# Flightless vs. Wingless



## bjdwa (Nov 26, 2004)

I recently started feeding wingless melanogaster to my retics. I love the wingless, they escape less, produce like crazy and are easier to deal with all around. My question is are there any advantages to feeding flightless over wingless? Would I be wrong to switch all my frogs (intermedius, imitator, and retics) to primarily wingless diet instead of a primarily flightless diet? Thanks for the input.


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2006)

Why do they escape less??? How do no wings affect their ability to climb out of the tank? I've never had the wingless form, so Im just curious.


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## dmartin72 (Oct 27, 2004)

I really like the wingless in that they are not as fast or jumpy and resemble a tiny little ant...smaller than your typical melanogaster. Nutritionally speaking I'm sure they are identical. They do not hop around as much so your frogs will become lazy hunters...less exercise. The fact that they don't jump around as much keeps escaping flies to a minimum when dumping flies from the culture to your dusting cup.


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## sports_doc (Nov 15, 2004)

Correct me if I am mistaken.....

but I was under the impression that gliders were closer to the wild form and therefore had more 'vigor' when it came to productivity....

so for better producers.....I notice my gliders to do the best. 

now the wingless are more ant like...esp good for shy frogs, b/c they tend to stay on the substrate floor longer b/f they start crawling up the walls of the tank. The golden delicious from BJ are particularly ant like little buggers

...but for me the wingless produce the slowest, compared with gliders, turkish gliders, curly wing from Ed's, and the standard melanos for BJ....all of which outperform my wingless cultures (disclaimer: under my growing conditions of course)

S


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Its not just under your conditions, wingless do, infact, have lower production rates. The glider strains are often used as you get more flies out of your cultures, thus you need less cultures, which is a benefit if you have a lot of frogs. If you don't, then do the wingless.

I currently detest my gliders. They glide way too much (like a FOOT), so when transfering them out of the culture I have a significant amount that don't make it into my dusting container (Oh look, they're gliding away... ALL OVER MY KITCHEN!), or the tanks. 

Vestigal wings don't glide (I mean, come on, they need wings to glide, and they barely have wings) they just tend to hop a couple inches (cuz they still think they can glide dammit!). This isn't that much of a problem, much easier and much fewer escapies than the gliders. They are a good intermediate strain betwen the gliders and wingless... they are less of a pain than gliders, but produce more than wingless.

Wingless are by far my favorite tho. They barely even hop, very ant like, and my frogs adore them, especially the thumbs and young frogs. Their only real downside is that they don't produce on the level as some of the glider strains, but if you don't have that many frogs, its hardly a big deal. I think their pluses out way that negative.

Nutritionally, I think derek brought up a funny analogy - they are like the different kinds of cows. Ok, sure, the different strains have a little bit of a nutritional difference... but they are still melanogaster fruit flies. Different strains don't vary siginificantly enough to me to be considered a nutritionally different food source to me (a cow is still a cow, even if angus do taste better). You still need to eat your veggies :roll:


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## TonyT (Feb 16, 2004)

The only advantage "nutritionally" to having wings would be when dusting. With wings would have more of a surface area for the calcium suppliment to adhere to. Which would give the frog more calcium per fly when they eat them. I am sure this would be minimal though. Just a thought.

TonyT


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## dmartin72 (Oct 27, 2004)

Wow...we have entirely too much time on our hands (that includes me)...surface area from a FF's wings.


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## TonyT (Feb 16, 2004)

LOL


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## dmatychuk (Apr 20, 2005)

I agree with Tony and dusting is one of the reasons I like my flightless. Another one is that I believe the wing motion the FF makes attracts the PDF and more Flightless get eaten as a percentage. In my experience I would also agree with Shawn about Flightless being far better producers.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

I wouldn't say that across the board flightless are prefered a bit more than wingless... I've definately noticed some of my frogs go for the wingless a bit more than the flightless (ground huggers mostly). The flightless tend to bounce around more and might catch the eye of some of the other frogs that like more active prey... kinda interesting how the hopping/lack of hopping can show you prey preference in these guys...


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

A little trick for handling the gliders:

Open your 32 Oz. fly cups over a critter keeper (the 2.5 gallon size.)

I honestly do not lose a single one this way. 

Once they are in there shake/tap them into one corner and dump them into your dusting cup.

Once they are dusted they don’t glide nearly as well! :wink: 

Done, and look mom, no flies on the floor!


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## bjdwa (Nov 26, 2004)

Thanks for all the thoughts guys. I'll start producing both until I get the feel for how much the wingless are going to produce over the long term. I bought 3 cultures from ED's of the wingless and between the three cultures they're producing more than my small collection(8 frogs) can eat, despite feeding every day and despite a particularly greedy tadpole who sucks down as many fruit flies as fall into his brom. That's why I assumed that they must be pretty hefty producers. Between my springtails and my flies I am up to my eyeballs in frog food. Maybe I should buy some more frogs!!


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## TonyT (Feb 16, 2004)

I agree that more frogs will fix the over abundance of food.


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