Fruit Fly Cultures - Fruit flies are easy to culture, provide outstanding value to aquarists and offer superb nutrition for tropical fish. If you are looking to start culturing live foods, you have come the right place.
Overview:
Wild fruit flies (FF) are pesky little winged avengers that attack the household fruit basket with the abandon of a teenager at a fast food drive-through. Let some of your kitchen bananas get a little over ripe and you may be looking at a scene from a late night horror movie! Why on earth would anyone want to willingly introduce such a pestilence into his or her fish room? The answer is simple, fruit flies are easy to culture, not overly prone to escape, and are a nutritionally outstanding food for middle to upper level fish.
Fruit flies are also an excellent entry point for fish keepers looking to begin culturing live food for their charges. Bettas, killifish, rasboras, most barbs, tetras & many cichlids will all devour fruit flies with reckless abandon. The high levels of beta-carotene are known to promote fish colors and the chitin (KITE-un) from the wings & bodies provides much needed roughage. Most wild fish eat winged creatures at some point in their life, typically in the early stages of rapid growth. Many fish keepers, at one time or another, have dealt with their prized pet fish being afflicted with bouts of constipation or the dreaded “trailing feces.” Added roughage from fruit flies may help prevent these forms of digestive trouble from ever occurring.
Fruit flies described:
There are a couple of commonly available fruit fly varieties for the aquarist to choose from. Let us immediately eliminate the wild flying variety from this discussion. Swarms of winged invaders would be bad news for you and anyone sharing your living space. Abandon any thoughts you may have of harvesting wild types for use indoors. If you value your mental health and relationships with other people, you will stick with the flightless or wingless varieties that are readily available in the aquarium hobby or from biological supply houses.
Fruit flies belong to the Drosophila (DRO-sofa-la) family. The fruit flies cultured for our purposes are genetically altered to prohibit flight. The commonly available varieties are winged but flightless, completely wingless, or those that have little stumps for wings. The winged types provide a little extra roughage for your fish but may take to flight if the temperature approaches 95* F. Keep the culture in a temperature range that is comfortable for people and you should be fine. By and large, if the culture has an appropriate lid or stopper, and you do not offer more flies than the fish can quickly consume, you will never see more than an occasional stray fruit fly in the fish room. We will share some tips later in the article to help minimize the number of strays.
The most commonly available fruit flies in the hobby are Drosophila melanogaster, which grow to about 3mm in size. D. melanogaster takes about two weeks to complete its lifecycle. These little flies have been used in biological research for almost a century because they are cheap, prolific, easy to culture, and well understood. In 1995 the Nobel prize in medicine was awarded for research done on the lowly D. melanogaster. Fruit flies have been available in the aquarium hobby for some time now, but have recently reached heightened popularity due to wider distribution in major pet store chains. It is not uncommon to see pet store aisle caps that feature fruit flies along with betta bowls and other flashy paraphernalia. The humble little fruit fly has an interesting history and has sure come a long way!
Another fruit fly that is available in the hobby, but not as readily as D. melanogaster, is Drosophila hydei Sturdivant. Easily twice the size of D. melanogaster, D. hydei will take about a month to complete its lifecycle and will therefore be more of a feast or famine offering as opposed to providing a steady supply from a single culture. D. hydei does provide a more attractive and filling package for larger fish, as they flutter and flail enticingly on the water surface, while D. melanogaster tend to hop and jump around on the water. A few D.hydei fluttering on the surface will bring Mr. Cichlid up for lunch pretty quickly.
The lifecycle for Drosophila includes fly, egg, larvae, & pupae. Eggs for D. melanogaster are about ½ mm long and hatch into a worm like larvae, approximately one day after fertilization. After three molts (called instars), the larvae pupate and hatch into an adult fly that is fertile within a day. Once your D. melanogaster culture is in full swing you will witness the lifecycle being played out as detailed above, as long as the culture is kept around 75* F. The lifecycle slows down considerably as the temperature drops.
Fruit fly cultures can be obtained from a number of national pet store chains, online retailers or local aquarium clubs. Call around to fish or reptile stores in your hometown or search the web for some reputable online resources. A single culture can be purchased for $5 to $10 and can yield a lot of fish food from new cultures that you start. Once you obtain your starter culture it is recommended that you begin new sub-cultures immediately and at least once a week in the beginning. After you get the hang of it, start new cultures weekly only if you have a lot of hungry mouths to feed, every other week should suffice for smaller operations, or simply sub-culture as needed.
