Fly troubles

Well, it has been a couple of weeks; I should post again...

For anyone that has kept fruit flies, the worst part about culturing them isn't the few escapees... its the smell! And having a pregnant wife that is more sensitive to smell than usual doesn't help. I've tried everything to contain the smell. I tried cutting up the lids in order to superglue paper towels on... that worked the best, but not perfect.

...until I saw a sterilite container at Shopko one day and thought--they'd all fit in there! So I put them in and sealed the lid--when we got home next, no smell! It works! I didn't think about air though... as FF larvae come out of the media, if they're not getting enough air, they climb for the top. This hadn't been a problem before, but this time, they started burrowing through the superglue! I didn't notice, until one time I opend the lid to the container--larvae everywhere! I scooped up as much as I could, put it on a lid, and threw it in the tank. The side effect was that my frogs had something to hunt that was different and I CONSTANTLY saw ALL THREE of them for the next few days! That part was great, so I'm considerning ways to repeat that...

How did I fix it? I finally switched to deli cups. I had been using 20 oz smoothie cups (that I was getting free from work) but deli cups add another 1/3 area--32 oz cups! I knew about them, and wanted to use them, but it seemed too expensive to purchase and ship in small quantities, and large quantities would have gone to waste in the move. Then a friend here in town that keeps PDFs as well, mentioned that the deli departments at grocery stores carry them! Of course! Deli department = deli cups. I found them at Macey's for $.10 a piece. Love it! The lids fit tighter, and I just use a pin to prick lots of tiny holes in the lid. Perfect--no smell (still in the container) and now they can't escape. Plus, they are crawling up onto the lid--so whenever I want to feed them worms, I just switch out a lid and throw the one with larvae into the tank. FF culturing continues to improve--next post: how to score cheap excelsior.

Old 20 oz cups