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[Live-foods] Fruit Fly Medium



2 things I have learned the hard way:

1.  Assuming you are using flightless or wingless
flies, and you use bananas, you have to microwave them
(for about 3 minutes) to kill the wild eggs. 
Otherwise your culture will be filled with fliers.  I
had some better luck using banana bread mix with apple
sauce instead of ripe bananas, but eventually gave up
as I note below.

2.  If you are trying to maximize production and
length of the culture, you have to protect against
mold.  You have to use methyl paraben (also called
tegosept) or calcium proprionate (neither of which are
particularly easy to purchase) or, at very least,
vinegar.

Now after many attempts at complicated recipes
involving agar, malt, corn syrup, etc, I finally
decided that life was too short to be spending a lot
of time creating fly food.  So for a while I tried the
following:

1 part apple sauce, 1 part sterilized bananas (later
banana bread flour), 2 parts oatmeal or instant mashed
potato flakes and some vinegar.  I started with 2
teaspoons per 4 cups of mix, and kept increasing.  I
never reached a point where I was happy with the
recipe.

So I started buying the mix from www.joshsfrogs.com. 
(I am not associated with him or the site except as a
customer.  I have no stake in whether anyone buys from
him or not.)  Both the D. hydei and the generic fruit
fly mixes are excellent.  They not only are they
highly productive, they smell pleasant (unlike the
stinking concoctions I used to make.)  As it turns
out, they are probably much cheaper than the cheapest
stuff I made, even not taking into account my time. 
It already has some mold inhibitor, and I've never (in
the over 1 year I have been using it) had any mold. 
He also sells methyl paraben cheaper than Carolina
Biological, if you simply have to make your own.


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