Making Fly Cultures + Homemade Media Mix
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ธ.ค. 2018
- In this video I share the recipe for the homemade fly media mix I use, and show you how I start my fly cultures.
Subscribe for more FROGS, GECKOS, and VIVARIUMS!
__________
Inquire about current frog and plant availability: northernfrogger@gmail.com (shipping within Canada only)
__________
Follow me on Instagram: @northernfrogger
__________
Support me by buying your vivarium supplies through these links:
Buy Plantation Soil: amzn.to/3rsFlVS
Buy Eco Earth: amzn.to/3rsrBuD
Buy Coco-Husk: amzn.to/3swo7Zo
Buy Forest Moss: amzn.to/3fmwX86
Buy Sphagnum Moss: amzn.to/3sr30HG
Buy Repti-Bark: amzn.to/3ruMiWy
Buy Automatic Misters and Supplies: amzn.to/2NVXZYD
Buy Thermometer/Hygrometer: amzn.to/3rrpZBk
Buy Expanded Clay Drainage Layer: amzn.to/31kPHwA
Thanks and have a great day!
![แม่กลองสองใจ - ซีแกรม โตเกียว มิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GSQfVjcr_f4/mqdefault.jpg)
Excellent information. Thanks for the help in saving money!
i like the small paper plates from the dollar store 2 per culture. been doing like that since 2012. go superfly 3Table spoons of mix plus 4 oz boiling water. works out to around 85cents per culture. I have 26 frogs need 2 cultures per week. so only 6.8$ a month for feeding.
Ty great advice
for a second i thought i clicked on a josh's frogs video that feature THE mr.josh of the frogs
Great video. Thanks for sharing. I would say the consistency is like mash potatoes 😀
So near the end of your video you said we can go ahead and add our fruit flies into our cultivation cup and add a lid. Two questions: 1) where am I getting these flies to add to these cups? Like ordering a culture and then subdividing them? 2) maybe I missed it but did you say how long the cultures sit before flies are harvested?
I would love to see a beginning to end process for cultivating flies and how the cycle should be managed so as to have a constant replenishment going.
I am excited to follow you!
Yes, you'll need to find a starter culture from an online supplier or another local hobbyist, and then you can use a single culture to start multiple new cultures.
It takes about 2 weeks for melanogaster to start producing, and about 3 weeks for hydei
Masya Allah. Very good and very useful knowledge
Thanks! Glad it was helpful!
Potato/dry milk/beer/vinegar and water is what I use. Only thing is expect your flies to come out walking sideways…LOL.
I never would have guessed boxed mashed potatoes were in the mix!
Me neither, but it works well, it's the main ingredient in the Repashy mix too. Lately the instant potato mix has been hard to find at a reasonable price though so I've been experimenting with an oat bran based mixture and it's been working well too
@@NorthernFrogger very cool! Good to know!
Carolina Biological makes a media. Don't have to boil it or refrigerate it. They have the flies also.
Interesting, I'll have to look into that and how difficult it is to get it here. Canada has a lot of restrictions and extra fees for bringing anything food related across the border...
@@NorthernFrogger Maybe difficult. US companies are probably scared to death to allow Canadian companies to easily compete.
Is there a rule of thumb about how many Melanogaster flies equals a Hydei? I've read that Hydei are twice as long, which I assume means they're 8 times as big, but I don't think that's true. I assume they're about 3 times as big, so that feeding a mantis 3 Hydei and 9 Melanogaster are the same.
A culture of mine is doing something I wasn't expecting. The flies seem lethargic. I am feeding them to praying mantids and a surprising number of mantids are dying. Could the 2 problems be related?
Hey Josh, Thanks for the great video. very informative... Question, could you use Mason jars (canning jars) in place of the deli cups.. Mason jars would be a bit more ecologically friendly and could be used over and over again.. They are easy to clean and can be easily sterilized in boiling water?
Hey, thanks for the comment! Yes, you can use mason jars, and I have done it in the past, but I found them a little inconvenient... Mostly because of the way the neck and opening of the jar are smaller than the rest of the jar, as opposed to the deli cups that have a straight side all the way to opening. That necked-down area creates a little shelf that makes it harder to dump the flies out without basically turning the jar completely upside down. I found it was much harder to control how many flies were coming out, plus I would get a lot more of the crud(old pupae cases, dried/crusty pieces of old media, etc...) from the bottom of the jars falling out with them.
