# Oil in fruit fly cultures



## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

I saw this Fruit Fly Links Obesity and Heart Disease - Softpedia and thought that if you increase the calories in the fruit fly media with fat, you could make them a treat for frogs that are going to lay eggs or to stimulate reproduction on females. 

Again this is just a thought, I just saw this and really dont know if it would be a good idea.

I did an experiment to see if I would get the same fruit fly production by adding a teaspoon of olive oil to the media when I was preparing it and looks ok. I think Im getting close to same or same production and I also noticed that the media decomposes or gets consumed a little slower. The fruit flies seem to look the same, not bigger, not smaller, but the fat content on them could have increased, but I dont have any equipment to measure that.

What do you think? Its a good idea or its just a waste of time and could harm my frogs?


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

This sounds like a post for...Look! There he is! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...Ed! 
Interesting experiment. I look forward to Ed's comments.


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

Pumilo said:


> This sounds like a post for...Look! There he is! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...Ed!
> Interesting experiment. I look forward to Ed's comments.


Lol! well lets wait for him and see what he thinks about this.

I saw the post about the dog food and the vitamin E issue that accumulates in fruit flies and this makes the vitamin dust to not be absorbed properly by the frogs. But I dont know if olive oil or coconut oil will have the same vitamin E content as the dog food.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

That is regarding a specific type of Vitamin E called Tocopherols. It might not apply here. Don't know.


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## Rain_Frog (Apr 27, 2004)

I think I once added vegetable oil to my fruit fly cultures and it drastically lowered production.


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

Rain_Frog said:


> I think I once added vegetable oil to my fruit fly cultures and it drastically lowered production.


How much did you add?
I did one culture with alot of olive oil in it, like 3 tablespoons just to see what happens. I got some production going, but its slower and it lower the production. Also the media is consumed very very slow.

I made another one with just a teaspoon and I dont see the production being affected too much if it is being affected. I think it helps aswell for mold and fungus and I think it holds more moisture.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

I think this helps with the answer http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf990993o 

Most of the cooking oils on the market have moderate to high levels of tocopherols. 

In addition, you should keep in mind that the levels of fat in the feeder insects can contribute directly to issues such as corneal lipidosis so increasing the fat content is probably not the best idea...... 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Pumilo said:


> That is regarding a specific type of Vitamin E called Tocopherols. It might not apply here. Don't know.


Tocopherols = vitamin E (the most active are alpha and gamma tocopherols).


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

Pumilo said:


> That is regarding a specific type of Vitamin E called Tocopherols. It might not apply here. Don't know.


Vitamin E is a tocopherol. In the case of the vitamin E that we take as a supplement its called alpha-d- tocopherol.

Here is something I found on the internet: Even though its name makes it sound like a single substance, vitamin E is actually a family of fat-soluble vitamins that are active throughout the body. Some members of the vitamin E family are called tocopherols. These members include alpha tocopherol, beta tocopherol, gamma tocopherol, and delta tocopherol.

Different types of oil have different contents of vitamin , which include different quantities of the different types of tocopherols.

If vitamin E is a concern with the oil, coconut oil I found is the one with less content.

Im no expert on this, just did a little research. We dont even know whats too much vitamin E for a frog, but I thought it should be something to consider if we try using vegetable oils to help with the fat content of fruit flies.


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

Ed said:


> I think this helps with the answer http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf990993o
> 
> Most of the cooking oils on the market have moderate to high levels of tocopherols.
> 
> ...


So its not a good idea to use it like a treat or to stimulate breeding in the case of females?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

antoniolugo said:


> Vitamin E is a tocopherol. In the case of the vitamin E that we take as a supplement its called alpha-d- tocopherol.
> 
> Here is something I found on the internet: Even though its name makes it sound like a single substance, vitamin E is actually a family of fat-soluble vitamins that are active throughout the body. Some members of the vitamin E family are called tocopherols. These members include alpha tocopherol, beta tocopherol, gamma tocopherol, and delta tocopherol.
> 
> ...


If you increase the tocopherol of the fly, you change the ratio of vitamin A to D3 to E needed to balance that food item as all three of those vitamins compete for uptake in the digestive tract of the frog. If the ratio ends up outside of 10 to 1 to 0.1 then you have conditional deficiencies of the frog. The supplements are made to balance the insect on the basis that they should be very low in tocopherols however, fruit flies if provided with tocopherols can store them (and they don't store D3 or A) to levels that can be hundreds of times above that found in the media.. sufficient to disrupt the needed uptake of vitamins by the frog. 
This is before we even get to the point of increasing the risk of corneal lipidosis in the frogs..... 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

antoniolugo said:


> So its not a good idea to use it like a treat or to stimulate breeding in the case of females?


Increasing the fat content of the diet can increase the frequency at which the eggs are produced but this comes at a cost of the nutrients needed to make a healthy egg. The female will produce eggs that are not sufficiently provisioned with vitamins which can not only deplete the maternal reserves (which can cause problems with her) and prevent her from aquiring enough to meet metabolic demands but produce eggs that do not develop or froglets that are affected with spindly leg syndrome. 

