Thank you for this quick and easy tutorial. Some other videos were 17+ minutes and I didn't know if I had it in me to watch a documentary on the whole process 😄 This was just what I needed. Thank you again.
Lol....tried making a culture like this a long time ago for fish food. Apparently something went wrong and the next generation of flies somehow re-evolved back their wings, so when I opened the container they all started flying everywhere 😂
tea wrecks Most commonly, one single wild fly gets in, and since functional,wings are a dominant trait, in a week or so, there are all sorts of heterozygous flies with functional wings. It may also be a throwback, but that is probably much more rare. 🤣👍
tea wrecks I wouldn’t be too surprised. Another possibility is that the flies might lay eggs on the lid, and if there is just a tiny imperfection in the mesh, the tiny larva could work its way in.
tea wrecks I wouldn’t be too surprised. Another possibility is that the flies might lay eggs on the lid, and if there is just a tiny imperfection in the mesh, the tiny larva could work its way in.
This is great. I'm here because my jumping spider , Punk, prefers the flies fed on this medium. The ones that I got at a local dealer lived a long time in the terrarium and the spider rarely ate them. He wasn't slow due to the season either. He also has been making more webs. I feel like he's finally getting the nutrition he needs. Thank you!!!
Hi! I am also going to keep these for a jumping spider. Any recs on how to not overdo it seeing as they don’t eat too often? Feel like I would have way too much flies
Could someone help me? --- I have tried to do this (with another basic recipe on UA-cam), and I had heaps of white worms come up the side of the container, and also on plastic scrap 'filler' in the middle . But they were quite small, about half the size of the shop culture worms. They eventually died and went brown, and there are no pupa, so something is wrong. The original flies are still alive in there, and the bottom mix looks fine, with no mold or darkening...The top is ventilated nicely, and temperature has always been moderate. No sunlight, just room lighting. Thanks!
@@Aquarimax Many thanks for replying! Yes they are melano's. The flies I used to start the culture were bought (as a working culture) from the pet shop. The white worms were twice as big as my failed culture. Yes I've seen the zillions of pupae in the vibrant shop culture, watching how they change and become almost "see through" (instead of dark brown) when the fly has hatched out etc. My failed cultures have just lots of dark-brown dead worms everywhere....Possibly 2 empty pupae which are quite small.....
@@Aquarimax Both those are ok ...I'm wondering if there was too much cinnamon in the mix and the poor worms fled as soon as they could! It did smell strongly. I'll try a modified mix (uses potato flakes/sugar/milk powder) with less cinnamon and vinegar...Thanks!
I'm glad there are more people that think like me. Lmao. They're fruit-walks!!! I used to pull the wings off of flies when I was a kid and call them walks.. Also, after you kill a fly it becomes a "flew".. lol I'll leave now
so I have to start a new culture every month? I'm doing research on starting a tree frog tank and a little stumped on feeding. fruit flies seem to make the most sense
I am not sure what fly larvae are in my soilless culture of grindal worms but they resemble fruit flies when they do mature. I dropped in some of the pupa and my dwarf puffer found a new favorite snack.
_Paws_ If you can’t beat ‘em, feed ‘em! 👍 most likely they are fruit flies, phorid flies, or fungus gnats. In any case, it sounds like you found a good way to keep their numbers down. With grindal,worms, I have found that plugging all vent holes with filter floss keeps all of the little flies out...but once they’re in there, I usually use the immersion treatment to get them out...
Aquarimax - they really were fruit flies, the flying kind, the larvae were as big as those by fruit flies. They seem to do well with just wet fish flakes; the container has paper towel to let air in. It smells like soy sauce for some reason; the fish flakes gives off a sweet like bread aroma in another container which also with grindal worms. The seller of grindal worms must have not realize they were in there.
_Paws_ That seems to happen often...if you feed off the larvae very aggressively you may be able to eliminate them, as long as adults aren’t getting back in.
Creepy as hell thinking of the idea of some super-uber advanced alien species conquering us and culturing us in the same type of farming technique for their feeding purposes. x.x
I made a batch of repashy Superfly because I bought a culture of fruit flies and when I got it already had a lot of flies. But then I found out that this was the flies he used to start the culture so I don't think I want to seed from those but the new flies can I freeze my culture and then thaw out when ready to add flies?
vanillacarnivore I just throw the whole container in the trash. If there a lot of viable flies in it, I will sometimes feed those to my chickens first. They love them.
when you say discard after 1 month, do you mean discard the old culture container, or discard the entire line of cultures entirely? As in, acquire a new culture and restart the process? Do you know what I mean?
@@Aquarimax ah yes of course! i thought maybe you were referring to the mites transferring to new cultures, but that's why you do away with the month old culture. understood! Great video dude thanks for this, I'll be using it to support my young ant colonies!
I have never tried wheat bran...I have used recipes that use semolina instead of potato flakes. The cinnamon is included as a mold retardant, so I don't think the powdered sugar would have the same effect, but there are lots of DIY medium recipes out there, so it might be worth a try.
I have 2 baby north american green treefrogs and they don't seem interested in anything I offer them. I make sure they could eat it. but I was looking for flightless fruit flies. where did you get yours?
brandon shafer I purchased my initial stock at a local pet store if I recall correctly. It's not always easy to find this species (Drosophila melanogaster) in big box pet stores, but many times they will carry a somewhat larger species (D. hydei). If you can't find them locally, dart frogs websites like www.neherpetoculture.com and www.joshsfrogs.com have both species available. I hope you are able to find some! Springtails are another good food to get small froglets eating.
