# Boosting nutritional value in fruit flies.



## sschind (Aug 10, 2004)

I have a friend who cultures live worms (micro worms, banana worms, Walter worms etc.) as live fish food. These worms are too small to be of use for frogs but my interest lies in the media he uses to culture them. I was wondering if any of his research could be of any use in fruit fly media. He has done a lot of research and experimentation on different additives to increase the nutritional value of the worms for the fish but since we usually don't feed the FF larvae to our frogs I suspect it won't really do much good for the adult flies. The adult flies do not eat correct? I assume that pretty much all of the nutritional benefits any additives would have to the larvae would be gone by the time they morph into an adult. 

I suppose some of the additions he has come up with might allow for better yields, larger flies, etc of adult flies but the actual nutritional benefits to the frogs would be minimal and probably not worth the added expense and trouble. 

I'm Just curious as to if there is any way to make the adult flies more nutritious besides dusting since you can't gut load them?


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## Deanos (Oct 16, 2012)

Here's a search result I found on your behalf

http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/fo...tant-culture-so-you-gut-load-fruit-flies.html


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Gut loading flies in not effective and, in fact, can be quite detrimental. Many vitamins and minerals pass through the fly much too quickly to be of any benefit. Other vitamins can be sequestered, or stored, in the fly in levels hundreds or even thousands of times what it natural. 
For instance, vitamin E will be sequestered and levels can skyrocket. Then your frog eats many of these and has a vitamin E level much higher than it should be. Once the vitamin E level gets high enough in your frog, it can completely block the uptake of other vitamins, like vitamin D for instance. When vitamin D is absent, your frog cannot properly uptake and utilize calcium. You may still have plenty of calcium in his diet, but he cannot utilize it. Once the calcium blood level falls low enough, your frog can stretch out prone, twitch a few times, and die.
Consider instead, relying on a quality dusting supplement to meet your frogs nutritional needs. I have been using the Repashy line of supplements and it's been working well for me.


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## whitethumb (Feb 5, 2011)

well put doug, i've seen many posts where ed says this over and over. 



Pumilo said:


> Gut loading flies in not effective and, in fact, can be quite detrimental. Many vitamins and minerals pass through the fly much too quickly to be on any benefit. Other vitamins can be sequestered, or stored, in the fly in levels hundreds or even thousands of times what it natural.
> For instance, vitamin E will be sequestered and levels can skyrocket. Then your frog eats many of these and has a vitamin E level much higher than it should be. Once the vitamin E level gets high enough in your frog, it can completely block the uptake of other vitamins, like vitamin D for instance. When vitamin D is absent, your frog cannot properly uptake and utilize calcium. You may still have plenty of calcium in his diet, but he cannot utilize it. Once the calcium blood level falls low enough, your frog can stretch out prone, twitch a few times, and die.
> Consider instead, relying on a quality dusting supplement to meet your frogs nutritional needs. I have been using the Repashy line of supplements and it's been working well for me.


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