Fruit flies are one of the easiest feeder insects to care for. Each 32 oz fruit fly culture includes all the food and water the flies will need for months. The culture will continue to produce flies for at least 2 months. Freshly Started Hydei Cultures will start to produce flies you can feed to your animals in 17-21 days. Freshly Started Melanogaster Cultures will start producing flies in 10-14 days. Each culture has the potential to produce 1000s of flies, but there are a few things that can slow down or stop production all together.

Humidity

Fruit fly cultures are prone to dry out in environments that are under 65% humidity. To maintain humidity, place the culture inside of a clear Rubbermaid container or storage shelving unit to keep the culture from drying out. You can also spray down the culture with de-chlorinated water if it dries out.

Temperature

Fruit fly cultures should be kept between 70 and 80 degrees. If the cultures hit 85 degrees even for a little while, the culture will go sterile and will not produce any more flies. Cultures that are kept under 70 degrees produce much slower.

Mold

Our 32 oz fruit fly cultures are made with a media that has a mold inhibitor already in it. However, if the culture begins to dry out, mold will appear on the top of the media. If mold develops on the top of the media, spray the mold down with some de-chlorinated water and put the culture in a clear Rubbermaid container or storage shelving unit to maintain humidity.

Mold will occasionally develop on the coffee filters or excelsior used in the culture. To prevent this from happening, make sure cultures are away from heater/air conditioner vents. If mold develops on the coffee filters or excelsior used in the culture, remove the portion with the mold on it before starting new cultures from that culture to avoid spreading the mold. Feeding from a moldy culture will not hurt your animals.

Mites

Mites are tiny bugs that love to attack fruit fly cultures. Mites are everywhere, so care must be taken to prevent mites from taking over your cultures. All cultures should be placed on paper towels that are sprayed with a Mite Spray. In addition, the area where the fruit flies are stored should be cleaned regularly.

If mites attack your cultures, it is best to toss all of your cultures and buy new fresh cultures.

Making Fruit Fly Cultures

Supplies:

1. Fruit Fly container and lid

2. Fruit Fly medium

3. Water free from Chlorine – Chlorine will slow the rate of fruit fly production. You can use distilled, RO, spring, etc.

4. Active Baker’s Yeast

5. Coffee Filters or Excelsior - Needed to create more surface area for more flies.

Procedure

The biggest (and most would argue only) drawback to keeping Dart Frogs is escaped fruit flies. There is nothing worse than feeling a fruit fly crawl over your arm or hear your guests comment on the amount of bugs in your house. There is, however, no reason for your house to be crawling with fruit flies no matter how large or small your Dart Frog collection is. Here is a list of a few things I do to keep down on loose fruit flies.

There is nothing worse than dropping a cup full of fruit flies and have them spill all over your floor. Keep a vacuum or shop vac near your tanks. If you have never dropped a cup of flies, don’t worry. You will someday.

Every time you feed your frogs your flies will make a quick dash towards your light and out every crack, vent, and crevice in your tank. For this reason, I have no vents on any of my tanks (they get air flow when I open them up every day). I also seal the none moving parts of my lids with silicon to keep flies from escaping (especially the aquarium lids that have the plastic back).

I also keep a glass of apple vinegar in my frogroom. The flies flock to this cup and quickly drown. I don’t like the smell of vinegar, so I only put an inch or so of it in the corner and change it weekly.

Finally, I allow free-roaming spiders to set-up webs by my tanks. I wipe away any webs that get in my viewing area, but I allow them to create webs out of plain sight.
If these steps are taken, you will find that you rarely (if ever) see any free-roaming fruit flies. Do you have any methods that I haven’t listed? If so, please shoot me a comment with your techniques.