Fruit fly trap question

Posts and questions relating to ant diet & nutrition. Let us know what you’re feeding your ants.

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Geffbro
Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2016 9:20 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Fruit fly trap question

Post: # 30775Post Geffbro
Sat Sep 02, 2017 9:32 pm

An update if anyone goes the fruit fly route.

I took some plastic container a sandwich came in from the store (like this http://www.uscasehouse.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/940x587/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/3/4/3424XX_11.JPG ), put a piece of banana inside and left it on my porch!

Lots of fruit flies go inside and multiply forever, a banana and being outside seems to give them access to whatever they need. When you close the container and disturb it, they try to escape and the only route is to try and squeeze through the outer rim (which surprisingly they can indeed fit into while its closed).

This puts them in a position to be easily smooshed on demand as they try to wiggle through, then you can just open it up (outside hopefully) and let all the other ones escape temporarily, collect the smooshed ones, and put the container back where it was for the others to come back and multiply.

With this strategy its really easy to get as many fruit flies as you want without worrying about any poisons of a fruit fly killing trap. I (probably comically overfeeding) give my colony of ~30 camponotus like 20+ fruit flies per day or every other day, just to make the queen think theres infinite food and therefore might as well lay as many eggs as she wants!

Lots of brood so its all good here!

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invjang
Posts: 35
Joined: Tue May 30, 2017 8:20 pm
Location: Chicago

Re: Fruit fly trap question

Post: # 31778Post invjang
Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:20 pm

I have same situation. How do you solve the problem?
My colony is still small and they consume only one or two insects a week.
Once I caught about 10 crickets and froze them, but they didn't accept the frozen ones.
So even if I buy some bugs from the pet marts, they may be bunch of them, but my ants only eat a few and most of bugs will be wasted.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
A keeper of
Camponotus pennsylvanicus
Formica sp.

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Batspiderfish
Posts: 3315
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2016 3:47 pm
Location: Maine

Re: Fruit fly trap question

Post: # 31785Post Batspiderfish
Sun Sep 24, 2017 8:22 pm

invjang wrote:
Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:20 pm
I have same situation. How do you solve the problem?
My colony is still small and they consume only one or two insects a week.
Once I caught about 10 crickets and froze them, but they didn't accept the frozen ones.
So even if I buy some bugs from the pet marts, they may be bunch of them, but my ants only eat a few and most of bugs will be wasted.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Every once in a while, just tap a bunch of the adults into a container and stick that into the freezer (chill the whole culture in the fridge, prior, if these flies have wings). You can put them into something smaller from there, and you will find yourself with nearly endless supply (particularly if you are transfering some of these living adults into new cultures). If you find yourself with too many adults, just throw out the old frozen ones.
If you enjoy my expertise and identifications, please do not put wild populations at risk of disease by releasing pet colonies. We are responsible to give our pets the best care we can manage for the rest of their lives.

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