The vast majority of the frogs in the hobby are already obese so I'm not sure why you would want to provide them with a higher caloried diet. It's like giving the person that is 5 foot 6 inches tall and weighs 350 pounds french fries fried in lard, and covered with cheese whiz. 

Ed


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Ed said:


> The vast majority of the frogs in the hobby are already obese so I'm not sure why you would want to provide them with a higher caloried diet. It's like giving the person that is 5 foot 6 inches tall and weighs 350 pounds french fries fried in lard, and covered with cheese whiz.
> 
> Ed


Shouldn't you wrap that in bacon?


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

Ed said:


> Increasing the fat content of the diet can increase the frequency at which the eggs are produced but this comes at a cost of the nutrients needed to make a healthy egg. The female will produce eggs that are not sufficiently provisioned with vitamins which can not only deplete the maternal reserves (which can cause problems with her) and prevent her from aquiring enough to meet metabolic demands but produce eggs that do not develop or froglets that are affected with spindly leg syndrome.
> 
> The vast majority of the frogs in the hobby are already obese so I'm not sure why you would want to provide them with a higher caloried diet. It's like giving the person that is 5 foot 6 inches tall and weighs 350 pounds french fries fried in lard, and covered with cheese whiz.
> 
> Ed


Thanks for this valuable info! I just thought it could help in a good way reproduction or maybe a frog that is not eating well.
Its good to know that its better without it.
Those french fries sound tasty tho!


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

antoniolugo said:


> Thanks for this valuable info! I just thought it could help in a good way reproduction or maybe a frog that is not eating well.
> Its good to know that its better without it.
> Those french fries sound tasty tho!


Fried in lard yes.. covered with cheese whiz.. no... 

If the frogs were seasonally cycled with significant down times for the females to aquire the needed nutrients then that would be fine or as needed for a thinner animal (if there is no other underlying cause) but I'm just not seeing where the risks to the frogs is work the result. 

I would be very leery of using coconut oil as it contains a lot of saturated fats which are much more likely to result in the fats that cause corneal lipodosis... 

Ed


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## Rain_Frog (Apr 27, 2004)

I prefer french fries covered in chili and cheese. 

I'm not sure how you could even get "olive oil fattened" flies to your frogs if the media itself has low output. At least, in my experience vegetable oil decreased output. The only thing I can think of is that most of the larvae suffocate since eventually the oil separates from the media and floats ontop.


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

Ed said:


> Fried in lard yes.. covered with cheese whiz.. no...
> 
> I would be very leery of using coconut oil as it contains a lot of saturated fats which are much more likely to result in the fats that cause corneal lipodosis...
> 
> Ed


I thought the same thing, but just dont now much about the metalism of frogs and could have been different. But in the case of fat its similar to ours then.


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

Rain_Frog said:


> I prefer french fries covered in chili and cheese.
> 
> I'm not sure how you could even get "olive oil fattened" flies to your frogs if the media itself has low output. At least, in my experience vegetable oil decreased output. The only thing I can think of is that most of the larvae suffocate since eventually the oil separates from the media and floats ontop.


That happened to the culture that I put lots of oil to see what happens. The other one with just a teaspoon its almost like the original media. Not much difference.


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## motydesign (Feb 27, 2011)

Ed i find it funny this is the second time Tocopherols have come up in the past month... im sure its just a coincidence but non the less the subject is here yet again.
my curiosity is starting to peak as it seems that each time it comes up it has to do with altering or trying to find a better mouse trap. 

media is cheap, use what is proven and good. unless you are chemist and bio engineer.... then PLEASE keep us updated on new research  .


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Rain_Frog said:


> I prefer french fries covered in chili and cheese.
> 
> I'm not sure how you could even get "olive oil fattened" flies to your frogs if the media itself has low output. At least, in my experience vegetable oil decreased output. The only thing I can think of is that most of the larvae suffocate since eventually the oil separates from the media and floats ontop.


It depends on how you work the media.. you can do the same thing that is done with some baked goods (add enough oil to "moisten" the dry media parts to get it throughly bound together, then add the wet ingredients and heat to get it to bind together. If the oil was seperating and floating to the top then you added more oil than the media could hold and it probably did drown the larva since this method can be used as a method to control mosquito larva in small volumes of water..... 

However this brings us back to the issues disrupting the ratios of vitamins A, D3 and E as well as the risk of corneal lipidosis. 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

motydesign said:


> Ed i find it funny this is the second time Tocopherols have come up in the past month... im sure its just a coincidence but non the less the subject is here yet again.
> my curiosity is starting to peak as it seems that each time it comes up it has to do with altering or trying to find a better mouse trap.
> 
> media is cheap, use what is proven and good. unless you are chemist and bio engineer.... then PLEASE keep us updated on new research  .


