# Ordering House Fly Pupae



## themann42 (Apr 12, 2005)

does anybody know of a good place to order house fly pupae? only place i've found is mantis kingdom, but you can only get pupae when you order a mantis.

also, has there been any recent news on azdr and their flightless house flies that i might have missed? i'd love to be able to culture them.


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## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

Move to Idaho and raise horses. 

Our summer/fall sport is zapping the 10 million house flies that blacken our windows, and finding the larvae in my fruit fly cultures. 

I spend a lot of money lacing the horse corrals with fly preditors (a kind of wasp that invades fly pupae) every year. :twisted: I've never considered propagating them deliberately, when you can just go to the nearest garbage in a city or corral in the rural places and collect all you want. 

Seriously, I've also read about the wingless house flies that have been bred. It just seems there are better things to spend one's time on deliberately cultivating. They are too large to feed to darts, so I've never investigated it much. 

The first year I moved to Idaho, way back in the dark ages, I moved into what was the old Moore School House-- a log cabin affair with a dirt floor, which had been improved by adding some plumbing, an inside decor of rough fir planks, insulated behind with some more modern stuffing than the original newspapers, dated 1905, and black plastic. The flies loved this. When the weather became cold, they would all crawl out of the woodwork and fly around in the wood-stove heated house. On night when I couldn't stand them anymore zapping my in the face while I tried to read upstairs, I got out the "Raide" and sprayed the joint with it. The nightmare that ensued, I will never, ever forget. Every fly came out of the insulation, wood work, etc., buzzed around madly, and spun on it's back, multiplied by by the millions. It was 20 below zero outdoors, but I opened the doors and went outside anyway. When I came back in, after virtually "Raide-spraying myself as well," there was a 3" layer of dead or dying flies all over the floor and four inches of them in the loft, with a lot of them still whirling around on their backs. Hitchcock never did anything better than this. "The Birds" was nothing compared to it. I have gradually reduced the house fly numbers, more gently and organically over the next 25 years, over time, but I'm not about to ever raise them deliberately! I am convinced they are not an endangerd species we need to encourage.

God in his wisdom
Invented the fly,
And then forgot
To tell us why. (Oden Nash.) 

This experience is probably what innured me to raising fruit flies and not even paying attention when they get in my wine and salad, telling guests to regard the the black dots in their food as pepper or protein. But I sure ain't gonna' ever deliberately raise blue bottles and other house fliles.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

slaytonp said:


> Seriously, I've also read about the wingless house flies that have been bred. It just seems there are better things to spend one's time on deliberately cultivating. They are too large to feed to darts, so I've never investigated it much.


Can't say I agree with this as there are a number of PDF species that love the houseflies. Remember - PDFs have a wide range in size and food preferences. Larger _Epipedobates_ (trivs, bassleri, etc), _Phyllobates_ (bicolor, terribilis), and even the _Allobates_ prefer larger food items, houseflies being perfect for that. I believe AZDR had even fed them to frogs like Tincs with good success (I plan to try them out with msot of the frog types when the kits come out).

Houseflies are also excellent for some picky feeders (like the glass frogs of ABG which they were hatching REGULAR houseflies for) and other herps that love them (and benefit from the variety) are stuff like TFs, small geckos (I've fed them out to stuff like Underwood Geckos, baby leos, pictus geckos - they are very popular for small arboreal geckos like Day geckos and juvies of other species). Also, a number of fish like them (FFs for smaller, houseflies for larger!).

What it really comes down to is that there are people who say the same thing about FFs - yet most of us would never DREAM of not feeding our animals FFs! Houseflies are the same thing in a bigger package. Both in difference situations can be pests (actually, all our feeds are pests in different situations) but thanks to the genetic glitch, they are easier to handle (less flying makes them less pesty).

I can't wait for the kits to come out, but AZDR became backlogged with just the feeding containers I dont' think they are coming out soon lol, they have enough to catch up with.


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## zaroba (Apr 8, 2006)

on another forum, somebody pointed to this page for some insects called firebrats. but they also have house fly culters towards the bottem of the page.

http://www.doubleds.org/HotFinds.html


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Very interesting, does anyone know anything about the firebrats? They seem to be out of them at this time. I also need to try some isopods...


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## bluedart (Sep 5, 2005)

kyle1745 said:


> Very interesting, does anyone know anything about the firebrats? They seem to be out of them at this time. I also need to try some isopods...


I believe the "firebrats" are simply silverfish... Thermobia domestica.

http://www.uaf.edu/museum/ento/Insect_Omnibus/Thermobia/domestica.html


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## geckguy (Mar 8, 2004)

They are closely related, but silverfish lay fewer eggs that take longer to hatch. Making them a rather poor feeder animal, opposed to firebrats that lay large clutches that hatch quickly. Firebrats also like it a bit drier.


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## bluedart (Sep 5, 2005)

geckguy said:


> They are closely related, but silverfish lay fewer eggs that take longer to hatch. Making them a rather poor feeder animal, opposed to firebrats that lay large clutches that hatch quickly. Firebrats also like it a bit drier.


Do you have much culture information on them?


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