Hi. I am new here. I recently inherited two very beautiful dart frogs that myself and my kids dearly love. My problem is my fruit fly colony. I inherited several jars of flies along with the frogs and they are all wingless as far as I can tell. Over the last couple of days, I have noticed a growing number of flying fruit flies gathering around the basket that has the culture jars in it. Can wingless fruit flies mutate into winged fruit flies? I have also tried feeding meal worms and small crickets to offer the frogs a little bit of variety, but they don't seem to care for them. Any other suggestions?
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!
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Hi Andrea.
Welcome to the forum.
Wild fruit flys can and will breed with your mutant flys giving them the future generations the ability of flight. All it takes is one.
The dart frogs will not usually take meal worms, and it is difficult to find cricket of the approprate size to feed the frogs without ordering online.
Do you know what type of darts you have?
Thanks for the quick response! My husband was a little put off by my breeding bugs in our kitchen, but I had successfully won him over. Then the little critters started swarming and he slid back into the "I can't believe you want to grow bugs" mode. Oh, well. He'll get over it, again.
I believe I have tincs. They have black bodies with yellow stripes and dark blue legs. One of the frogs seemed very interested in the crickets, but couldn't pick it up with his tongue. It looked like it was just too heavy. I have done a lot of research on the frogs, but this forum is much more layman friendly than many of the books and articles I have read. Ya'll do a great job!
Posts: 1,119
Threads: 118
Joined: Jun 2004
Would it be possible to move the fruit flys to another location? I see you are in Texas. Texas summers can be brutal, especially in the kitchen, and too much heat can affect your fruit fly production.
As for the crickets, you want to be sure the crickets are not too big for the frogs. A good rule of thumb is the distance between the frogs eyes, across the top of their head, is as large as they can easily consume. It is always better to error on the small side.
Also, are you dusting the feeders with a good vitamin and calcium powder such as Rep-Cal and Herptivite?
