7 replies to this topic

[Ants_Texas]

A couple questions about fruit flies.

1. Would you recommend D. Melanogaster, or D. Hydei?

2. How do I kill them before I feed a colony? Freezer?

[Kevin]

1) Whatever is at your local pet store.

2) Your fingers.

[Yuki]

There's plenty of information on the difference between melanogaster and hydei, but iirc melanogaster is smaller but breeds faster, while hydei is slightly larger but breeds more slowly.

I recommend freezing the extras so they don't soil the colony medium.

[Loops117]

I would freeze them. Get yourself a 32 or 64oz deli cup and lid. Pour the flies you want to feed to your ants into the new cup, and freeze them. If you use your fingers, you'll end up pushing out extra protein the ants could eat.

 

Also, i have always used D.hydei. I've never been able to purchase D.melanogaster locally.

[XZero38]

I've used just the flightless fruit flies from petsmart. I've created my own culture for them in some pint size mason jars they breed pretty quickly so I'm not in any need to buy more. I've given the fruit flies to some of my species live which would be my larger species, for my smaller species such as tetramorium and solenopsis molesta i freeze them first and let them thaw for a couple minutes before dumping them into the outworlds

[Nathant2131]

These two exact questions were asked recently on the forum. Doesn't hurt to do a quick search on the forum.

http://www.formicult...ter-or-d-hydei/

Edited by Nathant2131, July 13 2017 - 11:41 AM.

[Loops117]

These two exact questions were asked recently on the forum. Doesn't hurt to do a quick search on the forum.

 

There's a MUCH better alternative to just telling someone to do a quick search and not giving an answer.

[Ameise]

Yeah, don't say "search for it". That and some related answers bug me on a lot of forums - I end up in threads often because I searched for the topic on Google, and then see a post saying 'search for it' or 'rtfm' or similar, and the forum itself is broken or those old threads were deleted. You aren't just helping the person asking - you're helping anyone in the future who has a similar/the same question.

Also, note that a lot of ants reject/dislike frozen foods (even if thawed)... though I have been unable so far to find a good way to 'live-kill' things like mealworms - even CO2 suffocation for hours didn't work - they writhed violently, stopped moving altogether... but once the CO2 dissipated after 6 hours (I turned the valve off) they slowly came back. Might try heat.