breeding fruit flies?

[luna]

IME if you use potato flakes and add some brewers or nutritional yeast it works much better than straight potato flakes, sugar medium inoculated w bakers yeast. The FF's need the extra protein.

True you need some but I still wouldn't use too much of the yeast... according to Carolina Biological's manual for rearing drosophilia, "large amounts of yeast in a culture can produce enough CO2 to render Drosophillia sterile or even cause death. Five to eight grains of yeast per culture are sufficient." and when they are talking culture, they mean a vial about the size of a pill bottle. Yeast isn't going to add protein anyway.

I like the applesauce / fruit idea. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it... too busy following the exact recipes. Last cultures I made up I put in a few spoons of pear baby food that was just sitting in the pantry left here by a niece. The flies seem to love it.

 

[CURARE]

Hi,
for this big problem, take a 0,5l or 1L cup fill 4-5cm with a wet mix of 50% wheatbran and 50%smashed banana,set the drosos in and after2-3 weeks next generation hatchs.for the banana you can take also applesauce and for the wheatbran ,you can take oatmeal.i put also vitamins and calcium in, but that isn´t needed.wheatbran makes them grow faster ,then oatmeal. against gray horse/mold you can use vinegar or Nipagin ( that is chemical fungizid,you can buy at a drugstore),like before said ,i don´t use it ,with enough flies ,there will be no mold.that works ,now for years and is easy to buy.

 

[Vermis]

This one's been going the longest and so far I've managed to culture a bit of bluemold. Just like my attempts in the past.

I spoke too soon. I noticed maggots in it during the last week; since then I've watched the mould spread a little and then disappear, and watched more maggots crawling up the tub sides. Then something happened during the space of a few hours today (mass pupating time?) and the sides were almost completely covered by them. Made me do a double take, I can tell you.
Thinking about the potential number of flies, I might have to buy some new bugs to feed 'em to.

Maggots have started to appear in the potato culture too, so it's not a complete failure. Although I've now got myself some brewer's yeast, and I'm performing a little experiment with some basic medium recipes.

 

[lychas]

i just setup my culture with flies my mate gave me, any idea how long till i will get maggots? Then how long till the new batch of flies?

 

[lychas]

noone knows anything bout the fruitfly life cycle?

 

[ScorpDude]

Try this page for breeding fruitflies:

Breeding fruit flies

 

[lychas]

thanks for that

 

[Vermis]

Well this is weird. Of the few recipes I tried - commercial medium, cold potato, and boiled oats - the one with most and biggest maggots is the oats + baker's yeast culture. And that's a complete reversal of my (non) success with the original, larger porridge culture.

 

[titus]

Yeast of some sort is needed for fruit fly production, in most cases the adult flys will carry some with them from culture to culture. Use otmeal and some fruit ( apple sauce works well). To keep a good supply start 1-3 cultures a week at first, they can be kept up to a month. I'll also note that temps over 28c will cause males to become infertle.