Fruit Fly Culture ?

I made several cultures and seeded with flies from my original culture that I bought. Problem is that after a week the ones I made started to smell real bad. Can someone tell me what I can do to prevent this. My cultures were made with instant mashed potato mix, sugar and yeast.

Thanks

i think you are supposed to mix vinegar in them to help kill bacteria.

There was just a post I replied to with some good advice.

I'll tell you my recipe for 5 jars:

2 cups hot water
2 cups white vinegar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 ripe bananas, peeled
1/2 tbsp of paprika
1/2 tbsp of cinnamon


Mix it all up, bring to a boil (until the bananas are soft so you can mush them up)

I usually put in about 1 and 1/2 to 2 cups of potato flakes, sometimes up to 3 cups. It depends on the brand of potato flakes, but you want it to be like a cookie dough consistency.

then put about one inch into each jar.


brewer's yeast (a pinch on top of the culture once it's all in the jar)


The smell is either from too much yeast, or you made your cultures too wet.
You can fix this by using less yeast, and a little more potato flakes or dry oats.

The cinnamon helps with the smell as well.

Thanks for the advice. I only added a pinch of yeast. I did make the culture more like mashed potatos. So, I would say that it was to wet.

After 2 weeks mine all got moldy. I don't think I added enough vinegar. Does anyone else have this problem? I used a different recipe though and it only called for 2 TBS vinegar.

Here are some past threads that will tell you all you need to know

fruit flies
https://www.chameleonforums.com/diy-fruitfly-culture-21683/
https://www.chameleonforums.com/fruit-fly-culturing-12441/
https://www.chameleonforums.com/drosophilia-hyde-fruit-flys-19477/

Sometimes you will get mold no matter how much vinegar or yeast you use.
Both vinegar and yeast are mold inhibitors, but sometimes they just don't cut it.

One benefit you guys have in the States that we can't get up here is methyl paraben. This will inhibit mold for sure, as will methylene blue which is commony used in the fish hobby. Methyl paraben is commonly used in fruit fly cultures in the dart frog hobby and is a proven safe method for preventing molds and fungus.

I've never used it so I don't know how much to add, but this will solve your mold problems.

BocaJan said:

After 2 weeks mine all got moldy. I don't think I added enough vinegar. Does anyone else have this problem? I used a different recipe though and it only called for 2 TBS vinegar.

Click to expand...

I use quite a bit of vinegar. The cultures I've had for 45 days have not developed any mold.

I made some new culture today and added 2 oz vinegar instead of 2 TBS. I could only find regular yeast. I hope this will be ok. I didn't know yeast inhibits mold.

Thanks everyone for the info and links. The one question I could find an answer to is this. If I make a large amount can I freeze it and thaw out as needed? Thanks again.

mavl666, what you should do is mix all the dry ingredients together, and then you can keep those in a cool storage space for as long as you want. When you need to make some cultures, just put 1/4 of a cup into a jar, and mix in 1oz of hot or boiling water, and 1oz of vinegar (experiment a bit so you don't add too much liquid, 2oz might be too much or not enough).

I made thousands of FF cultures over the years and never had problem with mold when I mix water/vinegar 50/50 I don't even add boiling water, just tap water too.

I think it's been linked before, but this is how I do them https://www.chameleonforums.com/fruit-fly-culturing-12441/