got flightless fruit flies

[yvez9]

Hey

just letting you know i got some flightless fruit flies

the fish, especially bettas and killies, go mad for them!!!

They're so awesome, i got about 200 from the store and am trying to harvest them with a home made recipe i found!

I also caught a small night butterfly that found a way in my appartment and dropped it in the tank. it got swallowed after about 1 second!!

I just love feeding insects now!

 

[BigC]

I culture these flies at home, vestigal winged (Drosophila-melanogaster) make sure you adhere to the correct temperature that keeps the morph of the flightless gene. as outside the parameters they will develop normal wings and be able to fly.
They are an excellent natural food.
Regards
BigC

 

[penguinpimp1990]

hey does anyone have a link to harvesting these fruit flies sounds interesting

 

[BigC]

http/www.killi.co.uk/drosophila1.php

 

[Dorkhedeos]

odd, the so called flightless ones that you can buy at my petsmart can fly. i wouldve gotten some, but i dont want to have a house full of flies.

 

[sylvia]

I used to have a culture of fruit flies going a few years back (not flightless though and not actualy for my fish it was for a laboratory) but I've never tried these wingless ones and now I think I will. I've never actualy fed any flies to my fish but I expect they'd realy like them (especialy the gouramies).

 

[Vivid-Dawn]

My giant danios went totally wild over them (thrashing about, and zipping around). My guppies and mollies ate them, but not with any more interest than they have for frozen bloodworms or shrimp.
My Pictus catfish, who I thought would react much like the danios, totally ignore them! Instead, they go baserk over cichlid sinking pellets... weirdos!

 

[BigC]

odd, the so called flightless ones that you can buy at my petsmart can fly. i wouldve gotten some, but i dont want to have a house full of flies.

Vestigal Winged Fruitfly (stunted wings) are a mutation of the normal fruitfly there are a number of varieties but the one that aquarists are corncerned with (smaller variety) is Drosophila-melanogaster, they have to be kept at a certain temperature for the mutation gene to remain, if not then their wings will develop normally. It is not really a big problem in the UK in as much as the flies wont last very long in our climate, whereas in the states they could be considered a pest in certain (warmer)states.
You can get a variety of Drosophila-melanogaster known as Apterous fruitfly, which have no wings at all ( OK I'll await the comments of "Then why are they called flies if they cannot fly")?
A nice tip for anyone concerned about escaping flies (you will always get some escapees) is to place a jamjar with Cider Vinegar in amongst your cultures. The escapees will head straight for this and drown.
I hope this was of some help to someone.
Regards
BigC