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Hydei & Buzzatii - Do people really culture them ?
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Hydei & Buzzatii - Do people really culture them ?
#1
They are just so unpredictable in their hatch time and yield, compared to melanogaster....

Is there anyone that actually manages to culture these species in any appreciable amount ?

Someone probably does, but I'm personally just about out of patience with them both...
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"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana".
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#2
I culture hydei, but production is inconsistent at best.
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#3
I have similar problems, and they STINK! I mean it smells like rot even though I use the same media and setup procedures as my melanogaster.
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#4
I have great luck with Hydei. I use a custom media that's easy to make, keep them in a cool dark closet. It actually takes a month for them to produce a single fly. But from then on its constant. I make 2 cultures for them a week, and mine don't stink. I do add cinnamon to my media mix, and a spoonfuls of applesauce as well. They don't boom and bust for me the way melon do. They just constantly produce a manageable amount of flies, which I prefer because then the culture doesn't get poisoned with the die-offs. I keep my hydei cultures for about 8 or 9 weeks before they are dead.
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#5
Hi Tim, can you post the recipe you use with your Hydei cultures? Early on, I used to culture Hydei using media I purchased from Patrick Nabors and they produced just like my melano cultures once they started producing.
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#6
Yeah...Tim....hook us up with a thread on your recipe and culturing methods, please !
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"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana".
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#7
Philsuma Wrote:Yeah...Tim....hook us up with a thread on your recipe and culturing methods, please !


When I get home from work I will post my recipe, which is just a slight modification of what Scott menigoz uses.
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#8
OK, soooooo..... here's my fruit fly recipe and directions. I use this recipe for Hydei, Melanogaster, and Turkish Gliders with good results.

4 cups potato flakes
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/8 cup brewer's yeast
2 teaspoons Methyl Paraben
About 10 shakes of Cinnamon Powder (from the salt/pepper style shaker containers)

I mix all the above ingredients into a tupperware container (the kinds for cereal that are tall with the hole in the top for pouring) and shake it up for about 5 mins while watching some tv. Now, I triple or quadruple this recipe at a time, based on the size of the potato flakes box. No use storing potato flakes in an open box when you can just mix up more media! Also, all ingredients are of no particular brand, but do end up being the same brand usually, as I buy whatever is most economical (i.e. cheapest per unit of measurement). Once all the above ingredients are mixed, I store them and use weekly for makeing cultures.

Making Cultures: I put a 1/3 cup of the above dry media in a fruit fly cup (standard 32 oz cups everyone uses) and add a tablespoon of applesauce to each culture I'm making. I then boil ( a lot) of distilled water. Once the water comes to a rolling boil, I pour it into the cultures slowly and stir until the consistency is just a little sloppier than "just right" as it tends to lose a lot of moisture during cooling down, and so will cool down to the right consistency. I let them cool after mixing them well with a spoon, and them add a pinch of baker's yeast to the surface of each one. By a pinch, I mean about 30 or so "pellets" of the baker's yeast. Then, I jam some excelsior down into the media and pull it back out some and leave it like this. I add about 50 or so Hydei to a new culture to start it. I leave these starte flies in for a week, and either use them to start another culture or feed them out depending on how old I think they are. I do this because the starter flies die long before I get production out of the culture, so I get them out so they don't pollute the culture with their corpses. I keep my cultures stored in a closet, and I keep the house thermostat at about 72 degrees F. It takes roughly 4 weeks for me to have any flies hatch, but when they do I am not overwhelmed with Hydei but yet have enough to feed as often as I want. I prefer this type of production as the "boom & bust" cultures seem to boom one week and be dead the next. I get a solid four weeks of production, often into 5 or 6 weeks of production after the first hatching.

Alternate Method: The local frogger who I inherited this recipe from, has different success with another method. He uses the same ingredients, with the exception that he adds an additional tablespoon of brewer's yeast to each Hydei culture he makes. He also stores his fly cultures next to his tank lights, and so keeps them much warmer than I do. His cultures tend to "BOOM!" all at once, and he has trouble feeding them out as fast as they are hatching. He ends up poisoning his cultures with all the ones that die before he can feed them, and so they don't last as long as mine. However, they do produce much faster initially than mine and he probably has flies hatching at about the 16-18 day mark. If this is the type of production you want, I would use this method over mine.
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#9
Thats a pretty standard recipe. Very basic.

