2 replies to this topic

[BMM]

Yesterday I bought a Drosophila hydei culture to supplement the diet of a few of my faster growing colonies. I know there are plenty of guides on how to setup a new culture, but I'm in a unique position and wanted to get opinions from people who have kept them before. After purchasing the culture yesterday, I realized that the company I work for makes their entire setup, save the fruit flies and the food medium. This means I can very easily get a hold of bits needed for new enclosures, and at whatever size I need at that. However I'm unsure of a couple of things: 

 

-Are the store bought setups optimum?

-Is the plastic netting inside these setups ideal to provide surface area for the flies?

-Is there a point at which an enclosure is too small or too large?

-How long does the food medium stay good?

 

Any answers would be welcome.

[BobJ]

I use empty plastic orange juice bottles connected by vinyl tubing to each other and to one end of the ant nest.  I don't use flightless fruit flies and I don't use any type of scaffolding for them to pupate on.  To get my flies I just mix up an applesauce based culture into an open container and place the container in the garbage can for a day.  I then transfer the culture into a new orange juice container to get the whole shabang rolling.  The fun part of this method is you'll never know exactly what flies you end up with, but it does become self sustaining right from the start.

 

And yes, an occassional fly will make the gauntlet through the solenopsis invicta nest into their open foraging area, but that is somewhat rare.  Most get captured and stacked in a pile by the ants for later use.  When I want to add another new culture I just add another orange juice bottle into the system and let the captive flies go to town on new food.  I keep the old bottles hooked up until it looks like there is very little activity left.  The flies pupate on the side of the bottle so it gets very hard to see through the plastic but you can shake it to see if there's many flies alive inside.

 

I didn't feed the ants anything but sugar water this past winter using this method.

[drtrmiller]

Compared to D. melanogaster, D. hydei are more difficult to culture (need more heat, time, etc.) and have lower yields due to their larger size.

 

The brands that use the small polystyrene tubes with mesh netting generally have very poor yields.  I don't recommend those.  Josh's Frogs has good cultures, though it is worth mentioning that every one I have bought from them over the years has been inundated with white, detritivorous mites.  Though non-harmful, the mites can be an annoyance if allowed to bloom in a formicarium with lots of unkempt organic detritus.

 

In any case, a culture is single use, and must be discarded after production ceases, with a couple dozen of the younger, healthier flies placed in a fresh culture if additional production is desired.