I'm noob at this i want to feed these guys to my ants but i want to know where do you get these flies from? (when you are making first "cup") do you get them from wild and if so how do you catch them? PLEASE ANSWER
Bosnian Mapper I bought these flightless from a local pet shop, but you can also order them online from dart frog breeders and other establishments that sell live foods. I don't recommend using the flighted wild flies, as they are too difficult to keep contained.
www.fruitflyshop.com/shop-flies.html is who i use, they r great and FAST and I have never had a single problem with them. Plus they have other feeders to choose from
Erik Iacopelli weve ordered 2 seperate wingless fruitfly cultures from Joshs Frigs and they get shaken in transit so bad the flies and larva die. We have 3 mantid and hunt for ants and flies and rip the wings off to feed them. Its very discouraging
Pet Craz Bettas love them. A wide variety of fish enjoy them. I have fed them to guppies, goldfish, cardinal tetras, bettas, white clouds, etc. I would say any fish that will feed from the water surface that is large enough to eat them and not so huge that it doesn’t notice them will probably eat fruit flies. 👍
Great video! i got a small fruit fly culture with my pet ghost mantis, and just moved it into a slightly larger container. I made sure to dump a lot of the original medium into it and also added a lot of my own, but I kind of 'winged' making it-- we didn't have a lot of the things from recipes i found online. since then all the little maggots have moved out of the medium and are chilling out on the sides of the culture, is this ok? :/
+mouse264 That is usually a sign they are going to pupate, and it is probably ok. When I start a new culture, though, I never use any of the original medium...just the flies. Otherwise, you can have problems with mold/mites.
Hello, I just recently got everything, but im missing one last thing, can you tell me the specific store to get excelsior?? I just moved to Houston and I have no idea where to get them, thanks!
If the culture is still producing flies, (which it often is) you can start new cultures with those flies on fresh food in a clean container. Keeping the culture too long often encourages mites to colonize it. You can keep that culture separate from others , so that mites does not move from it to other and continue to feed from it. But at some point you’ll need to throw it away.
Andy Lin That is a great question! I've never tried it, but if the acidity is around 5%, I see no reason why it wouldn't work. If the acidity is too high, you could try diluting it with distilled water. It is worth a try.
if your culture "population" has evolved to have wings again; is there a way to reverse them back to wingless? Got some evolution happening in my culture and I would rather not buy a new culture to start over but it seems like I might have to because they almost all have wings now. It has been years since I have bought a culture.
Unfortunately, this can happen when one wild fly enters the culture, as the wingless trait is recessive. Careful breeding of any wingless specimens you do have left, and culling winged descendants, could result in a wingless culture again, but to be honest, it will likely take far less time and effort just to buy a new culture.
I made a culture and I can see a ton of fruit flies that have died on top of my medium. I only made it yesterday! Is it possible they suffocated because there were too many?
@@Aquarimax The medium is more like a very soft / malleable play dough, a bit dryer than in your video but still smooth. The lid I used was one of those plastic cup lids with a single hole at the top, and I'm thinking maybe it was too small a hole.
Audrey Rose I have given them to my goldfish in the past, and they gobbled them up. It might take them a few tries to figure out they are food, but they should learn to like them. 👍
Sara Crawford great question! It can be done, I have done it successfully, but if possible, it is better to use flies from a culture in its prime...not too early on, not too late. Too early and you end up selecting for explosive, short-lived cultures, too late, and the risk of passing mites to the new culture increases. But if all you’ve got is an older culture, it can work. 👍
When people add vinegar and cinamon powder it is to prevent mould growing and destroying the culture, people aslo add yeast and I think this is what might give you the "cheesy smell", not sure though.
+J Butera Excellent! Apple cider vinegar is a logical choice, as are the algae wafers in place of the spirulina. I hope the culture continued to thrive!
So I don't have any flies to start with... And in my town we don't have flightless fly cultures... I might have to just breed ones with wings, wouldn't know how to transfer them though
I bought some "flightless" fruit flies. After a month they seemed to learn to fly! I opened their container and several "flightless" flies took flight and flew away Anyone have any idea how? Were they bred to have weak wings and then with time bred back to the flying type? Did the first generations simply noy have their flying certificates? What's up with my flies?
Firstname Lastname the genes for flightlessness are recessive. What sometimes happens is that one flighted fly of the same species makes its way into from the wild, it interbreeds with the flightless flies, and its offspring can then fly.
"drosophila melanogaster" can learn to fly when a wild fly go to in your culture OR when the temperature is high (next gen will recover the wings). Maybe use "drosophila hydei". The wingless species can't recover the wings if the temperature is high.
Hi. Thanks for the video. Fruit flies cannot be bought in Norway so I need to make my own cultures. We don't have potato flakes. Are there any other possible alternatives? Thanks for any help :)
Steve Boutcher do you have semolina/farina? (Ground wheat hearts). That can work as a basic culture medium. Or you could order Repashy or another commercial medium.
My fruit fly cultures tend to always turn out in a way where the flies don't emerge from the pupate stage. It's as if they die inside the shell. Any suggestions on what I should do?
@@Aquarimax Thank you for your comment. This is something I've considered as well. Recently I've started to spray water inside the container if I don't see condensation on the walls. Is there a way to know whether a culture is too dry/moist? Most of my fruit fly cultures end up with hundreds of larvae that eventually climb to the top of the container and begin their metamorphosis there. However, rarely flies emerge from the pupate shells.
haltsinberg I rarely see condensation on the walls of my successful cultures, but it is possible for a culture to get too dry or too moist. When you mix the medium, is it more soupy or more lumpy? I have occasionally seen what you describe...usually when the culture temperature is too low. What temperature range are you working with?
@@Aquarimax i usually go for more soupy, that is, that the surface of the medium will even-out after stirred. I have no heating for the cultures, I keep them at room temperature, so about 24-27C depending on the season/weather. I've noticed that sometimes the cultures do better when I put the container in a terrarium where my frogs are. I've thought that this was because of the moisture, but Im not sure.
haltsinberg The temperature range is appropriate. There will be some tweaking of the moisture levels in your medium based on relatively humidity in the room, etc. I would suggest trying to vary and document moisture levels of the medium for a while. Sometimes high humidity in the air, but lower moisture content in the medium, can be helpful. That may be why your cultures do better in the frog vivarium.
