of the cup. It seems like younger chams like them more than older ones. I offer them to all my chameleons, but after about 5 or 6 months of age, they seem to lose interest. Also, add a pinch of a gutload (cricket food) and a piece of that cricket water or some small chopped veggies for the flies to feed on while waiting for death. Besides, newly hatched flies have absolutely no gut content and almost no nutritional value, so it'll help that. Are you trying to keep the fruit fly colony going or just keep the ones you have? Usually the vials will reproduce themselves until the meduim is gone at room temp. Are you going to make more vials? What species of fly did you get? Who from? American Cricket Ranch didn't have fruit flies Saturday but said they'd bring some Sunday. Are they for your flapneck?
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Tyler Stewart
Las Vegas NV
1.2 Nosy Be Panthers
2.2 Sambava Panthers
1.0 Tamatave Panther
1.0 Nosy Be X Unknown Cross
1.1 Veiled Chameleons
0.0.2 CBB Desert Tortoises
0.0.1 Sulcatta Tortoise

i got the FF from the kammers. the container just says flightless. and they are for the flapneck. also i figured i need the "know how" so now is as goods as any.

dennis

I'm still a little new to keeping fruit flies, but I think I've figured it out. I started with the smaller fruit flies, which I probably shouldn't have... I'm still waiting for more Hydei's in the mail from Wormman.com. But I got 12 wide mouth glass jars to do it in for now (more later). I use a recipe for the medium that was as simple as possible, involving 8 cups of potato flakes, 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar and a third cup of yeast (I used the kind for bread machines cause that's all I could find but it works). I mix all these dry things together. Then when ready to make it wet, get about an equal part of this dry mix and mix it with an equal part of a 1.1 water to vinegar ratio. So it would be something like 1 cup of the dry mix, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup vinegar. You may need to add a little water or dry mix to get the consistency right. It should be like slightly thick mashed potatoes. I've tried it a few ways, making it thinner and thicker. Too thin and the bugs stick to it and it gets runny after a week or so, too thick and the top layer dries and makes it hard for the maggots to move around in. I also tried it using only water (no vinegar) and it worked ok for a week but after that there was a layer of what I assume was water on top of the medium, probably killing all the eggs and eventually they all died. I think the vinegar keeps the consistency better and keeps the two liquids from separating. I get a small scoop of this mix and stick it in a CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN jar. I make it a little less than an inch deep. It shouldn't even settle... It should kinda just clump up at the bottom. I tap it on the floor and it'll make it level. Then I cut a few pieces of fiberglass screen about 2 inches wide by 4 or 5 inches long and put them in there pushed into the medium standing vertically. They can space themselves out on that and get a place to crawl. After about 2 weeks with the small flies you'll have more flies, and with Hydei's it's more like 3-4 weeks. You need to use some sort of cloth on top of the jar, like a piece of a T-shirt or a rag or something. I used a paper towel and somehow they got through it in 3 or 4 different jars, I don't know if it got wet and came apart or what. I keep them at room temp or cooler. I think at extreme temps, the meduim acts up. I have much more flies right now than I know what to do with and if anyone in the area wants any let me know. I'm just watching them die right now as nothing I have eats them. I'm probably producing around 50 flies a day right now in a few small jars. I have a few larger colonies in larger jars that haven't turned into flies yet, but when I get more Hydeis, I'm getting rid of all these small ones. Let me know if any questions. I might know the answers maybe not.
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Tyler Stewart
Las Vegas NV