Another thing to point out, is that the founding stock flies - Hydei are as important, if not more, than the culture media. Scott Menigoz has some excellent larger flies going thru multiple generations and has probably got damn near, the perfect Fly going. He keeps on using the same stuff that produces excellently for him.

The problem is, when we try to use his flies with different media or use our flies with his media. It's often VERY hard to replicate success that someone else has with their particular set up and their particular flies.
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"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana".
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#10
I have his recipe, but not his flies. I got my Hydei from a frogger that lives in Ohio. They have been doing well for me ever since, also, the local frogger I mentioned got his Hydei from ME so, they are the same flies.
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#11
We seem to be doing better as beginners with hydei,than melanos untill very recently,when we got some new ones (mels red eyes wingless) from a different source and they are doing much better,i also think the strain means a lot,justwith our limited experiance. Guys we use the simplist of recipes,a product called readybreak (here uk ....instant hot oats) a childrens cereal fortified with vits, white wine vinegar and water,no yeast fruit etc.these are our breeding cultures we keep these in large sweet jars. A couple of days before feeding to frogs we pop them in small pint pots with some fruit,to try and add a bit more "goodness" to the flies.As before we are beginners so have no yardsticks to play off,but we have been lucky enough to be able to help out a couple of other guys and get them out of problems when they have had crashes so i guess we have been doing something right. We do add a hell of alot of flies to a culture,and don't seem to get many problems with mites,even though our starter culture came swarming with them,we used the vit dust sieving trick to help with that.
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#12
Tim13 Wrote:I have his recipe, but not his flies. I got my Hydei from a frogger that lives in Ohio. They have been doing well for me ever since, also, the local frogger I mentioned got his Hydei from ME so, they are the same flies.

lol...all bets are off then. Perhaps you have the prefect "Fly room" for hydei and I....don't.

So many variables. Percentage-wise.....people have a much harder time with Hydei than Melanogaster.

May be time for a poll.
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"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana".
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#13
I only culture Hydei. Mels are too small.

Half a cup of instant porridge flakes.

2 x table spoon of sugar.

Table spoon of yeast.

Splash of cider vinegar.

Whatever fruit juice is laying about. I never use orange juice, always seems to fail.

Add at the bare minimum 50 flies.

Leave at 77F and within 3 weeks you should have some production.
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#14
I just started culturing Buzzatii. I cant tell you how reliable they are since I have only had one culture. I know they take some time to start producing but once they do you get great yeilds from them. Same with the Hydei. I have been culturing them since I got my first dart frog. They take about 2 or 3 weeks to get started but from then on they produce in great numbers. I can usually feed all of my frogs(6) with one culture for about a week or two.
1.1.3 Dendrobates Tinctorius "surinam cobalt" CB
1.1.1 Dendrobates Auratus "Panamanian green and bronze" CB
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#15
I've never really had much luck with hydei until I tried two things...
1) Try culturing them with alongside melos - The melos hatch out quicker but their main purpose is stir up the media and prevent it from getting mold. I was getting mold when I kept my cultures too dry (surprisingly) and without the melo's in there. When I make a culture I seed with 4:1 hydei:melo.
2) Use a high quality media and add an extra protein source.

Hope this helps anyone... does you guys have any other hydei culturing secrets?

PS: This is my first post!
Kitty Litter: As good as what goes in it...
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#16
I don't know what kind of media you guys use, but I use joshs frogs hydei mix. I think it works really well and have never had a problem with molding. Check it out on his website. Highly recommend the stuff!
1.1.3 Dendrobates Tinctorius "surinam cobalt" CB
1.1.1 Dendrobates Auratus "Panamanian green and bronze" CB
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#17
If you have an area that you can get up to 80F, they should hatch out in 15-16 days. The need extra protein ie. brewers yeast to get good yields imo.
Glenn
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