Patricia Daughdrill If cultured correctly, they have a definite smell to them, not delightful, but not really noticeable unless you're working directly with it. The cinnamon helps some.
I never thought of feeding these to fish! Are they nutritious? Not to be annoying by advertising or anything but I'd appreciate if you guys check out aquaforums.net/ It's a forum I stared all about fishkeeping. Its got some unique features like awards that other fishkeeping forums don't have. It even has a category where you can promote your videos and I will be adding a topic on culturing flies to the live foods/culture topic!
Earl Spencer Mutations occurred in lab specimens, and since the flightless flies were easier to handle, they were preferred. They soon made their way into the reptile/amphibian/invertebrate hobby. 👍
Could you have them shipped to you? They are routinely shipped to various places around the world. If not, I would not recommend working with wild caught specimens, as it is a gigantic pain to work with flighted fruit flies.
@@Aquarimax bettas:) a sorority of spicy girls that need a lot of food and distraction to be friendly with each other. The flies are fine but it's the larvae that gets me haha!!
What does spirulina do for the culture? Is the idea to build a more nutritious fly? Fruit flies eat yeast, and boiling water kills yeast, so why are you adding boiling water to it? Also, brewer's yeast cannot break down starch. It's only capable of breaking down simpler sugars, of which there isn't much in your growing media. No wonder you need cinnamon & vinegar to control mold growth (which is also not good for yeast)! Just use a mashed banana thickened with potato starch or oatmeal. Sprinkle in your yeast. Done. The yeast will multiply rapidly, and thoroughly establish itself in the media, preventing other fungi from becoming established.
balzonurchin All great questions to consider...nothing wrong with a good hard look at this method. 👍 I don't add yeast until after the hot media has had a chance to cool down to yeast-friendly temperatures. While the flies do principally eat yeast, they very likely end up ingesting some of the spirulina incidentally, which is why commercial fly media like Repashy include natural color enhancers and other nutrients like spirulina. The brewer's yeast I add is dead. I add it strictly for the nutrients it contains, some of which the yeasts themselves probably use, the others are for the flies...which seem to produce much better with the addition of the brewer's yeast. It is true that vinegar and cinnamon are antifungal agents, so the probably have some effect on the yeast as well as mold, but I honestly never have mold problems either. Lots of commercial media contain cinnamon, and I know of at least one professional frog breeder that uses vinegar in fruit fly cultures, so I started that years ago. I find that the method in this video produce many more flies than I need, with good longevity of the cultures, so that's why I do it this way. 😀
*"👍 I don't add yeast until after the hot media has had a chance to cool down to yeast-friendly temperatures."* - You need to specify this in the video. You simply instruct to add boiling water to the dry ingredients... Then again you say you're adding dead yeast anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter. *"The brewer's yeast I add is dead. I add it strictly for the nutrients it contains, some of which the yeasts themselves probably use, the others are for the flies...which seem to produce much better with the addition of the brewer's yeast."* - Well of course they would. Without the addition of yeast, you'd be relying on wild yeast to establish itself and populate the culture all the while in direct competition with every other micro-organism. I'll point out that wild yeasts are generally slow to reproduce, although _they_ can break down the starch you provide them in your mix, when given the chance, unlike brewer's yeast. I would hazard a guess that your flies are growing on the dead brewer's yeast you've provided, and not so much on wild yeast. I'm not arguing that your method doesn't work, as you're obviously having success with it. However, I'd like to know _why_ you don't use _active_ yeast (brewer's or otherwise)? I speculate that the reason must be so that any significant fermentation of the growing media is avoided, because if it's fermenting, it has become anaerobic. If it's anaerobic, there's no oxygen... no oxygen... no maggots. I guess my active yeast & a banana isn't such a good idea after all.
balzonurchin Again, great questions. I should have been more clear, both in the video and in my response. I add dead brewer's yeast to the dry ingredients, before I add hot water, but if/when I add active dry baker's yeast to the culture, I add it once it cools to yeast friendly temperatures. I don't usually end up adding it directly to the cultures, though, and this is why: the flies themselves have been walking in the yeast cells living in the fly culture, so when I add dozens of flies, most of those flies probably inoculate the culture with a few active yeast cells it is carrying on its feet. I can't be sure, but there may even be an advantage to using these fly-carried active cells...over the years that I have cultured the flies, it is possible that the yeasts have adapted to do better in fly culture conditions than baker's yeast intended for baked goods. This idea that the flies themselves serve to inoculate the yeast is not mine...it was explained to me by a frog breeder at some point in the past. It seems to make sense, though...the flies we add are definitely not sterile, and live, active yeast cells, even just a few, should reproduce exponentially in the fly culture medium. Thanks for sparking this discussion, I appreciate your insights! Please feel free to chime in anytime.
