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Re: culturing fruitflies in aquaria



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Nevin Aspinwall <aspinwalln at SLU_EDU> wrote:

Richard J. Sexton wrote:
> 
> I've always liked the *idea* of fruit flies as food, but
> they are to me one of the most troublesome foods for
> a variety of reasons.
> 
> I'm wondering if it might be possible to grow them *in the
> tank* with the fish. It might work like this: the tank
> would have to have it's water level a few inches below the
> top, and have some sort of platform, whether it's a rock
> or a floating bit of styrofoam. On this could be placed
> a banana peel or a bit of orange. There would need to be
> a pinhole in the cover, big enought for fruit flies to
> get in, but not large enough to allow for the egress
> of the fishes.
> 
> I'm going to give it a try and will let y'all know how
> it works out.
> --
>             An image a day. That's all we ask.
> 
>   Richard J. Sexton             richard at killi_net
>   +1 (613) 473 1719      Bannockburn, Ontario, CANADA
> 
> 
> 
Hi Richard, This is Nevin in St. Louis. I have often thought about your
idea of rearing fruitflies in an aquarium. I have considered floating a
plastic container, say 4x6", in the aquarium filled with fruit fly
media. If you had a plastic container with a lid you could innoculate
the container with adult fruit flies and let the culture grow outside of
the aquarium. Once established remove the lid and place the container in
the aquarium. Perhaps replace the plastic container containing new media
every couple of weeks. The one problem I see with this scenario is what
will be the behavior of the fruitflies. In feeding adult fruit flies to
my killies, I've noticed that they don't seem to like the water real
well (an understatement) and seem to crawl out on some dry surface like
the lid of the aquarium or onto a floating plant. The question is how
often would they land on the water surface and get eaten like they
should. This would require some experimentation. Go for it.

On a slightly different thread concerning "flies", I have developed a
method to rid grindal and white worm cultures on those pesky little
black knats that invade my culture. To the lid of the plastic culture
container I duct-tape a couple of those non-toxic fly strips which you
can purchase very cheaply at your local hardware store. The black knats
fly up off your culture and get stuck and die. I've rid my cultures of
these pests in about 2 weeks. That's how long it takes for all of the
fly larvae to pupate and become adults. See you later, Nevin


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