Adding Flies to a Fruit Fly Culture

"Hi my name is Richard Revis I'm co-owner of Black Jungle Terrarium Supply and on behalf of expertvillage.com we are discussing the proper culturing of fruit flies. At this point we have our culture cup ready to go and it is now time to add the fruit flies. Using a funnel definitely helps to channel all of the flies down into the cultural vessel. Take an existing culture that has fruit flies in it and tap it to knock them down. Remove the lid. Tapping the container while you are doing so. You can allow them to start crawling up the sides and then carefully tap the culture into the funnel allowing the fruit flies to fall down into the culture. Return the existing culture back upright, close the lid, tap the funnel to knock down the fruit flies, and then place a new lid onto the container. The number of fruit flies that you actually add to a culture is very important. If you add to many or to little it can cause problems with the development. Additionally at this point is where you actual have the extracellular the extracellular is a shredded aspen material that helps provide additional surface area for the adult flies to crawl on. Taking a small hand full you want to loosely want to form a ball that would generally will fill the culture container. You are not looking to pack it but simply provide additional surface material. Allow the flies to settle to the bottom by tapping the container. Remove the lid and then insert the cellar down into the cup. Don't worry about pressing any flies to the media as the extracellular rather springy and doesn't really trap them. When you are done the culture basically should have a full but still loose appearance to. Once the culture have been set up they should be kept in room temperature in a area protected from excessive heat or drafts. The drosophila melanogaster topically take between 2-2 ½ weeks to start producing new flies. Where the drosophila hydei take about a week to a week in half longer. All of this is temperature dependent and vary from the time of year."