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Keeping report Food animals
Breeding Drosophila melanogaster
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General information:
Drosophila melanogaster or the black-bellied fruit fly, fruit fly, vinegar fly or fruit fly has become indispensable in terraristics. The stubby-winged form has long since replaced the flight-capable wild form. The advantages of the flightless breeding form are obvious. The ease of handling the animals is enormous – in return, they are no longer quite as capable of reproducing as their wild form. Drosophila melanogaster are very small. It has a length of about 2 mm to 4 mm. Depending on the species, they are black, yellow-brown or mottled in all shades of brown and have bright red eyes. Just one day after mating, the females lay their eggs in fermenting and rotting fruit – around 400 in total. After pupation, it takes a maximum of eleven days for the first offspring to hatch. The flies have a life expectancy of 30 to 40 days. Due to the short generation sequence, they are suitable as laboratory animals. It is the most successful laboratory animal in the world. The diptera is now one of the best-studied species in the world and it is impossible to imagine genetics laboratories without it.
Breeding:
Breeding these animals is very easy and very inexpensive compared to other animals. I use washable glass containers or plastic containers with a capacity of 500-1000 ml for breeding. I fill them with the breeding substrate to a height of approx. 3 cm. Wood wool, egg cartons, crumpled paper or strips of paper from the shredder are placed on the substrate as a walking surface. As a rule, I stock the new breeding boxes with 20-40 flies, so that the larvae are stocked quickly. I do not heat the fruit fly hatchery but keep it at normal room temperature.
| Temperature | Development time |
|---|---|
| +10°C | No development |
| +15°C | 28 days |
| +18°C | 20 days |
| +21°C | 16 days |
| +25°C | 10-11 days |
| +30°C | 8 days |
| +35°C | No development |
Duration of the individual development stages at 25°C
| Ebryonic development | 21 hours |
| 1st larval stage | 22 hours |
| 2nd larval stage | 21 hours |
| 3rd larval stage | 44 hours |
| Doll time | 90 hours |
You should therefore keep the breeding cultures a little warmer and the containers with the already hatched animals a little cooler to increase their lifespan. Egg laying is best observed shortly after the cultures have been prepared, when the larvae are not yet disturbing. The eggs are preferably laid on the surface of the culture medium. The development period depends on the temperature.
During larval development, the animals moult twice. The length of the animals increases and reaches 4-5 mm in the third stage. The larvae burrow into the culture medium. To pupate, they usually leave the culture medium and migrate up the wall of the culture vessels.
Small fruit fly “ant”
3,99 € incl. VAT, plus shipping
Perfect for rearing young animals The small fruit fly “Ant” (Drosophila melanogaster) is a flightless breeding form that is ideal as a food animal for a variety of invertebrates, reptiles…
Nutrient medium:
Drosophila larvae feed on yeasts. The culture medium must be such that it provides favorable growth conditions for yeasts. It should be firm enough so that nothing flows out when the container is turned over. However, the larvae must be able to bore into the substrate.
Ingredients for a breeding container in summer:
- 1 cube of baker’s yeast (1 packet of dry yeast)
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 40 g rolled oats (3 heaped teaspoons)
Ingredients for a breeding container in winter:
- 1 cube of baker’s yeast (1 packet of dry yeast)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 135ml vinegar (8 tablespoons)
- 1 bag of mashed potatoes
- Water (half of the liquid indicated on the packaging)
You do not need an antifungal agent such as Nipagin as the proportion of vinegar is very high. You can also leave out the yeast, as there are yeast cells on the feet of the breeding flies. However, this delays breeding considerably. Due to the presence of yeast, it must be clear to everyone that completely odorless breeding is not possible. In the beginning, the smell of vinegar predominates. The longer the culture stands, the more unpleasant the smell of the substrate becomes.
Mites are the biggest problem with Drosophila breeding. I therefore recommend using as many animals as possible when inoculating the new breeding tanks. This increases the number of larvae and their strong circulation in the breeding mash reduces the multiplication of mites. In addition, the breeding boxes can be placed permanently in a water bath. This prevents the mites from moving from one cup to the next and also prevents the fruit flies from spreading throughout the house.
Feed Drosophilas:
Of course you can go to your wife’s or girlfriend’s closet to “borrow” a pair of tights. This builds many bridges from the breeding cup to the insectarium. However, I usually break some out anyway and tights are far too expensive in the long run, especially if you get the wrong ones. You can easily avoid any trouble with the opposite sex by simply putting the breeding cups in the fridge for a few minutes. Then you can open the can at your leisure, knock the animals out and even dust them with a vitamin preparation (Korvimin ZVT). The fruit flies will remain in a state of torpor for a short time, which will not harm them, the eggs or the larvae.
