Fruit Flies

Fruit Flies

Fruit Flies make the perfect feeder insect for small amphibians such as dart frogs, hatchling reptiles such as baby chameleons and even invertebrates like the praying mantis, which would struggle with larger prey items.

Fruit Flies are an extremely nutritious live food and provide high levels of essential sugars and minerals for your exotic pets.

We recommend buying flightless fruit flies in a ready-to-go culture, which will make your life much easier and stop any clouds of fruit flies from escaping when you open the container. You will need to keep your Fruit Fly culture between 65-70F although they can handle some higher and lower temperatures. The higher temperatures will increase the speed of development and breeding, while lower temperatures will slow the process down.

Initially when you receive your Fruit Fly culture it will look like a blob of mashed up fruit and a wad of cotton wool but this contains all the fruit fly larvae needed to start your culture. Within 5-7 days you should start to see the fruit fly larvae crawling out of the mixture and settling on the cotton wool where it is dryer, to begin the pupation process. Adult Fruit Flies will emerge after a further 2-3 days and will have a life expectancy of just over 2 weeks. In a further 2 days the Frit Flies will be sexually mature and ready to mate, starting the process over again, or alternatively they can be removed from the culture and feed to your pet.

Fruit Flies can be fed on a variety of fermenting plant materials, mashed up ripe fruit or a prepared mixture which can be bought from Fruit Fly breeders or biological suppliers. You can even make your own using a handful of mashed potatoes, a tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of yeast, mixed together with water. This will provide ample material for several cultures.

If you wish to extend the life of your Fruit Fly culture, you should start a new culture when your first culture is 2-3 weeks old. Do not remove any Fruit Flies before you set up the new culture as this will reduce the breeding population.

To set up new cultures, you will need to keep your main breeding batch within a slightly larger fine net cage. Every week you should introduce a smaller container such as a cricket tub with your chosen food source and remove the previous weeks. This needs covering with a fine mesh lid and then left untouched for 7-10 days for the eggs to begin developing. Once a specific culture reaches 6 weeks old it is time to feed off the adults and begin a fresh.

To feed from the culture, gently but firmly tap the culture down onto a counter top to settle the flies away from the lid. Open the lid and shake some flies into the tank. Continuously tapping the sides of the culture cup will help keep the flies from crawling up the sides until you get the lid back on. Dusting fruit flies with a vitamin or mineral supplement can be done by tapping the flies into a cup containing some of the vitamin/mineral powder and then swirling and gently shaking the flies to coat them.

Females hatch earlier than males so wait 7 days after first flies appear to increase fruit fly production.

In dry weather, slightly mist the material to prevent it from drying out, but be careful of drowning fruit flies.