# Strange Brew (Not your mother's FF media)



## Catfur (Oct 5, 2004)

Since Kyle is going all batty over FF mix ingredients, I thought I would go ahead and start this thread for people to post their unorthodox FF media recipes. Don't post your's if you just use a standard mix or buy media.

I'll start with mine:

Dry Mix:

2# Potato Flakes
2 cups each: Powdered Sugar, Soy Protein Isolate, Nutritional Yeast Flakes, Flax Seed
3 Tbs of Methyl Paraben
1 Tbs each: Paprika, Tomato Powder, Spirulina & Chlorella

I carefully blend all of these ingredients together in a blender, first blending a container full of potato flakes, adding one cup of the sugar, soy or yeast after blending up the potato flakes, after mixing that I slowly add 1/3 cup of the flax seed and blend until the flax seed is thoroughly milled and mixed in. Then I dump out the blender into a 2 gallon tub and repeat with a new load of potato flakes and stuff. You can add the methyl paraben and other stuff in at any point. I do this because the blender doesn't appreciate it if I try to mix the non potato flake ingredients in in larger amounts. If you have a big ass industrial blender or some such you could probably just add everything in and grind away. Once I have all of the ingredients ground up and dumped into the tub, I put shake vigorously until it's all mixed. It takes me about 30-45 minutes to do this (one blender load at a time...) and the mix lasts me for about 6-8 weeks at 12 cultures a week.

To make the cultures:

3.5 quarts of water
2 cans of Apple Juice (or somesuch)
1 cup of flax seed
1 tsp agar

Add all of these to a big pot, and bring to a boil, it will get thick from the flax seed. Be careful and watch it very closely, stirring regularly, or it will boil over and make a terrible, mess (this is a mess of truly epic proportions, take my word for it and don't let it happen to you). Once it has boiled for five minutes, I lower the heat. I put 1/4 cup of the dry mix in a jar, and add 1 cup of liquid (with flax seeds floating around in it) to the dry mix in a jar and stir vigorously, it's hard to mix completely, so stir well. I then spray the congealed media off the sides of the jar with water and add a pinch of baker's yeast. I wait overnight for the jar to cool (or all day if I make it in the morning) and add excelsior and flies the next day. Make sure to cover the jars while cooling so you don't get wild FFs contaminating your cultures. 

Notes: I add the agar and flax seed to the liquid as a congealing factor, otherwise the mix is too free flowing. I have been experimenting with these two ratios for a while and haven't yet found the perfect one.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

As you are getting it hot have you considered using corn starch instead of agar as a binder/thickening agent? 

Ed


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Batty?  Maybe... I have a tendency to focus in on things...


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

Wow! That’s a very involved recipe. If I even attempted to do all that, my wife would shoot me and then make me sell my frogs. 

My mix is quick and easy, but probably a bit more expensive than what most people use.

I use 1 small jar of fruit baby food (6 oz, I think) mixed with an equal amount of apple cider vinegar. To this I add enough Gerber banana and oats baby cereal to get a good consistency (probably around 12 to 16 oz). This makes enough for one 32 oz culture. I use accordion folded index cards as pupation sites. I find that the cards last the life of the culture if three are folded together. If I use the index cards singly, the maggots eat them before the culture's life comes to an end. Usually I use three sets of three index cards per culture (nine index cards total). After the index cards are inserted into the medium, I sprinkle a little baker’s yeast on top. 

The nice thing about this recipe is that I don’t have to order any chemicals, and all the ingredients are found at my grocery store. This recipe will grow some mold, but I get much better production than I used to get with Carolina’s medium.


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## MartyA (Apr 18, 2006)

Since I love to cook I do everything by eye...

2.5 Bananas
Level off to top of bananas with Apple sauce
maybe an inch layer of brewers yeast
couple scoops of Paprika
couple scoops of Spirulina
good ammount of vinegar (maybe 1.5 cups?)
Blend till smooth
Place mixture in mixing bowl and stir in oats till I get semi firm medium

A full blender full (before adding oats) makes me maybe 16+ cultures. I usually freeze all but three, and add in Bakers Yeast a day before the flies/commercial coffe filters. This seems to produce great for me and with my rotation im able to feed my room of frogs. Hope some of that made sense .

My springtail recipe is similar and I need a break from studying so here it goes.

