# Hydei Life Cycle and Culturing



## rleyh (Jun 21, 2005)

There's tons of info available on the life cycle of the melonagaster due to all the genetics research, but I haven't been able to find much on the hydei. The info I collected from the board also seems incomplete or part of other posts, so I created a new one. I'm sure someone will let me know if I missed the hydei compendium.

It probably makes sense to substitute range of days for days since everyone's conditions vary based on temp, humidity, and media. Here's my list of questions:

How many days from initial culture to eggs being laid? Might this be zero if you put the right flies in?

How many days from egg to larva?

How many days from larva to pupa?

How many days from pupa to hatch?

How many days until mature?

How many days do they live after hatch from pupa?

In other words, I'm trying to figure out how do I determine if a hydei culture is viable and progressing toward food and how to maximize good cultures.

Also, there's the question of feeding out the adults so you don't crash the culture due to adult deaths. How do you determine when?

Thanks for your help.

Rob Leyh


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## Blort (Feb 5, 2005)

Some relevant info in this thread. YMMV

http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7898

Check this out as well:

http://lists.frognet.org/pipermail/frog ... 15537.html


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## rleyh (Jun 21, 2005)

Yes and yes. Thank you.

Your post in the first link is what caught my interest as a possible method to increase efficiency as opposed to just make more cultures. I have no problem with making more cultures, it just seems there might be a better way.

I'll read through the Frognet link and then I'm off to make more cultures.

Thanks again.

Rob


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## Blort (Feb 5, 2005)

Rob,

I look forward to hearing what you find out. I prefer hydei to mela except for those issues that you have mentioned. I've found that hydei do seem to liquify their media more than mela and when they do die they make a mess out of the culture because of their larger body mass. It seems that this results in lower quality larva after the first generation and less places for the larva to morph. I guess you could add another coffee filter after about 15 days, but I think the fouled media is probably the big problem and can't think of a good way to get around that. Sometimes I feed out the parents when I can see that the larva are getting ready to morph and add some more from an older culture. I can't really tell if that helps or not.

What I have noticed is that I got better yields recently by using a combination of excelsior and coffee filters. I use about 1 to 1 1/2 inches of excelsior on top of the media and the filters on top of that. It seems that keeps the filters out of the goo and from collapsing. I think that even though the excelsior has a lot of surface area, that the larger hydei larva do better of flat surfaces. But, the increased production could be from something completely unrelated.

Happy farming,

Marcos


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## rleyh (Jun 21, 2005)

Here's my first pass on this from Frognet:

http://lists.frognet.org/pipermail/frog ... 15528.html

Visible larva at about day 6 with almost full grown larva by day 9
Instar approximately at days 11-15
First hatch at about days 15-16

I think this is your post and it continues with good quantitative info. You begin just as I did with, "Hey, everybody's talking about melos, but ..."

Here's a continuation on the idea of removing some mature flies:

http://lists.frognet.org/pipermail/frog ... 15162.html

I didn't want to get into media, but here's a post discussing protein as being most beneficial:

http://lists.frognet.org/pipermail/frog ... 15124.html

Academic hobbyists at play. This is the beauty of the internet. You can gain access to really intelligent and helpful people.

I need some time to digest this a little more but read these if you have a chance. I think you can see where this is heading. Let me know if I'm howling at the moon.

Thanks,

Rob


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## rleyh (Jun 21, 2005)

Marcos,

I've set up some new test cultures. Two of them started with the SOP 50 FF's and one with about 100. I'm going to feed out the adults when the cultures show active larva (about 6-9 days?). Any ideas on this affecting productivity?

At around day 28-30, I'm going to cycle the flies again for cultures/feeding. This assumes the schedule is correct for larva/pupa/hatch and that the flies are mature.

In my original post, I was trying to get a detailed life cycle and I think you have provided that. My goal is to simply produce productive and clean cultures. This SHOULD produce clean cultures, as I'm highly allergic to molds. We'll see about productive.

I think I will end up with more cultures, go figure, due to cycling them faster (at about 1 month).

Thanks again for your help. I'll post results.

Rob


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## rleyh (Jun 21, 2005)

Marcos,

I've been making a lot of cultures, but it is still too small of a sample to say this is conclusive.

Here are my observations:

Your life cycle numbers are spot on, 6 days to larva and 15 days to hatch. If you up the initial number of flies, the larva is evident earlier at 4-5 days. I had some literally explode using more flies, but this does muck up the culture early as it liquifies. I'll be sticking with the 50 fly rule.

I've begun feeding out at one week, after I see larva. A clean culture is a happy culture and the mature flies are going to die in a couple of weeks anyway.

After the hatch is going strong (21 or so days), I feed out again. At week five, the matures go into new cultures and the old one is trashed.

I've also fine tuned my recipe a bit, if you can call it that. I use the potato recipe and add a very small amount of honey and then the activated yeast. This has produced remarkably clean (no green tint, no mold) and no-smell cultures. Someone on the board said it smelled like bread and I agree. Even at three plus weeks.

Once again, thanks for your help. I think I've solved my primary issues of mold (for me) and smell (for the wife). And yes, it's a bit anal, but it only involves rotating the stock and the cultures are producing very well.

Rob Leyh


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