Aaahhh, okay. Things are starting to add up now. I'm glad you responded, as I have two jars of your recipe cooling as I type. I'm literally starting my first cultures (and I don't even have anything to feed them to yet, lol. It's critical that I have this bug culturing thing down _before_ I get dart frogs). Your point about the flies doing the inoculation for you is a good one, & something I overlooked. I'm tempted at this stage to try a little bakers' yeast in just one of the cultures to see what happens. The question is, "How much is enough, and how much is too much?" My knowledge of yeast stems from the brewing hobby. In brewing, it is desirable to achieve fermentation as quickly as possible- like a matter of hours (to safeguard against other microbes, primarily), so we tend to pitch a lot of yeast to keep the lag time down. We also aerate the wort (unfermented beer) really well to provide the yeast the oxygen it requires to reproduce. Fermentation is triggered once the population density of yeast cells has reached a certain threshold (and oxygen is greatly depleted). Understanding that, you can see why I'm curious about the usage of active yeast in these fly cultures, and how I managed to quickly talk myself out of trying the banana/ active yeast mix. But this isn't wort (or banana)... it's potato. There's not very much sugar to ferment, and I don't know if baker's yeast can break down starch the way wild yeasts can. So, would adding the teensiest li'l pinch be beneficial? Or would that merely reduce the lag time before fermentation kicks off, killing the culture? I imagine the maggots & flies are extremely tolerant of alcohol given their nature, but the maggots will certainly die with no oxygen in the growth media. *" it is possible that the yeasts have adapted to do better in fly culture conditions"* - Most certainly. I have experienced the evolution of yeast first hand. One of my favorite strains for stouts is a super fast fermenting variety. I have literally had one batch bottled just 6 days after brewing (fermentation was complete in just 2 or 3 days)- and that was after pitching just a moderate amount of yeast. Well, I wanted to make that beer again, and it just so happened that my buddy had just made beer with that strain, but he obtained his yeast from someone else's fermenter, who obtained his from someone else's fermenter who made a few consecutive batches with it. So the yeast I was using was from the 5th or 6th generation of beer batches. It wasn't the same yeast anymore. This time, it was about 3 weeks before the beer was ready! So you see, when you're dealing with a population measured in trillions or quadrillions, and that population completely replaces itself every couple of days, it's not long before evolution is noticeable.
balzonurchin I think it is awesome how your brewing knowledge is influencing your (soon-to-be) dart frog hobby. Good information for me and everyone who reads this as well! I suggest adding a small pinch of baker's yeast to your slightly warm cultures. More in this case is not necessarily better. It is also great to see that you are getting the fly culturing down before you get the frogs...👍
Quim Roscas That is likely the issue. If you don’t have access to the commercial vented kids, you can cut a large circle out of the lid and put a paper towel underneath it.
I really appreciate this video for saying "do this and do that after X days/weeks"
Thank you for this quick and easy tutorial. Some other videos were 17+ minutes and I didn't know if I had it in me to watch a documentary on the whole process 😄 This was just what I needed. Thank you again.
Lol....tried making a culture like this a long time ago for fish food. Apparently something went wrong and the next generation of flies somehow re-evolved back their wings, so when I opened the container they all started flying everywhere 😂
tea wrecks Most commonly, one single wild fly gets in, and since functional,wings are a dominant trait, in a week or so, there are all sorts of heterozygous flies with functional wings. It may also be a throwback, but that is probably much more rare. 🤣👍
@@Aquarimax Can wild flies mate with the flightless flies through the air holes? Even if none actually get in?
tea wrecks I wouldn’t be too surprised. Another possibility is that the flies might lay eggs on the lid, and if there is just a tiny imperfection in the mesh, the tiny larva could work its way in.
tea wrecks I wouldn’t be too surprised. Another possibility is that the flies might lay eggs on the lid, and if there is just a tiny imperfection in the mesh, the tiny larva could work its way in.
you let the temp get too high, higher temp makes the flightless gene go dormant.
This is great. I'm here because my jumping spider , Punk, prefers the flies fed on this medium. The ones that I got at a local dealer lived a long time in the terrarium and the spider rarely ate them. He wasn't slow due to the season either. He also has been making more webs. I feel like he's finally getting the nutrition he needs. Thank you!!!
Hi! I am also going to keep these for a jumping spider. Any recs on how to not overdo it seeing as they don’t eat too often? Feel like I would have way too much flies
By the way great show have been lIstening for about 2 years now, keep up the great shows.
Thanks! Will do!
Could someone help me? --- I have tried to do this (with another basic recipe on UA-cam), and I had heaps of white worms come up the side of the container, and also on plastic scrap 'filler' in the middle . But they were quite small, about half the size of the shop culture worms. They eventually died and went brown, and there are no pupa, so something is wrong. The original flies are still alive in there, and the bottom mix looks fine, with no mold or darkening...The top is ventilated nicely, and temperature has always been moderate. No sunlight, just room lighting. Thanks!
Which species of fruit fly did you get? Hydei and melanogaster are quite different in size . So none of the larvae pupated? The pupae are brownish…
@@Aquarimax Many thanks for replying! Yes they are melano's. The flies I used to start the culture were bought (as a working culture) from the pet shop. The white worms were twice as big as my failed culture. Yes I've seen the zillions of pupae in the vibrant shop culture, watching how they change and become almost "see through" (instead of dark brown) when the fly has hatched out etc. My failed cultures have just lots of dark-brown dead worms everywhere....Possibly 2 empty pupae which are quite small.....
@@tomlewitt restrictive ventilation or excessive heat can cause that issue…are either of those possible?
@@Aquarimax Both those are ok ...I'm wondering if there was too much cinnamon in the mix and the poor worms fled as soon as they could!
It did smell strongly.
I'll try a modified mix (uses potato flakes/sugar/milk powder) with less cinnamon and vinegar...Thanks!
You have the most spoiled Gold Barbs in history haha.
Heuzier Daddee LOL I guess you're right!
Hello does anyone knows where to get the wingless fruit flies ?
Most large pet stores carry them, or you can order them online.
Definitely starting a culture of these for my small carnivores aquarium!
Amber C excellent! If they feed from the surface, they’ll love these!
Why call them flies if they can't fly? You should call them walks.
Gary Quan Good point! 🤣👍
Grow your own fruit walks
Some people actually DO call flightless fruit flies fruit walks.
@@ey8648 i do
I'm glad there are more people that think like me. Lmao.
They're fruit-walks!!!
I used to pull the wings off of flies when I was a kid and call them walks..
Also, after you kill a fly it becomes a "flew".. lol
I'll leave now
thank you, its very easy and clear compare to others
Connie Yang Thank you for watching!
so I have to start a new culture every month?
