3 replies to this topic

[Spamdy]

I have a culture of Drosophila melanogaster. A few days ago, my workers started dying randomly. Then on one feeding I saw white salt like things on my fruit flies. I took some photos of the "mites". I've also noticed other weird things in the culture like small egg like microorganism, red pupae and more. If they are killing my ants, what should I do to fix the problem? Thanks in advance! 

Edited by Spamdy, November 8 2017 - 5:35 PM.

[Chicken_eater100]

i heard that lemons help with the mite infestations.  

[Spamdy]

i heard that lemons help with the mite infestations.  

Sorry I meant how should get rid of the mites in my fruit fly culture?

Edited by Spamdy, November 8 2017 - 5:41 PM.

[brgz87]

I did my PhD on drosophila and I can tell you that if you get mites you can trash your flies. We had to replace our entire stock because of that (nearly 1000 culture tubes). If you really want to keep your flies it's a bit annoying, you shoud change they're tube/bottle/container at least once a week. Ideally you should keep only the flies w/o mites but they are not easy to spot without a binocular