Hi , Got my 10 gal viv today and love it
Problem is when I went to feed I made a big mess , open container of fruit flys over wet sink and they came out running , I did manage to dust some flys but washed down about four times more :evil: not to mention a couple dozen running all over me
hock: . there has to be a better way , I know I'm doing something wrong . Please tell me everyone how do you handle fruit flys ? Here are some pics of my viv .
Hi Froggy 44,
welcome to the hobby.
If you will put the fruit flys in the fridge for a couple of minutes, this will slow them down enough to where they will be a little more managable.
That is a nice looking vivarium. Is the waterfall made from corkbark, or is it rocks?
Thanks for the tip and the complement ..... but I can't take the credit for the build . A friend of mine built it and it was plug and play . The waterfall I think is made from driftwood .
I just open my container a crack, shake some out into another container then I pour them into a small container with my supplements in it and then I sort of flick tap on the small container so that just the flies come out into the tank. It may seem over complicated but I always have exactly how many flies I want, hardly any powder in my tank with minimal escapes.
Has anyone tried using a dunkin donuts coffee cup? their lids have that small opening on the top to drink out of. Or is a styrofoam container a bad idea?
Hi Redmaw.
I have used that type of cup and lid combo in the past, and it works great!
You will still need to keep tapping the container as the flys will want to crawl up the side and head straight for the tiny opening, but it is a lot easier to manage than a wide open lid.
I there shouldn't be any concern about the styrofoam, as it is a food grade, and the flys will not be in prolonged contact with it.
Cindy, since you've used it in the past and it has worked out pretty well, what were your reasons for doing something different? Did you find something better and/or more efficient?
Also, if you are using the coffee cup for the culture, wouldn't that classify as "prolonged contact" since they would be living and reproducing in it?
I misunderstood you, I though you were only going to use the cup/lid to feed out of, I didn't know you wanted to culture the flys in this.
I don't know if it would be possible to culture in styrofoam or not. Styrofoam has some porosity to it. If you have ever left a drink in a styrofoam cup for a a couple of days, it will seep out. This could cause problems for controlling the moisture content in the media. Also since you cannot see in to the cup, it would be difficult to monitor larva production in the media, not that big of a deal, but.
I used the cup lid combo to feed out of sometimes when I take the frogs to herp shows. I can feed the frogs in their deli cups without opening the deli cup lid all of the way and risking the possiblitiy of an escaped frog.
When I feed the in the frog room, I have a spice shaker with a perforated lid, that I put the flys in to feed into the tanks. I have some tanks that I am not able to fully open the lid because they are on a rack, and the small size of the spice shaker I can easily get into the tank to feed.
I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I've yet to culture any FF's, I don't even have a frog yet. I'm setting up my first viv now and gathering information for when I do get a frog a few months from now. Most of the posts I've read about FF's made it seem that all I had to do was make up the culture, put some FF's in and "presto-chango", in 2 weeks time I'd have alot of FF's. I didn't realize the container had to be clear to observe growth, but it does make sense now that I think about it. I also assumed that the same container that the culture was in could also be used to feed the frogs, although I'm guessing now that if the culture has that many flies in it, you probably need a seperate container just to feed? Is that where the original posters question stemmed from?
Sorry for the thread hijack, but since this is the newbie thread, others here might have similar questions.
Yes, sorry for the thread hijack, Froggy 44.
Redmaw,
good to see you are doing your research BEFORE you get your frogs.
Fruit flys are not difficult to culture. In a way, that is kind of the way it happens, add flys to a cup with media, and in a couple of weeks you have more flys ( this is somewhat oversimplified, and time frame will vary with fly species).
Another problem with culturing in the same cup you want to feed out of is you have no way to add your supplements (calcium, multivitamins).
I have found it easy to get some flies out of the breeding container with a birds feather.
I put the feather in and tap on the container. Many flies drop to the feather and I can then transfer them to the dusting container or the vivs.
When using the small containers sold by some internet companies I just tap on the small tubes over the dusting cup and almost never get any escapees.
I'm new to the hobby so there are probably 1,000's of better ways to do this, but for me this has worked fine. I also use the outside feather barbs to capture any wild fly when they are on glass, and place a dusting cup underneath to make the wild fly flightless.
The feather also works very well to pick flies up from the floor or throw those trying to escape from the viv back in without killing them.
kinda just theorising here,
but, what if you were to make a bug vacuum (
http://www.butterflies.org/Bug%20Vacuum.pdf )out of 2 straws and a clear container, then put a little hole in the tops of the cultures, and when you wanted some flys, you just unplug the hole, stick the straw from the vacuum in, and suck some ffs out into the holding container of the vacuum.
you'd have minimal chance of escapes from the culture, and then could dust the ones in the vacuum container, and tap them into the viv leaving the remaining dust in the vacuum for the next time you suck some flys up.