Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I ordered and recieved 4 containers of fruitflies and a food/deli cup kit. This was 1st time I ordered from this place. The ad said no mites(which I never had before and a very nutricious food mix. Sold! Good ad I guess. They came on a day that it got to 92-the mail doesnt come until late if the day 3:30 pm usually. As soon as it came I opened it and all maggots, flies were not moving. Some excelsior on 2 of the 4 cups was between the cup and top and maybe 200 now dead maggots were loose in the box. I never had that happen before! I felt that something might have lived. Well waiting days for them to hatch I saw little brown mites 1000s of them on the cups white tops. I never had that before. I moved them out to a shed. 1 cup had maybe 50 flies, so I set up 3 new ones and set them up. Another cup had a bunch but they were all flying!!!???. I never had that before. The other 2 cups never had anything hatch out. I started itching and wanted to throw them out, but I want to see what happens, since I spent a small fortune on flies, kit,and shipping. The next day my fiance told me she was itching. I told her of the mites. I had bought from Mr Tresser in Miami years ago, but wanted to give this place a try, as the ad sold me. Any recommmendations on mite control-I dont want to kill off all my flies. And a new place to order from since I wont buy from this place again. Steve in Sarasota. PS someone hacked into my account/changed password but not screen name, and I had changed email addresses without changing it here, so I had to put a 1 behind my prior screen name stevemc is now stevemc1.

This was not Mr Tressers flies! I never had a problem with his flies-great guy, shouldnt have changed! I wont divulge the new sellers name here in public.

1. I suspect the fruit fly cultures were killed off by overheating in shipment. Are you certain the brown "mites" were actually mites? It's hard to tell, but with a dead fruit fly culture, a lot of little, more heat resistant organisms, which in a healthy culture wouldn't even be noticed, might take over the media. Actually, if you currently keep dart frogs, you could probably feed these "mites" off to them with no problem, then destroy the entire culture, just to get rid of a possible fly pathogen that might be passed on. If the "mites" are existing alone without benefit of living fruit flies, I think they may be something else.

2. If you have flying flies, the culture with flying fruit flies has been contaminated somehow along the way with wild flies. Either the original flightless flies all died and some wild types found their way in to propagate, or some wild ones got in and interbred with the flightless flies, producing a percentage of about 1/4 of flies that fly. I had this happen a lot when I was using lids with only paper towel or coffee filters over the air hole. Since I've been using either the foam plugs or the perforated tops with the net pasted into place, I haven't had a wild fly contamination problem.

3. If you order two or more types of flightless melanogaster fruit flies, mixing the different types may also result in a percentage of flighted flies. Some may have a gene for being totally wingless, others may have different genes that inhibit flight, such as crumpled wing, or muscle problems with flight, all on different alleles, that may combine when allowing them to breed together. Depending upon the various genetic combinations and dominance, mixing them is quite likely to come up with a number of fully flighted offspring.

4. I can promise, but not against my life, just because nothing is impossible, that yours and your fiance's itching problem has nothing to do with the incidental mites in the fruit fly cultures. Mites that affect fruit flies are not pathogens on human skin, nor should they cause any particular allergic reactions confined in a culture cup. There are thousands of species of mites, and most of them are specialists. You are both more endangered, allergic and itch wise, from the dust bunnies under the bed, full of microscopic mites, than from the visible mites in a fruit fly culture.

5. Hopefully our monitor/host can resolve your problem with the posting and e-mail, name changes problem. It may have been a simple error, not a hacker. I think the solution will be simple.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.

I am sure the flies died from leaving them in the mail truck all day and heating them up. And the flies I got were flightless M. hydei with wings, all the same. Maybe some got swapped at the place, maybe a few wilds got in(oh the flying ones are smaller)but I only opened them inside, and looked in. No holes in top, and it is the kind with 6 holes with mesh glued on. The mites are little mites, and they arent biting us or causing a reaction, but I can feel something on me, kind of an itch or feeling of them crawling on me. I dont know if they are fruitfly mites, as I never had any mites even with many years of keeping fruitflies. They are worse on the 4 original cups, and a little on the next cups, they are visible on the white tops. Another weird thing, a local guy I know, and I didnt tell him about it, he said he ordered FF from the same place and got mites, and threw out everything. I told him of my experience, and he said his wife felt something on her arms, as they were in thelaundry room. I am familiar with mites, as I have worked at a large reptile wholesaler and also kept reptiles and animals all my life-a long time! I have felt mites walking on me before, even rat mites. I know about Shell no-pest strips, and powder and liquid, and keeping the shelves legs in cans of oil and seperate containers in a rubbermaid of water and all the other things, but, it is weird to have all those things from a supposedly reputable dealer.

I know who the hacker is, his email was there. He used my screen name, but had changed my password. He is just a bad person, and I dont think he has used this board since. We had some dealings, We posted some stuff for sale her a long time ago on his computer and I suppose I got him on kingsnake on his computer or something, and he got in and changed my password. He had some frogs and knew nothing about them, and I set him up and gave him food- termites, crickets fruitflies, and set up tads when they laid eggs, and I raised them up. I thought he was a friend, but he was a crook and just a bad person. I expected this of him.

You should probably report the details in the "report abuse" option. This may keep it from happening again to you, and alert the moderators to the source and details of the problem.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.