I'm doing research on starting a tree frog tank and a little stumped on feeding. fruit flies seem to make the most sense
Ideally, you will start a new culture every month to keep production going.
How do I buy fruitless wing flys
Most dart frog supply companies have them.
I used this guide for breeding flies for a little panther chameleon I have and I may have more flies than I know what to do with!
Radiant Reptile Exotics they definitely produce lots of flies...luckily, I can always feed my excess fruit flies to my chickens. 👍
@@Aquarimax great idea I’m going to make some for my froggies and give the rest to my mom for her chickens 🥰
I am not sure what fly larvae are in my soilless culture of grindal worms but they resemble fruit flies when they do mature. I dropped in some of the pupa and my dwarf puffer found a new favorite snack.
_Paws_ If you can’t beat ‘em, feed ‘em! 👍 most likely they are fruit flies, phorid flies, or fungus gnats. In any case, it sounds like you found a good way to keep their numbers down. With grindal,worms, I have found that plugging all vent holes with filter floss keeps all of the little flies out...but once they’re in there, I usually use the immersion treatment to get them out...
Aquarimax - they really were fruit flies, the flying kind, the larvae were as big as those by fruit flies. They seem to do well with just wet fish flakes; the container has paper towel to let air in.
It smells like soy sauce for some reason; the fish flakes gives off a sweet like bread aroma in another container which also with grindal worms.
The seller of grindal worms must have not realize they were in there.
_Paws_ That seems to happen often...if you feed off the larvae very aggressively you may be able to eliminate them, as long as adults aren’t getting back in.
Creepy as hell thinking of the idea of some super-uber advanced alien species conquering us and culturing us in the same type of farming technique for their feeding purposes. x.x
I've never thought of it that way...but yes, that is indeed a creepy thought, 😬
What do you think they're doing now? They harvest us routinely. Start running.
Running doesn't do much. I mean, look at these flies. Where did running get them?!
who knows when that might happen, I am trying to stay very thin and sick looking. lol
@AlienFirefox I would not mind the breeding.
Can you use window screen to cover the top or that weed guard stuff?
Had to save this video.
Hi, can I use any nutritional yeast or it has to be 'brewer's'?
You can! They are a bit different in terms of nutritional profile, but nutritional yeast works too, in fact that is what I usually use now.
This might have been said, but can I use regular bread yeast rather than Brewer’s yeast?
I made a batch of repashy Superfly because I bought a culture of fruit flies and when I got it already had a lot of flies. But then I found out that this was the flies he used to start the culture so I don't think I want to seed from those but the new flies can I freeze my culture and then thaw out when ready to add flies?
When you say discard the old ones, do you mean throw the whole container in the trash or do you have specific method?
vanillacarnivore I just throw the whole container in the trash. If there a lot of viable flies in it, I will sometimes feed those to my chickens first. They love them.
when you say discard after 1 month, do you mean discard the old culture container, or discard the entire line of cultures entirely? As in, acquire a new culture and restart the process? Do you know what I mean?
Just the older culture…you can keep the younger cultures to seed new ones.
@@Aquarimax ah yes of course! i thought maybe you were referring to the mites transferring to new cultures, but that's why you do away with the month old culture. understood! Great video dude thanks for this, I'll be using it to support my young ant colonies!
Thank you!
How do you get them if I don’t have flies to start with?
You need to purchase a starter colony of flightless flies. Many pet stores offer them, and they can also be purchased online.
Can I substitute the potato flakes for wheat bran and use powdered sugar in lieu of cinnamon?
I have never tried wheat bran...I have used recipes that use semolina instead of potato flakes. The cinnamon is included as a mold retardant, so I don't think the powdered sugar would have the same effect, but there are lots of DIY medium recipes out there, so it might be worth a try.
Thanks.
Really great video, thanks!
bloopmnstr Thanks for watching!
I have 2 baby north american green treefrogs and they don't seem interested in anything I offer them. I make sure they could eat it. but I was looking for flightless fruit flies. where did you get yours?
brandon shafer I purchased my initial stock at a local pet store if I recall correctly. It's not always easy to find this species (Drosophila melanogaster) in big box pet stores, but many times they will carry a somewhat larger species (D. hydei). If you can't find them locally, dart frogs websites like www.neherpetoculture.com and www.joshsfrogs.com have both species available. I hope you are able to find some! Springtails are another good food to get small froglets eating.
Super helpful!
MetalFrogg Thank you!
frog
@@officiallydumb yes?
@@ey8648 frog
What kind of fish were those?
GreenSlugg those are gold barbs. 😊👍
I'm noob at this i want to feed these guys to my ants but i want to know where do you get these flies from? (when you are making first "cup") do you get them from wild and if so how do you catch them?
PLEASE ANSWER
Bosnian Mapper I bought these flightless from a local pet shop, but you can also order them online from dart frog breeders and other establishments that sell live foods. I don't recommend using the flighted wild flies, as they are too difficult to keep contained.
Aquarimax okay thank you
www.fruitflyshop.com/shop-flies.html is who i use, they r great and FAST and I have never had a single problem with them. Plus they have other feeders to choose from
Erik Iacopelli thanks for sharing, it is always good to hear about reputable dealers!
Erik Iacopelli weve ordered 2 seperate wingless fruitfly cultures from Joshs Frigs and they get shaken in transit so bad the flies and larva die. We have 3 mantid and hunt for ants and flies and rip the wings off to feed them. Its very discouraging
Thank you. I’m thinking about getting fruits flys for my Bettas. Especially for before I breed next. Can any fish eat wingless fruits flys?
Pet Craz Bettas love them. A wide variety of fish enjoy them. I have fed them to guppies, goldfish, cardinal tetras, bettas, white clouds, etc. I would say any fish that will feed from the water surface that is large enough to eat them and not so huge that it doesn’t notice them will probably eat fruit flies. 👍
Great! Thanks!