Culturing details:
You will need a container, food medium, lid or stopper and some refined techniques. Climbing material for fruit fly cultures are optional but recommended.
What follows is my own system:
Culturing techniques:
It is better to start new cultures frequently than to have ugly, smelly old cultures lying around. Like any type of culture, you should maintain at least two or three fruit fly cultures at all times. If you follow this advice you will always have a viable culture to fall back upon in the event of a major crash. If you start new cultures as needed you are certain to always have fruit flies available for your fish.
Feeding technique:
Now comes the part that will make your fish very happy, feeding time! Pick up one of your culture bottles and observe the location of the flies. If they are at the top of the bottle simply tap on the bottle to knock them down to the bottom. Next, pull out the stopper and tap lightly on the inverted bottle to “shake” them out of the bottle and into the tank. The best approach is to only sprinkle out a few flies into the aquarium at a time – make sure they are all eaten quickly. Smaller fish need only eat a few D. melanogaster or one to two D. hydei. Observe the fish and discontinue feeding before their interest begins to wane as evidenced by being slow to come up for food. This is one food that you do not want to overfeed, as uneaten files will climb out of the tank and attempt to colonize your fish room.
After a while you will begin to get a feel for how much to feed your fish. It is far better to leave your fish a little hungry than it is to try and hunt down stray flies.
Tips:
Place the culture bottle in the refrigerator for a few minutes before feeding to minimize their feistiness and desire to make a rapid get away. Small refrigerators are cheap these days and are highly recommended for live food culturists. It is unappealing to keep creepy crawlies next to the milk/eggs/butter.
It is also a good idea to leave out a small glass of wine in the fish room to attract and trap any strays. If you don’t imbibe the fruit of the vine, I’m sure that wine vinegar will do the trick.
Once you have mastered the culturing and feeding techniques outlined in this article, you will have an endless supply of high quality live food for your fish. Your fish will be well fed and in turn will reward you with vibrant colors and healthful vigor.
Overview:
Wild fruit flies (FF) are pesky little winged avengers that attack the household fruit basket with the abandon of a teenager at a fast food drive-through. Let some of your kitchen bananas get a little over ripe and you may be looking at a scene from a late night horror movie! Why on earth would anyone want to willingly introduce such a pestilence into his or her fish room? The answer is simple, fruit flies are easy to culture, not overly prone to escape, and are a nutritionally outstanding food for middle to upper level fish.
Fruit flies are also an excellent entry point for fish keepers looking to begin culturing live food for their charges. Bettas, killifish, rasboras, most barbs, tetras & many cichlids will all devour fruit flies with reckless abandon. The high levels of beta-carotene are known to promote fish colors and the chitin (KITE-un) from the wings & bodies provides much needed roughage. Most wild fish eat winged creatures at some point in their life, typically in the early stages of rapid growth. Many fish keepers, at one time or another, have dealt with their prized pet fish being afflicted with bouts of constipation or the dreaded “trailing feces.” Added roughage from fruit flies may help prevent these forms of digestive trouble from ever occurring.
Fruit flies described:
There are a couple of commonly available fruit fly varieties for the aquarist to choose from. Let us immediately eliminate the wild flying variety from this discussion. Swarms of winged invaders would be bad news for you and anyone sharing your living space. Abandon any thoughts you may have of harvesting wild types for use indoors. If you value your mental health and relationships with other people, you will stick with the flightless or wingless varieties that are readily available in the aquarium hobby or from biological supply houses.
Fruit flies belong to the Drosophila (DRO-sofa-la) family. The fruit flies cultured for our purposes are genetically altered to prohibit flight. The commonly available varieties are winged but flightless, completely wingless, or those that have little stumps for wings. The winged types provide a little extra roughage for your fish but may take to flight if the temperature approaches 95* F. Keep the culture in a temperature range that is comfortable for people and you should be fine. By and large, if the culture has an appropriate lid or stopper, and you do not offer more flies than the fish can quickly consume, you will never see more than an occasional stray fruit fly in the fish room. We will share some tips later in the article to help minimize the number of strays.