Well you don't have to be a chemist or a bioengineer but you do need to have a good understanding of the metabolic needs of both the flies and the frogs. 
With respect to understanding fly nutrition, this has been pretty well studied since before 1910 so the nutritional needs of the fly are pretty well known and there has been not a lot of advancement on diets for the insect since that time. The nutritional needs of the frogs are similar to that of well studied vertebrates as these traits tend to be highly conserved across vertebrate taxa. 


Ed


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## motydesign (Feb 27, 2011)

Ed maybe im confused. you said you dont need to be a chemist to alter the media, but at the same time we have data on the current media that really cant be improved (so how does a layman improve where a professional has failed?). 

so i guess i should ask, what could be done to current proven media to enable better uptake and delivery of vits to vertebrates from the flies?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

motydesign said:


> Ed maybe im confused. you said you dont need to be a chemist to alter the media, but at the same time we have data on the current media that really cant be improved (so how does a layman improve where a professional has failed?).
> 
> so i guess i should ask, what could be done to current proven media to enable better uptake and delivery of vits to vertebrates from the flies?


Okay, the nutritional needs of the flies have been studied for decades so we have a really good idea on what the flies need to do well. All it takes is a willingness to wade through the papers on it as there are studies on the flies both as larva and adults that document what they need to not only survive but to do well. It is through these studies that we know that the flies actual break down vitamin D and D3 and use it as precursor to make cholesterol, that vitamin A is only used to make rhodopsin in the eyes and that they uptake and store vitamin E in levels that are far higher than that found in the media. This tells us that we can't really optimize the media for those vitamins as other than vitamin E aren't transferred to the frogs and that the level of vitamin E can be high enough to screw up the vitamin ratios provided by the supplements. This is also before we get to the gut transit time of the flies which is around 6 hours (the time it takes for the fly to have a complete turnover of gut contents) which further makes the attempt to gut load much more difficult. 

There are a lot of people that equate a good media with production of flies which is not necessarily the case. Good production does not mean that the flies produced are optimized as it ignores a lot of things including the fact that the genetics of the flies can result in flies that sacrifice good utilization of the media for faster growth or that the flies can make sacrifices that still enable production (like a fly deficient in vitamin A is going to be blind but due to the antenna and being housed in a culture it isn't a big problem for the fly). This means that the flies produced in this manner are more likely to not be optimized for the nutritional needs of the frogs.

If you are willing to do the reading and literature searches, the information is already spelled out and all you have to do is be willing to is make the effort and put two and two together. This is why you don't have to be a chemist or bioengineer.. .you just need to be willing to chase down the answers. 

Ed


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## wingless (Dec 1, 2011)

antoniolugo said:


> I did an experiment to see if I would get the same fruit fly production by adding a teaspoon of olive oil to the media when I was preparing it and looks ok. I think Im getting close to same or same production and I also noticed that the media decomposes or gets consumed a little slower. The fruit flies seem to look the same, not bigger, not smaller, but the fat content on them could have increased, but I dont have any equipment to measure that.


Hey, I was wondering what kind of media you used (I know this was a really long time ago) -- I'm conducting a long-term experiment for my Biology class on fruit fly obesity and tried adding vegetable oil to instant media, but the flies all seem to have drowned in the oil. How did your flies not die? (Or, why did our flies die?)

Sorry for posting sort of off-topic! I appreciate any help!


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## Blue_Pumilio (Feb 22, 2009)

I add ground flax seeds to my cultures. It helps increases the omegas.


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## frogparty (Dec 27, 2007)

NW power mix is flax seed based... and worth the time it takes to make for sure. Im just lazy so I use repashy. I am, however, considering going back to it, since Darren Meyer has some of the best breeding results Ive ever seen and some of the nicest frogs to boot.
I cant argue with success

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=329165197097487


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## antoniolugo (Apr 8, 2011)

wingless said:


> Hey, I was wondering what kind of media you used (I know this was a really long time ago) -- I'm conducting a long-term experiment for my Biology class on fruit fly obesity and tried adding vegetable oil to instant media, but the flies all seem to have drowned in the oil. How did your flies not die? (Or, why did our flies die?)
> 
> Sorry for posting sort of off-topic! I appreciate any help!


Well, I dont know how much vegetable oil you used in your media....I normally use a simple recipe that someone posted here.. 6cups potato flakes, 1cup of yeast, 1 cup of sugar.
In that experiment I added 1 teaspoon of olive oil and to another one I dont remember if I added 2 or 3 teaspoons.. With 1 tablespoon I think I got the same production, with 2 or 3 production was lower and I also had problems with the flies sticking to the media but I still had some. Just put a lot of excelsior so the flies can have somewhere to stand. 

The development of the flies in the culture with more oil was maybe 2 times slower. The flies that were produced in there had no difference in size, but from a study I looked in the internet the fat content of the flies does increase.

Hope this help.


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