Do u feed the flies or larvae to the fish
kitty katbaby mostly the flies, though I have used the larvae with success...thru are just a bit trickier to harvest,
Great video! i got a small fruit fly culture with my pet ghost mantis, and just moved it into a slightly larger container. I made sure to dump a lot of the original medium into it and also added a lot of my own, but I kind of 'winged' making it-- we didn't have a lot of the things from recipes i found online. since then all the little maggots have moved out of the medium and are chilling out on the sides of the culture, is this ok? :/
+mouse264 That is usually a sign they are going to pupate, and it is probably ok. When I start a new culture, though, I never use any of the original medium...just the flies. Otherwise, you can have problems with mold/mites.
@@Aquarimax Hello could you tell me how you got these flies without wings? here in Brazil I haven't found anyone who can sell them
Sorry for my English I'm Brazilian
@@megaants they originally came from genetics labs, Inwonder if there are labs in Brazil that have them?
@@Aquarimax I think it's very unlikely
Hello, I just recently got everything, but im missing one last thing, can you tell me the specific store to get excelsior?? I just moved to Houston and I have no idea where to get them, thanks!
Connie Yang In my area, craft stores often carry it. Failing that, it is available on Amazon: amzn.com/B00855BF1K
i got them at Michaels yesterday, thx
I got some at Dollar Tree.
By discarding the culture after a month, do you mean that after about a month I should transfer them all into a fresh container with fresh food?
If the culture is still producing flies, (which it often is) you can start new cultures with those flies on fresh food in a clean container.
Keeping the culture too long often encourages mites to colonize it. You can keep that culture separate from others , so that mites does not move from it to other and continue to feed from it. But at some point you’ll need to throw it away.
@@Aquarimax oh ok, thanks for the info
Will Chinese vinegar (the black stuff) work?
Andy Lin That is a great question! I've never tried it, but if the acidity is around 5%, I see no reason why it wouldn't work. If the acidity is too high, you could try diluting it with distilled water. It is worth a try.
where can i get nutritional yeast and spirulina powder?
Connie Yang both of them are often available at health food stores, that's where I buy them.
if your culture "population" has evolved to have wings again; is there a way to reverse them back to wingless? Got some evolution happening in my culture and I would rather not buy a new culture to start over but it seems like I might have to because they almost all have wings now. It has been years since I have bought a culture.
Unfortunately, this can happen when one wild fly enters the culture, as the wingless trait is recessive. Careful breeding of any wingless specimens you do have left, and culling winged descendants, could result in a wingless culture again, but to be honest, it will likely take far less time and effort just to buy a new culture.
you let the temp get too high, higher temp makes the flightless gene go dormant.
Mites how would they show up ?
Mites are in most houses…they tend to find their way in.
one bottle can produce how many grams of fruit fly insects per day?can it reach 5-10gram per day?
I made a culture and I can see a ton of fruit flies that have died on top of my medium. I only made it yesterday! Is it possible they suffocated because there were too many?
Serama it could be. Did you use a ventilated lid? Or is the medium too soupy? If so, that could account for it.
@@Aquarimax The medium is more like a very soft / malleable play dough, a bit dryer than in your video but still smooth. The lid I used was one of those plastic cup lids with a single hole at the top, and I'm thinking maybe it was too small a hole.
Serama it sounds like the medium is probably ok, and yes, the hole may not have been enough.
Would this be good for goldfish?
Audrey Rose I have given them to my goldfish in the past, and they gobbled them up. It might take them a few tries to figure out they are food, but they should learn to like them. 👍
Aquarimax Pets Thanks! my goldfish will eat anything lol
Audrey Rose then you should definitely offer them some flightless fruit flies. 👍
Is it okay to move flies from a culture your about to discard and use all the rest of an to make new cultures?
Sara Crawford great question! It can be done, I have done it successfully, but if possible, it is better to use flies from a culture in its prime...not too early on, not too late. Too early and you end up selecting for explosive, short-lived cultures, too late, and the risk of passing mites to the new culture increases. But if all you’ve got is an older culture, it can work. 👍
Does the vinegar prevent them from smelling? I use honey now which helps some but there’s still a cheesy smell
When people add vinegar and cinamon powder it is to prevent mould growing and destroying the culture, people aslo add yeast and I think this is what might give you the "cheesy smell", not sure though.
I just made this but I used apple cider vinegar and NLS AlgaeMax wafers (ground). I'll let you know how it turned out.
I would definitely be interested in hearing how it goes! 👍
Day 15: No mold, mites or crashes. Seeing tiny larvae crawling everywhere.
+J Butera Excellent! Apple cider vinegar is a logical choice, as are the algae wafers in place of the spirulina. I hope the culture continued to thrive!
Thanks again.
Every culture boomed with thousands of flies and with zero mold. Thanks again.
So I don't have any flies to start with... And in my town we don't have flightless fly cultures... I might have to just breed ones with wings, wouldn't know how to transfer them though
Cool them down in a fridge
I bought some "flightless" fruit flies. After a month they seemed to learn to fly! I opened their container and several "flightless" flies took flight and flew away
Anyone have any idea how? Were they bred to have weak wings and then with time bred back to the flying type? Did the first generations simply noy have their flying certificates? What's up with my flies?
Firstname Lastname the genes for flightlessness are recessive. What sometimes happens is that one flighted fly of the same species makes its way into from the wild, it interbreeds with the flightless flies, and its offspring can then fly.
"drosophila melanogaster" can learn to fly when a wild fly go to in your culture OR when the temperature is high (next gen will recover the wings).
Maybe use "drosophila hydei". The wingless species can't recover the wings if the temperature is high.
