fruit fly viles

DrewNYC

New Member
is anyone dealing with these fruit fly cultures? due to a few babies i've bought quite a few to keep up a amount of flies but a few of the cultures seemed to have gotten contaminated or arrived contaminated, they have tiny white things running around in them, i'm not talking about the fly worms that start out tiny and grow to small worms and then pupate into flies, they look like white mites, how could they get contaminated? nothing goes in only flies come out?
tiny macroscopic round "mites"? has anyone had this problem?
drew
 
Take a pic of tiny microscopic mites? Hah. I hope you have a nice lens with a reverse 50mm mounted on it.

The fly, in all of its life stages, don't look like mites at all. Seems like it was contaminated, possibly right from the beggining.
 
It isn't fruit fly larvae. You are almost positively seeing mites. They aren't uncommon in fruit fly cultures. There is a mite solution that is sold that will kill the larval and adult stages, but it won't kill the eggs. It almost always crashes the medium in your culture, too. But, it gives you enough time to kill off the mites and then transfer your flies to a clean culture without polluting the new one. You can also use paper towels under your cultures with a little of this stuff on them.. it is supposed to deter mites from entering the cultures to begin with. Anyhow, here is a site that sells it.. there are a couple bottles near the bottom that are miticides:

http://www.fruitflies.net/supplies.htm
 
it is definetley not the larva i know what the larva looks like, this looks like grain mites but i wouldn't think grain mites would want to be in the fruit fly media
well here is the best picture i could give ya, all those white dots (they even look like water droplets) large and small are moving, sliding across the plastic
MVC-009F-1.jpg

MVC-008F.jpg
 
Mites can fit through even the tight fitting lids of a snap top container. There is apparently enough space for them to scoot on in (or out). I had a springtail culture in a tight container.. springtails only require a tiny bit of air which is provided when the container is opened once a week for food and water.. and mites took up residence. I had the culture for several months, so I know that they didn't come from the culture itself. I believe that they were first introduced to my house through a superworm container, but who knows? I think I have the problem pretty well under control now, as I haven't seen any for a couple months. All of the containers of meal type bugs and fruit flies sit in trays with diatomaceous earth sprinkled in them. If anything escapes or tries to invade, it doesn't live long. You need to seperate your infected cultures from your clean ones.. by at least a room! The good thing? They are harmless for your chameleons. They do a number on your cultures though.

Heika
 
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