That small opening also made them a bit tough to clean, as it's too small to get my hand in there, and sometimes that old dried media and coffee filters can be quite difficult to get out. I never really found a great solution for the lids either. With the deli cups, it's easy to just pop a small section open to dump the flies out without having to remove the whole lid. I never came up a good way to do that with the mason jars so I would end up with a lot more flies getting away.
Most of these things are kind of minor inconveniences, but when you're feeding 100+ frogs at a time it can really add up, and it was taking much longer to feed and many more flies were getting away from me than with the deli cups. I found I was also spending up to two hours a week just cleaning mason jars, which is hard to justify.
On a smaller scale though, I think the mason jars make a lot of sense, and if I only had a few frogs I would probably be using them. I am trying to find ways to reduce my ecological impact, including really trying to move away from single-use plastics. I recently switched all my tadpole grow-out cups from deli cups to small mason jars and it's working great. I have been looking for solutions for the fly cups, but I haven't found a good one yet. There are a couple types of straight-sided mason jars, like the ones I'm using for tadpoles now, but so far I've only found them in 250ml sizes. If they ever make a 750ml or 1L size in that style I would be all over them!
@@NorthernFrogger Hey Josh, thanks much for your input. Since I'll only be housing a few frogs jars may be the way I'll proceed. I figured I'd use ladies panty hose for ventilation and the round screw tops should fit over the jar providing there is not much bulk in the hose. Here in the states, Mason jars are not that expensive and I like the idea of reusing instead of filling landfills with trash that will take years to decay.. Just trying to do my part in saving our planet and frogs... I think I'll give it a try with a few jars and see how it plays out.. Thanks again for your comment and all your great vids, I've been binge watching them...
@@diamondpaintingdogdad8533 Sounds like a good plan! I like the pantyhose idea, I think that should work well. I have been looking for a reusable option, but your comment reminded me I haven't looked in a while. I've been doing some browsing on Amazon and I did actually find a 750ml smooth-sided mason jar! I still can't find a 1L version, but I think I will give the 750's a try and see how they work. They aren't too expensive here, but I do think I would need at least 90 of them to keep the rotation going with a bit of a buffer. Doing some rough maths with the current price on Amazon, it would take about a year to reach the break-even point vs. the deli cups, which isn't too bad, but I do need to make sure they can be a permanent solution before I switch the whole operation over!
How long does the media last in the refrig? how many batches do you get out of it? Thanks
I'm not really sure how long it would last, to be honest, I go through it fast enough that I've never really had to worry about it. I would guess it should be good for a few months at least in the fridge. I get about 30-40 cultures per batch.
@@NorthernFrogger ever calculate the cost per culture?
Il coperchio dei barattoli non ha fori per fare circolare area? Funziona lo stesso con chiusura totale?
Usually I use brown sugar since it contains more nutrients and carbs
Interesting... I just use the icing sugar because it's so fine, it mixes well with the other ingredients. I will have to look into brown sugar though
How do you get rid of the SMELL
Do you put the one part vinegar in with the two parts water before you boil it, I think I missed that part.
Yes I added the vinegar first and then boiled it together
2 parts water and 1 part vinegar... a note for myself because I keep forgetting and losing my notes 🤦♀️😂
What if you just mashed up some fruit and tossed it ina culture cup??
How do you deal with ticks? And what filters do you buy?
I think you mean mites, ticks aren't really a problem with fly cultures. I keep the cultures on a layer of diatomaceous earth, it kills the mites when they try to crawl through it.
I don't have a particular type of filter I use, usually just whatever is cheapest
Doesnt brwers yeast supposed to be added once everything is cooled?