Hi. Thanks for the video. Fruit flies cannot be bought in Norway so I need to make my own cultures. We don't have potato flakes. Are there any other possible alternatives? Thanks for any help :)
Steve Boutcher do you have semolina/farina? (Ground wheat hearts). That can work as a basic culture medium. Or you could order Repashy or another commercial medium.
You dont' have instant pototo in Norway?! If so then boil potatoes and them mash them or try oats instead.
@@MoreChannelNoiseDid you use mashed potatoes? I presume that worked.
What will mites do to a cultural?
oakland002 They can compete for food with the flies/larvae and severly reduce productivity.
My fruit fly cultures tend to always turn out in a way where the flies don't emerge from the pupate stage. It's as if they die inside the shell. Any suggestions on what I should do?
haltsinberg I would check first if the moisture levels are off...does the culture seem to dry out?
@@Aquarimax Thank you for your comment.
This is something I've considered as well. Recently I've started to spray water inside the container if I don't see condensation on the walls. Is there a way to know whether a culture is too dry/moist?
Most of my fruit fly cultures end up with hundreds of larvae that eventually climb to the top of the container and begin their metamorphosis there. However, rarely flies emerge from the pupate shells.
haltsinberg I rarely see condensation on the walls of my successful cultures, but it is possible for a culture to get too dry or too moist. When you mix the medium, is it more soupy or more lumpy?
I have occasionally seen what you describe...usually when the culture temperature is too low. What temperature range are you working with?
@@Aquarimax i usually go for more soupy, that is, that the surface of the medium will even-out after stirred. I have no heating for the cultures, I keep them at room temperature, so about 24-27C depending on the season/weather. I've noticed that sometimes the cultures do better when I put the container in a terrarium where my frogs are. I've thought that this was because of the moisture, but Im not sure.
haltsinberg The temperature range is appropriate. There will be some tweaking of the moisture levels in your medium based on relatively humidity in the room, etc. I would suggest trying to vary and document moisture levels of the medium for a while. Sometimes high humidity in the air, but lower moisture content in the medium, can be helpful. That may be why your cultures do better in the frog vivarium.
I’ve always said that Gary Quan lol
Is a permit required to sell these?
Great vid loved the step by step. Also I have hangouts but couldn't figure out how to let yOu know I wanted to parTicipate ?
Thank you! You can add me on google+ as (Aquarimax) and email me on the aquarimax contact page on the Aquarimax.com website.
How mutch Celsius is 70 Fahrenheit
Joris Wolthuis about 21 C
I wonder if they were the flies in the bathroom, will try steal fli lmfao
for my mantis
Does it smell horribe?
Patricia Daughdrill If cultured correctly, they have a definite smell to them, not delightful, but not really noticeable unless you're working directly with it. The cinnamon helps some.
I never thought of feeding these to fish! Are they nutritious?
Not to be annoying by advertising or anything but I'd appreciate if you guys check out aquaforums.net/ It's a forum I stared all about fishkeeping. Its got some unique features like awards that other fishkeeping forums don't have. It even has a category where you can promote your videos and I will be adding a topic on culturing flies to the live foods/culture topic!
I gave you a shout-out on episode 201, best of luck to to your forum!
Aquarimax Thanks!
Wonder how they made them wingless in the first place
Earl Spencer Mutations occurred in lab specimens, and since the flightless flies were easier to handle, they were preferred. They soon made their way into the reptile/amphibian/invertebrate hobby. 👍
but like... where do i get the first flies to put into my new culture? its not possible to get a fly culture where i live
Could you have them shipped to you? They are routinely shipped to various places around the world. If not, I would not recommend working with wild caught specimens, as it is a gigantic pain to work with flighted fruit flies.
2:19 Feb the 1st is my birthday 😄
Trioptic Blaze LOL....I retroactively dedicate that shot at 2:19 in celebration of the happy occasion! 🎂
Me too
gives me the ickies but anything for my fish babies.
Hopefully you’ll get used to them. What kinds of fish do you have ?
@@Aquarimax bettas:) a sorority of spicy girls that need a lot of food and distraction to be friendly with each other. The flies are fine but it's the larvae that gets me haha!!
What does spirulina do for the culture? Is the idea to build a more nutritious fly?
Fruit flies eat yeast, and boiling water kills yeast, so why are you adding boiling water to it?
Also, brewer's yeast cannot break down starch. It's only capable of breaking down simpler sugars, of which there isn't much in your growing media. No wonder you need cinnamon & vinegar to control mold growth (which is also not good for yeast)!
Just use a mashed banana thickened with potato starch or oatmeal. Sprinkle in your yeast. Done. The yeast will multiply rapidly, and thoroughly establish itself in the media, preventing other fungi from becoming established.
balzonurchin All great questions to consider...nothing wrong with a good hard look at this method. 👍 I don't add yeast until after the hot media has had a chance to cool down to yeast-friendly temperatures. While the flies do principally eat yeast, they very likely end up ingesting some of the spirulina incidentally, which is why commercial fly media like Repashy include natural color enhancers and other nutrients like spirulina. The brewer's yeast I add is dead. I add it strictly for the nutrients it contains, some of which the yeasts themselves probably use, the others are for the flies...which seem to produce much better with the addition of the brewer's yeast. It is true that vinegar and cinnamon are antifungal agents, so the probably have some effect on the yeast as well as mold, but I honestly never have mold problems either. Lots of commercial media contain cinnamon, and I know of at least one professional frog breeder that uses vinegar in fruit fly cultures, so I started that years ago. I find that the method in this video produce many more flies than I need, with good longevity of the cultures, so that's why I do it this way. 😀
*"👍 I don't add yeast until after the hot media has had a chance to cool down to yeast-friendly temperatures."*
- You need to specify this in the video. You simply instruct to add boiling water to the dry ingredients... Then again you say you're adding dead yeast anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter.
