Care sheet for Flightless Fruitflies?

[AneesasMuse]

I just recently picked up a culture of flightless fruitflies cuz I have two really tiny slings that prefer them for now. Does anyone know what I can feed them? I'm thinking fruit... d'oh!... but should it be pieces or mush or fortified with supplements or what? What kinds of fruit are best? I have no idea and I don't want to buy a new culture every couple weeks... my bugs and geckos and fish and snakes and rattie kids are eating me out of house and home, as it is

Thanks!
Aminah

 

[sick4x4]

just leave them in the culture they came in and keep them at room temp...when i bought ff's i bought the tub thing sooo it was pretty self containing.....

 

[AneesasMuse]

what is the "tub thing"?

Mine came in a little vial with some blue stuff at the bottom and a little sponge for a top. I can already see little "maggots" in there, so I know they are breeding. I just want them to continue to do so, so I'm thinking they must need to eat and have access to some moisture... or am I way off?

Thanks, btw

 

[sick4x4]

the tub thingy is a pint sized tub which usually has several hundred ff larvae and ff adults..there is a paste that is kept for the nutritional needs and are self containing....soo im guessing the vial you got does the same...they dont reproduce because they are sterile..sooo im guessing the maggots you are seeing were in the culture already

 

[AneesasMuse]

That's odd. The package info suggests not feeding off all the flies at once, so that some can lay eggs and continue the culture. It even goes into their lifespan and the two common ff's that pet stores carry for feeders, etc.
I'll try to find the packaging and get the scientific name from it, so I can google some more. I get involved with culturing my pets' foods almost as much as the pets themselves.

 

[Mat]

Fruit fly larvae feed on the yeasts that grow on decaying fruit. Making up a feeding substrate for the larvae is pretty simple. The 'blue' stuff is basically something like oats or porrige mix which is used as a carrier for the fruit pulp and yeast - it is basically dyed blue to prevent it being mistaken for edible oat mix.

If I want to culture FF than I mix some mashed banana with some porrige oats and put it in a test tube or 35 mm film canister. Add some cardboard or wood so that it sticks out of the mix and give somewhere for the adults to land on and a place for the larve to pupate. Put this in a large, ff proof tank and add the adult flies. If you have room for several film canisters than you can rotate them round and remove them when most of the larvae have pupated.

There are plenty of websites offering ff advice - heres the first one I googled today - seems ok. http://www.anapsid.org/fruitfly.html

Regards

Matt

 

[AneesasMuse]

Awesome! Thanks, Matt

 

[bugmankeith]

I have purchased these kits before. Themesh looking thing is for the maggots to pupate on to become flies. The blue stuff may be food, but if your feeding off your remaining maggots soon, I would add a bit of peach or banana baby food, the maggots swarm over it. It starts to mold after almost 2 weeks so make sure your not going to be breeding them for very long if your gonna feed them that.

Or you could do what I did and move the maggots to a small tupperware container and feed them just the peach baby food, it's easier to clean in a tupperware container, and they'll have more room to pupate too.

I left the blue food in for a day and in the container they all moved to the peach baby food, allowing me to throw out the blue stuff without getting rid of too many maggots.

 

[Stylopidae]

the tub thingy is a pint sized tub which usually has several hundred ff larvae and ff adults..there is a paste that is kept for the nutritional needs and are self containing....soo im guessing the vial you got does the same...they dont reproduce because they are sterile..sooo im guessing the maggots you are seeing were in the culture already

The friut flies are not sterile. They will continue to breed until the mix...or whatever it's called is exhausted.

 

[sick4x4]

The friut flies are not sterile. They will continue to breed until the mix...or whatever it's called is exhausted.

are you sure? i checked on the label and it says the ff's that are produced in this tub are sterile????and can not fly??? is this just a California thing??? i talked to the reptile shop where i get them and he said that all the ff's he gets are like this????

 

[bugmankeith]

Sterile doesnt mean they cant fly, that varieties wings are smaller than normal, and I think are too weak to use for flight. That variety does reproduce though, by no means are they sterile, and they run fast. Think about it, if they were sterile most of the fly kits you would buy would be empty, because the original flies shipped in it would all die, they have to be fertile.

I purchased white eyed fruit flies, that flew like normal, and bred them with the red eye flightless fruit flies. Most of the offspring were flying white eye flies, and a few had the red eyes, it was a fun experiment to do, too bad the adult flies dont live that long.