The most commonly available fruit flies in the hobby are Drosophila melanogaster, which grow to about 3mm in size. D. melanogaster takes about two weeks to complete its lifecycle. These little flies have been used in biological research for almost a century because they are cheap, prolific, easy to culture, and well understood. In 1995 the Nobel prize in medicine was awarded for research done on the lowly D. melanogaster. Fruit flies have been available in the aquarium hobby for some time now, but have recently reached heightened popularity due to wider distribution in major pet store chains. It is not uncommon to see pet store aisle caps that feature fruit flies along with betta bowls and other flashy paraphernalia. The humble little fruit fly has an interesting history and has sure come a long way!
Another fruit fly that is available in the hobby, but not as readily as D. melanogaster, is Drosophila hydei Sturdivant. Easily twice the size of D. melanogaster, D. hydei will take about a month to complete its lifecycle and will therefore be more of a feast or famine offering as opposed to providing a steady supply from a single culture. D. hydei does provide a more attractive and filling package for larger fish, as they flutter and flail enticingly on the water surface, while D. melanogaster tend to hop and jump around on the water. A few D.hydei fluttering on the surface will bring Mr. Cichlid up for lunch pretty quickly.
The lifecycle for Drosophila includes fly, egg, larvae, & pupae. Eggs for D. melanogaster are about ½ mm long and hatch into a worm like larvae, approximately one day after fertilization. After three molts (called instars), the larvae pupate and hatch into an adult fly that is fertile within a day. Once your D. melanogaster culture is in full swing you will witness the lifecycle being played out as detailed above, as long as the culture is kept around 75* F. The lifecycle slows down considerably as the temperature drops.
Fruit fly cultures can be obtained from a number of national pet store chains, online retailers or local aquarium clubs. Call around to fish or reptile stores in your hometown or search the web for some reputable online resources. A single culture can be purchased for $5 to $10 and can yield a lot of fish food from new cultures that you start. Once you obtain your starter culture it is recommended that you begin new sub-cultures immediately and at least once a week in the beginning. After you get the hang of it, start new cultures weekly only if you have a lot of hungry mouths to feed, every other week should suffice for smaller operations, or simply sub-culture as needed.
Culturing details:
You will need a container, food medium, lid or stopper and some refined techniques. Climbing material for fruit fly cultures are optional but recommended.
What follows is my own system:
- Container:
Empty plastic spring water bottle (approximately a pint). The idea is to use something fairly sterile and disposable. Retain the bottle cap! When the culture goes bad, it may go really bad, so you will need to seal it tightly and throw it out with the household garbage. Most cultures tend to just slow down production and then ultimately stop. - Medium:
Cornmeal, instant potatoes, instant baby cereal, orange juice and yeast. The culture medium needs to be full of vitamins, starches, minerals and protein to essentially “gut-load” your fruit flies. The high quality baby cereal can be used for other live food cultures as well, such as white worms and grindal worms. I use a combination of cormeal, instant potatoes and just about any grain-based type of baby cereal (rice, oatmeal, or a combo) from any national brand. Look for vitamin fortified and/or high protein on the label.
Some types of bread can also be highly nutritious and contain mold inhibitors that will keep your cultures going stronger/longer. Using bread may also eliminate the need for yeast. Feel free to experiment and share your own experiences. Note that some biological supply houses are known to carry instant fruit fly food, just add water and a sprinkle of yeast. I still lean toward the baby cereal due to nutritional considerations. - Liquid:
Juice from a fresh orange works really well at retarding molds that can crash your culture; it also binds the medium together and adds sugars that seem to keep the fruit flies fat and happy.
Note that the medium will feed the larvae and the yeast will feed the flies. All you need are a few yeast granules sprinkled on top of the culture. - Climbing material:
Recommended. Why bother? Fruit flies tend to do better with material to climb around on. I use a material called BirdBlock. BirdBlock is basically a plastic mesh, that is available at yard and garden centers, and is used by gardeners to keep birds off of fruit trees and the like. Just cut off a chunk, wad it up and stick it into the culture medium. You can use wadded up packing material, plastic screen or whatever you have handy for this purpose. I happen to have BirdBlock around.
