# Bugs in Grindal Worm culture



## joshsfrogs (May 6, 2004)

I got my first grindal worm in the mail, but the cold killed most (if not all) of them in shipping. I added some coco fiber to the culture and hoped some had made it through the cold. Well, I came back from the weekend and found these black bugs in the culture. They are larger than hydei and most of them are attached butt-to-butt. They don't seem to want to be in the wet coco fiber as all of them are on the lid/top of the cup. They have wings and are totally black. What are these things? Sorry for the bad pics. My camera isn't the best.


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## *GREASER* (Apr 11, 2004)

These also showed up in some of my cultures a while back. But I also have no clue what kind of fly they are.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Well, I haven't worked with grindel worms so I'm not even sure what is "in" the culture anyways, but at least I can tell you is the butt to butt thing is them mating. So whatever they are they are making more lol.


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## joshsfrogs (May 6, 2004)

I figured the butt to butt thing is mating. The guy I bought them from claims that they are springtails. But I think their size and that fact that they have wings rules that out.

Anybody got a guess? He is from California, so they would have to be native of California.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

Ed knows this one. I always forget the name of them.

You find them in ff cultures on occasion too.

DO NOT OPEN THAT CULTURE! These flies are a pain in the butt.

s


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

They are probably phorid flies (if they run very quickly they are probably phorid flies), other possibilities are some of the fungal gnats but phorid flies are the most likely item. 

If they are phorid flies, they are problomatic as they will get into ff cultures as well as the larva can feed on dart frog eggs. 

Ed


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## joshsfrogs (May 6, 2004)

I googled (images) phorid flies, but those guys look nothing like the flies in my culture (at least I don't think they do). And their legs are very tiny (don't fungus gnats have long legs?) They do move pretty well. Most of them have grouped together where the lid meets the cup.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

There are a lot of different types of phorid flies and you may have not been looking a picture of the ones that are in the culture. Most of the pictures when I did a google image search are dead specimens so the postioning of the body and wings are off. 
Basically they should look like a ff with a hump in the back 

See http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... D%26sa%3DN for a better but not great picture. 

Ed


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2006)

are they thrips?


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## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

I get something similar to what Josh posted in my fruit fly cultures every spring and summer. They are attached butt to butt and run together frist one way and then another like a couple of train engines hooked together. I believe they are a gnat of some sort-- the same mini-critters I always find crawling on my windows in warm weather by the thousands. They don't seem to be an infection of any sort, as they show up in the older cultures and don't seem to affect the fruit fly production much. My frogs eat them up with relish, so I just regard them as another food source. When they break apart, they do fly, however. In winter, they totally disappear from my cultures along with the window sill gnats. An entomologist once offered to identify them for me, but I never got around to sending samples clear to Sweden where he was located. If yours are the same as what I have, they may be just a local contaminant. Mine are not hump-backed, but flat and sleek when they are doing their mating thing, which appears to occur as soon as they hatch. They have a larvae and pupal stage very similar to a fruit fly and are hard to tell apart. I no longer sweat about them.


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