Interesting "natural" food thought, while at work today...

[Magnum Man]

so, at work we get these little fruit fly type bugs, around the sink drains, mop sinks urinals, and other wet areas, they look like the same fruit fly kind of bugs we get in the kitchen, and sink drains at home...

I started making these Apple Cider Vinegar traps by drilling a hole in the cap of a bottle, adding half a bottle of Apple Cider Vinegar, and a table spoon of sugar... these seem to work great, at trapping these critters... and since there is no poison, I started thinking today, if I couldn't skim the dead bugs off the surface of the Vinegar, and rinse them in fresh water, and add them to my tanks, not as a live food obviously, but as a "natural" food... if I poured my jar contents through a sieve it would make my solution last longer in my traps, and provide a natural food source...

what say you guys???

 

[GaryE]

I looked at that. I had an outbreak of those creatures in my fishroom last year. I decided not to use them as I wasn't sure how the vinegar would go down. Plus there were never the numbers. I caught a lot relatively, but only enough to feed one tank rarely.

Now, the idle thought I've had a few times was the use of bug zappers. I've never had one and never intend to have one as they kill indiscriminately, but a catching structure under one of them would provide some good insect life in its deadest form...

 

[Colin_T]

Are they fruit flies or fungus gnats?
Fungus gnats like damp humid conditions and are a pain in the blank.

If they are removed from the vinegar within an hour or so and rinsed to remove the vinegar, they are probably fine. However, vinegar is an acid and will start to dissolve the insects so they might not be that palatable after a day or two in the solution.

I had a 12 inch fine mesh fish net that I took collecting when I was out in the bush. I regularly came across swarms of small flying insects and would catch up as many as possible and stick them in a plastic bag that got sealed up. When I got home I put the bag of bugs in the freezer and when they were dead, I moved them into a smaller container that stayed in the freezer until the insects were used.

I also used to hunt ants and ant eggs and feed them off. The ant eggs were used fresh but the ants got frozen to stop them escaping and going all over the house.

I had large plastic rubbish bins with flour in and left them open for a bit to attract weevils. Once the flour was well infested I would use a fine sieve to separate the weevil larvae from the flour.

There's lots of different insects you can culture including fruit flies (winged or wingless). Some scumbag is breeding blowflies around here and they are regularly attracted to my place for some reason. I mean I feel like death most of the time but I didn't think I smelt of it. On Tuesday I had a massive invasion from the blowflies and killed over 50 of them that got inside somehow. I get little white aphid type things in the pot plants. they aren't aphids but I have no idea what they are. Fish like them though. Normal aphids love the rose bush out the back and I used to feed them to my fish.

 

[Magnum Man]

I assume they are both fruit flies and the other kind, which apparently look similar enough to each other the average "guy" can't tell them apart... our house has ripening fruits and vegetables on a counter section lately... and we never have anything like that at work... the bugs remain in an unmolded condition in the solution for months ( they don't seem to dissolve )

of course I would start with fresh solution, & pull them out every day or two, if I were reusing the bugs... do you think a rinse out in the sieve, would be as good, as a 24 hour soak in plain water... a plus, is a lot of the fish I'd try feeding them to, are soft water fish...

 

[GaryE]

A lot of freshwater rainforest fish have ants, with their formic acid defences, as food. They'll burn our skin, but fish that hunt them are unbothered. So it should be okay.

There is just one way to find out.