It should be noted that some folks do fine without climbing material. - Stopper:
Cotton ball. You need to plug the bottle to keep the fruit flies from swarming the fish room. At the same time you need to allow airflow into and out of the bottle. A cotton ball or piece of sponge will work well enough as a stopper.
Culturing techniques:
- To set up a new culture, rinse out a spring water bottle under hot tap water. Shake it out reasonably well and allow it to air dry.
- When completely dry, add a ½ teaspoon of cornmeal to the plastic bottle. This will serve as the base food to absorb excess liquid as the culture matures. You may want to use a funnel when you add ingredients to keep the mess to a minimum and assure that the measured amount you are adding hits the target.
- Next, add 1 Tablespoon of dried instant potato flakes, do not stir or mix, simply drop it on top of the cornmeal.
- Likewise, drop in 2 Tablespoons of the dried baby cereal and do not mix.
- Take a fresh orange and roll it around under the palm of your hand for a few minutes. You want to soften the orange a bit to make it easier to juice. Cut the orange in half and squeeze out enough juice for 1½ to 2 Tablespoons. Pour the orange juice into the bottle and still do not mix. Allow the juice to be absorbed by the dried contents.
- Don’t be too concerned about dry spots in the very bottom of the bottle. Fruit fly respiration and bacterial processes will give off considerable amounts of moisture, so the extra dry pockets will come in handy. Optionally, borrowing a trick from the tidy-bowl man, a few drops of blue food coloring added to the mixture will make things more visually appealing.
- Next, add a sprinkle of yeast to the top of the medium. Something like 10 to 20 grains of yeast should suffice.
- Drop in a small wad of the BirdBlock, if you decide to do so, and jam it into the medium with a chopstick.
- Place the stopper on the bottle and let the culture set for 24 hrs. This will allow the liquid to become completely absorbed by the media, and allow the yeast to begin the fermentation process.
- Sprinkle in 10 to 20 fruit flies from an established culture into your new culture bottle. I use a funnel and sometimes call for another set of hands to make sure the bottle and funnel rig doesn’t tip over. Don’t forget to put the stopper back on when you are done!
- Once your new culture has been started, write the date on the outside of the bottle with a felt tip pen so that you can tell how long the culture has been active. A culture that is well over a month old could be destined to crash. Take a sniff at the top of the plugged culture bottle; you should catch a yeasty scent, not an offensive odor.
It is better to start new cultures frequently than to have ugly, smelly old cultures lying around. Like any type of culture, you should maintain at least two or three fruit fly cultures at all times. If you follow this advice you will always have a viable culture to fall back upon in the event of a major crash. If you start new cultures as needed you are certain to always have fruit flies available for your fish.
Feeding technique:
Now comes the part that will make your fish very happy, feeding time! Pick up one of your culture bottles and observe the location of the flies. If they are at the top of the bottle simply tap on the bottle to knock them down to the bottom. Next, pull out the stopper and tap lightly on the inverted bottle to “shake” them out of the bottle and into the tank. The best approach is to only sprinkle out a few flies into the aquarium at a time – make sure they are all eaten quickly. Smaller fish need only eat a few D. melanogaster or one to two D. hydei. Observe the fish and discontinue feeding before their interest begins to wane as evidenced by being slow to come up for food. This is one food that you do not want to overfeed, as uneaten files will climb out of the tank and attempt to colonize your fish room.
After a while you will begin to get a feel for how much to feed your fish. It is far better to leave your fish a little hungry than it is to try and hunt down stray flies.
Quote:
Feeding tip to remember: A fish’s stomach is roughly the size of its eye.
Tips:
Place the culture bottle in the refrigerator for a few minutes before feeding to minimize their feistiness and desire to make a rapid get away. Small refrigerators are cheap these days and are highly recommended for live food culturists. It is unappealing to keep creepy crawlies next to the milk/eggs/butter.
It is also a good idea to leave out a small glass of wine in the fish room to attract and trap any strays. If you don’t imbibe the fruit of the vine, I’m sure that wine vinegar will do the trick.
Once you have mastered the culturing and feeding techniques outlined in this article, you will have an endless supply of high quality live food for your fish. Your fish will be well fed and in turn will reward you with vibrant colors and healthful vigor.
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