You might be confusing brewing yeast with brewers yeast. Brewing yeast is the active cultures that are used for fermentation, while brewers yeast is a non-active byproduct of the fermentation process, and is often used as a nutritional supplement. Some people add brewing yeast (or baking yeast) to their fly cultures after mixing (although I'm pretty sure you're supposed to do it while it's still warm to kick-start the process). From what I understand, the idea behind adding the active cultures is to get them to create those nutritious byproducts, so in the end, it's accomplishing the same thing, this way just kind of skips a step.
that is a good question 🤔
do you like his answer
I'm still researching all
ideas before I put it in action and most Important
before I get a animal to feed it correctly
thank you have a great day enjoy life I will
👵🐟♎🕊😁😷🧤👀👂🧠
🎥👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👏🍻 cheers😊
@@trishafisha918 So I started adding brewers yeast in a few test cultures while I am making cultures. These cultures are producing quicker than counterparts with all other things being equal. Not sure if they will crash quicker. But so far positive results.
Where do yo get your bromeliads?
They've come from a few different places. I ordered a bunch from Hawaiian Botanicals years ago, but last I checked they only do wholesale orders now. Most of the other's I've sourced through users on the canadart.org forums.
what size cups are you using?
They are the 32oz cups.
Is brewers' yeast the same as nutritional yeast?
Yes
My understanding is that they are different... Nutritional yeast is just deactivated yeast. Brewers yeast is a by-product of yeast produced during the brewing process
hi everyone lol
Could someone help me? --- I have tried to do this (with another basic recipe on TH-cam), and I had heaps of white worms come up the side of the container, and also on plastic scrap 'filler' in the middle . But they were quite small, about half the size of the shop culture worms. They eventually died and went brown, and there are no pupa, so something is wrong. The original flies are still alive in there, and the bottom mix looks fine, with no mold or darkening...The top is ventilated nicely, and temperature has always been moderate. No sunlight, just room lighting. Thanks!
Theyre the fly larvae! The brown things are the pupae :)
The tiny worms are larvae that turn into the fruit flies. Did you continue ?
@@debbiedebbie9473 Yes, I had great success with a different and very simple recipe. Previously (as per my first comment) the worms definitely died, then went brown. They weren't the brown pupee, as people have tried to tell me...They stayed exactly the same for 1 month until I chucked them out.
i thought you were keith habersberger for like 2s
Sixty bucks for the superfood!
hi do you have a situation with mites just wondering
thank you for this video have a great day enjoy life
I will 🌞🤓😎🤐😇😷
👵🐟♎🕊🌹🙊🙉🙈
well I try
I've had mite problems in the past, but I haven't had issues with them for a long time now. The main things I found really helped cut down on mite problems were: keeping the cultures on a layer of diatomaceous earth, and storing the cultures so they are not touching each other or the sides of the bin.
Do you glue the filter to the lid?
Yes, I use hot glue to attach the filters. I have a video about making the lids here: th-cam.com/video/AZ17O4Mqqko/w-d-xo.html
Have you tried feeding flies to your fish?
Yeah I do regularly! Most of the fish love them!
@@NorthernFrogger Good news. I'm just building the vivarium. I want to have the flies going before I get the frogs. I'll just feed them to my Platys.
Could you please give the recipe in grams ? With cups it is difficult because it depends if some ingredients are in flakes or in powder
ninfireblade eye ball it dude its a hobby!
How do you feed the frogs in terrariums… do you take them out to feed them???? 🤔🤔
No I just dump the flies in the tank, the frogs are pretty good at hunting them down
@@NorthernFrogger thanks…
One more question…. How do you take care of the fruit flies during winter???
frogs and chameleons, if kept. How many servings should be given? one day given 3 glasses of fruit flies?
Why is everyone using sugar in the recipe
I'm so jealous of your cultures! I'm having no real success, even after trying 3 different media types seen on YT. What always happens is that the flies aren't interested in the media! They just head straight up the sides, to the top of the container. It has an excellent see-through nylon mesh, so the ventilation is not the problem. The flies never hang around down the bottom and roam on the media.. Why is this? I've prepared the media very carefully, re hyrdration level etc. ...Many thanks
There going to be 3 main ingredients.
7 ingredients later.your fly cultures are not very cost effective.
I use banana.castor sugar.yeast.dried mash.apple cider vinegar.works a treat and 8th of the price.mix it all together apart from yeast which I just sprinkle on top
There are three main ingredients: potato flakes, powdered sugar, and brewers yeast. Everything else is optional/personal preference.
So it sounds like our base recipes are essentially the same, I just skip the bananas in favor of a powdered supplement.