*"The brewer's yeast I add is dead. I add it strictly for the nutrients it contains, some of which the yeasts themselves probably use, the others are for the flies...which seem to produce much better with the addition of the brewer's yeast."*
- Well of course they would. Without the addition of yeast, you'd be relying on wild yeast to establish itself and populate the culture all the while in direct competition with every other micro-organism. I'll point out that wild yeasts are generally slow to reproduce, although _they_ can break down the starch you provide them in your mix, when given the chance, unlike brewer's yeast. I would hazard a guess that your flies are growing on the dead brewer's yeast you've provided, and not so much on wild yeast.
I'm not arguing that your method doesn't work, as you're obviously having success with it. However, I'd like to know _why_ you don't use _active_ yeast (brewer's or otherwise)? I speculate that the reason must be so that any significant fermentation of the growing media is avoided, because if it's fermenting, it has become anaerobic. If it's anaerobic, there's no oxygen... no oxygen... no maggots. I guess my active yeast & a banana isn't such a good idea after all.
balzonurchin Again, great questions. I should have been more clear, both in the video and in my response. I add dead brewer's yeast to the dry ingredients, before I add hot water, but if/when I add active dry baker's yeast to the culture, I add it once it cools to yeast friendly temperatures. I don't usually end up adding it directly to the cultures, though, and this is why: the flies themselves have been walking in the yeast cells living in the fly culture, so when I add dozens of flies, most of those flies probably inoculate the culture with a few active yeast cells it is carrying on its feet. I can't be sure, but there may even be an advantage to using these fly-carried active cells...over the years that I have cultured the flies, it is possible that the yeasts have adapted to do better in fly culture conditions than baker's yeast intended for baked goods.
This idea that the flies themselves serve to inoculate the yeast is not mine...it was explained to me by a frog breeder at some point in the past. It seems to make sense, though...the flies we add are definitely not sterile, and live, active yeast cells, even just a few, should reproduce exponentially in the fly culture medium. Thanks for sparking this discussion, I appreciate your insights! Please feel free to chime in anytime.
Aaahhh, okay. Things are starting to add up now. I'm glad you responded, as I have two jars of your recipe cooling as I type. I'm literally starting my first cultures (and I don't even have anything to feed them to yet, lol. It's critical that I have this bug culturing thing down _before_ I get dart frogs).
Your point about the flies doing the inoculation for you is a good one, & something I overlooked.
I'm tempted at this stage to try a little bakers' yeast in just one of the cultures to see what happens. The question is, "How much is enough, and how much is too much?"
My knowledge of yeast stems from the brewing hobby. In brewing, it is desirable to achieve fermentation as quickly as possible- like a matter of hours (to safeguard against other microbes, primarily), so we tend to pitch a lot of yeast to keep the lag time down. We also aerate the wort (unfermented beer) really well to provide the yeast the oxygen it requires to reproduce. Fermentation is triggered once the population density of yeast cells has reached a certain threshold (and oxygen is greatly depleted).
Understanding that, you can see why I'm curious about the usage of active yeast in these fly cultures, and how I managed to quickly talk myself out of trying the banana/ active yeast mix. But this isn't wort (or banana)... it's potato. There's not very much sugar to ferment, and I don't know if baker's yeast can break down starch the way wild yeasts can. So, would adding the teensiest li'l pinch be beneficial? Or would that merely reduce the lag time before fermentation kicks off, killing the culture? I imagine the maggots & flies are extremely tolerant of alcohol given their nature, but the maggots will certainly die with no oxygen in the growth media.
*" it is possible that the yeasts have adapted to do better in fly culture conditions"*
- Most certainly. I have experienced the evolution of yeast first hand. One of my favorite strains for stouts is a super fast fermenting variety. I have literally had one batch bottled just 6 days after brewing (fermentation was complete in just 2 or 3 days)- and that was after pitching just a moderate amount of yeast. Well, I wanted to make that beer again, and it just so happened that my buddy had just made beer with that strain, but he obtained his yeast from someone else's fermenter, who obtained his from someone else's fermenter who made a few consecutive batches with it. So the yeast I was using was from the 5th or 6th generation of beer batches. It wasn't the same yeast anymore. This time, it was about 3 weeks before the beer was ready!
So you see, when you're dealing with a population measured in trillions or quadrillions, and that population completely replaces itself every couple of days, it's not long before evolution is noticeable.
balzonurchin I think it is awesome how your brewing knowledge is influencing your (soon-to-be) dart frog hobby. Good information for me and everyone who reads this as well! I suggest adding a small pinch of baker's yeast to your slightly warm cultures. More in this case is not necessarily better. It is also great to see that you are getting the fly culturing down before you get the frogs...👍
Wingless fruit flies are just called fruit walks
It totally makes sense!
All dead in 24 hours. I made holes in the lid, not air enough?
Quim Roscas That is likely the issue. If you don’t have access to the commercial vented kids, you can cut a large circle out of the lid and put a paper towel underneath it.
@@Aquarimax The problem was the air, holes were not enough. I cut the lead and glued a paper on it, problem solved.
Medium complicated. I just squash some fruit and put it in.
Earl Spencer that can work, but tends to be more susceptible to mold, has a shorter life, and stronger smell.
Lol, How can a Fly can be called a fly if it is wingless, The name should be walk not fly 😂
That's a lot of work just to feed some fish.
Katrina Byrd I also use them for creatures that eat fruit flies as a staple diet, such as dart frogs and small geckos.
WHAT! I DONT WANT TO KILL FLIES
Cow Chop?
Jose Reyes did that show up in the captions?
Or just buy fish food
Numberone if you are feeding most fish, you can do that, but I also use these flies for geckos, frogs, mantises, etc...
where do you get the wingless fruitfly
they're not wingless and you can buy them at petco
+Leonel Ledesma There are wingless ones. Look up wingless Drosophila melanogaster.