The most common species that is cultured is Drosophila melanogaster.
What you will need:
*Culturing Container (Deli Cup)
*Culturing Media (Fruit Fly Food)
*Baker’s Yeast
*Coffee Filters
It is recommended to place all cultures on Paper towels that have been treated with Mite Spray.
1. Place the dry culturing media in your culturing container, in the amount directed. Add the directed amount of hot water.
* I place ¼ a cup of dry media and add hot water until it has a paste like consistency.
(I exclusively use Josh’s Frogs Melanogaster Fruit Fly Media.)
2. Add a pinch of baker’s yeast. (This is a microorganism that will be eaten by the larvae)
3. Place 3 folded coffee filters into the media cup. (The flies will reside and mate here.)
4. Let the culture cool for 12 hours.
5. Add 25-50 flies to the culture.
6. Sit back and Enjoy
I highly recommend dusting the flies with vitamin powder before feeding.
I create a new culture every 10 days. This is a little over-kill, but it allows for some overlap in the event of a mysterious crash or fouled culture. I discard old cultures after 30 days. Cultures can produce longer than 30 days, but I do this to avoid potential mite breakouts, as well as mold that tends to show up in older cultures. This helps insure that that my cultures are in a healthy, producing state for the duration of the life of the culture.
I freeze the flies of my 30 day cultures to be fed to my fish at a later time.
A single culture, following the above method, can feed 2 adult frogs (with extras) for the life of the culture. Just be sure to have a culture that is producing before you dispose of the old culture.
Clean out the Culturing Container with a bleach/water solution to insure that no mites or mold spores are transferred into new cultures. Let the container completely dry before reusing.
I highly recommend using my overlap technique and/or creating multiple cultures to insure you always have food for your Frogs. Mites mold, and unexpected deaths can happen, no matter the precautions you take.
In my opinion, Mites are unavoidable. There will always be a few mites wandering around, but you can avoid outbreaks and culture crashes. Mites will not harm your Frogs.
Cultures with mold or excessive mites should be thrown out, no matter the age, to prevent cross contamination.
A producing culture is a culture that flies have already mated in, and larvae are pupating and emerging as adults. You feed out of your producing cultures only. It takes about 10-14 days for a culture to start ‘producing’. It is very important to have a producing culture before you get your frogs.
The method I use is not the only way to culture these flies. There are many other containers, media recipes, and other methods used by other hobbyists. Feel free to experiment, but make sure you have producing cultures elsewhere, just in case everything goes horribly wrong.
Culture: New
Culture: 10 Days
Culture: 20 Days
Culture: 30 Days
Where do I get my Fruit Flies?
I highly recommend ordering your Fruit Flies from Southeasternfruitflies.com. They have great flies with great genetics and they can send you an already producing culture in a suitable container. They have never sent me a culture with mite or mold problems. Check them out!
You should also be able to get flies from any hobbyist who has frogs.
You can sometime find Fruit Flies at pet stores.
The Flies
Drosophila melanogaster are and awesome little insect. They are tan/brown in color and generally have red eyes. Females are about 2.5 millimeters, males are slightly smaller.
The most commonly cultured flies are the wingless variety, and a flightless variety, which have wings but cannot fly.
Lifespan and development varies depending on temperature. At 77 °F, it takes approximately 8.5 days to reach adulthood.
Females lay roughly 400 eggs into suitable media. They generally lay them in groups of 5 eggs. The eggs are about 0.5 millimetres long and will hatch after 12–15 hours at 77 °F. The larvae grow for about 4 days while molting twice, 1-2 days after hatching. The larvae feed on microorganisms found in the media, as well as on sugars present. At 4 days, they will pupate and undergo metamorphosis for 4 days. Mature Flies will emerge from the pupae.
Females will start breeding after about 8 – 12 hours of emerging. Mating lasts around 15–20 minutes.
The average lifespan of a single fly at 77 °F is roughly 30-40 days.
