Obtain Fruit Flies

Finding fruit flies can be a difficult task especially because they are so small. With the right pointers, you will have fruit flies in a jar in no time!

Steps

Capture Fruit Flies

  1. Put scraps of old fruit/vegetables in a large jar. No meat or dairy.
  2. Set the jar near a trash can or near a compost pile (without the lid, but make sure you've got one that fits tightly).
  3. Leave the jar there for several hours. Check on it every few hours.
    • There should be a swarm of fruit flies in 3 hours or so.
  4. When you've got a lot of fruit flies in the jar, you'll have to work quickly. First, snap a lid on the jar, and then turn it upright. You can then follow the directions below to culture them, or feed them right away to your pet.

Buying Fruit Flies

  1. When buying fruit flies, choose the type of fruit fly you want, online. They come in several sizes and wingless and flightless as well. Flightless is a better choice than wingless, as wingless can revert back to the flying.
  2. When buying them, get an extra order of fruit fly media (food), bedding and culture cups.
  3. When the box comes, remove the contents. You shouldn't have to worry about escapees, because the company will have secured them.
  4. If they are in small vials, put them in a freezer for a couple seconds, no more than ten, to slow them down a little, then pour them into a culture cup. They breed in the vials, but it's not recommended: they will over-crowed and die.
  5. Pour the fly food into a culture cup, adding the amount of water the package instructs you to. Fill the cup up 1/4 full, maybe a little more, and this lasts about a month or so. If you use "Organix" remember to add the mold inhibitor.
  6. After assembling your culture cup, add the flies you bought/caught.

Tips

  • Change the cultures about once a week, to once monthly, depending on how often you use it. Don't throw away the culture until there are no flies left, but start a new culture when the first looks brown and yucky inside.
  • Feel free to put the flies in the freezer for 5 seconds at a time, no more, to slow them down. Just make sure that you don't freeze them to death.
  • Wingless flies are better than flightless, because flightless have wings. They jump and then "float" but can't sustain true flight. However, even without contact with winged flies, this species can revert back to winged flies themselves at shocking speed.
  • You will want to pour at least 50 flies into the new culture to start. Otherwise you will not have enough flies in time.
  • Remember, any flies you catch have wings to fly. Mixing wild fruitflies with wingless or flightless ones will have the next generation as mostly winged. This is annoying but easy to avoid, just keep the store-bought away from wild ones.
  • Try feeding the flies pumpkin or squash, they do very well on this food and it gives an opportunity to not waste those extra pumpkins from Halloween.

Warnings

  • Fruit flies can possibly transmit a minor condition called isovalinemia, in which a person produces too much of an amino acid resulting in those affected to have an odor resembling sweaty feet.
  • Try not to open the lid all the way, when you are dispensing them into the predators enclosure. Just enough to get some out.
  • Some fruit flies might escape out of the screen lid of the enclosure, you may want to put something solid on top while your pet is eating, so that they cannot escape that way.
  • Do not leave the fruit fly jar open, even for a second! Fruit flies as so quick that, although you might not think so, hundreds can escape in seconds, and it is near impossible to kill or capture them all.

Things You'll Need

  • 1 Jar w/ lid
  • Table scraps
  • Culture cups
  • Fruit flies, store bought or caught
  • Fruit fly media
  • Fruit fly bedding (straw and old torn up bird nesting strands work well, if you don't want to buy the Excelsior Fruit fly bedding, which is Pine strings)
  • A pet to Eat the Fruit Flies.

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