Tomato paste (1/2 can)
Bananas - 2 maybe
Spirulina - few scoops
Oats used to make little more firm that FF media
Paprika - few scoops
Apple sauce - little less than banana
Brewers Yeast - few scoops

I blend then place these ingredients in an anti freeze dry bag (ziplock), smooth it out so its maybe a cm thick all around, freeze it and take chunks as I need them. The good thing about the freezer bags is they hold in moisture so its very easy to bend pieces off. I also use Wild Maple leaves and a soil media for my Springs.

Im currently trying to cook up my own form of the 'Orange' cubes (by Flukers?) to place in the tanks to keep FF's down and for maggot gutloading.


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## BIGGUN (Dec 16, 2006)

Chris,

What type of Baby fruit do you use?

All I can find is Fruit Medley desert and Bananas......is it one of these?

Thanks,
Kevin


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## Ryan (Feb 18, 2004)

...off topic, but is the topic name chosen from the Cream song?


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## Marty71 (Nov 9, 2006)

This may be off topic slightly, but I am interested in what kind of increase in FF production you all see from these recipes vs. standard commercial medias. Thanks.


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

The fruit that I use is Gerber baby fruit. I’ve used blue berries, apricots, and some different mixtures. Gerber sells these in 3.5 oz plastic boxes and small glass jars. Sorry I got the oz wrong above. Basically if you go to the baby food section in your supermarket and purchase fruit in the small size glass jars or plastic cups (Gerber) you should make out well.

Previously I was using Carolina’s medium mixed with half water and half vinegar. Production was O.K. but my baby food mix gives explosive results. I’ve found that completely harvesting the flies from each container three times a week keeps the cultures from crashing. I start harvesting as soon as I start to see pupae. The vinegar helps to prevent bacterial over growth. You will see some mold growth in this type of culture but as long as production is good I don’t mind the mold. 

The primary advantage of this method is that you purchase everything at the supermarket, even the index cards. The only thing you order is fly cups. I’m sure it’s not the cheapest medium but for me it’s convenient and it’s quick to make. I do it one fly cup at a time. If my collection was much larger, I would probably come up with a different method.


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## BIGGUN (Dec 16, 2006)

Well, I'm trying the Gerber recipe tonight.

I've used about half an 8 oz box of cereal and the media is pretty thick.

Are you sure you ended up using 12 oz? That would make it like play dough if not drier......is that right?

What should the final consistency be? Right now it doesn't run at all when turned upside down.

Thanks,
Kevin


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

Oh maybe my directions use both weight oz and volume oz. The baby food is probably in weight oz. I meant volume oz for the dry baby food. I fill an 8oz cup with the cereal and then fill it up half way again. Sorry my bad. I mix in enough dry to make the medium mushy but not runny. This will give you about 1.5” of medium in the bottom of the culture.


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## BIGGUN (Dec 16, 2006)

Cool, that's what I thought might have happened.

 

I stopped when it started thickening up.

I wonder if I should try to liquify it a little? With????? Distilled water, or Cider vinegar?

How many FF's do you normally top it off with?

Thanks again......it was fairly easy. Especially after doing once.

Kevin


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

Kevin,

I would say that half the box of cereal is too much. I probably make at least 4 cultures out of a box. A little water might be necessary. I mix so that the consistency is such that when the culture is tipped 45 degrees the medium moves a little but doesn’t assume a 45 degree angle. I start out with about 50 flies.


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## wax32 (May 9, 2006)

I can't even imagine "explosive" results...

I have more flies than I need all the time just using Ed's medium.









( I started making 3 cultures a week after a discussion I had with some of you guys. )


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

So Biggun, What happened?


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## BIGGUN (Dec 16, 2006)

Chris,

Even with the mix not being exact.........I'm CRAWLING in FF's!!!!!! 
:shock:  

Thanks for the recipe,
Kevin


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## Dog_Byte (Jan 22, 2007)

How many FF do you usually put into your vivarium each day? or feeding?


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

Dog_Byte,

For my two leucs, I fill the bottom of a 7oz paper cup to about ½ a cm deep with flies. They have grown too fat, so I’m cutting back. For my trivs I feed twice as much. I just lost one for an unknown reason though. She was not skinny. My lamasi gets maybe 10 flies at a time. I feed either Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Monday, Friday.

BIGGUN,

Glad it worked out for you. In the recent medium recipe thread, Corey mentioned that she doesn’t like the smell of many of the homemade recipes. I have to admit that this one can smell quite yeasty. If you have a lot of these cultures in a closed room you will definitely be able to smell the yeast.


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## Catfur (Oct 5, 2004)

Someone the other day in chat asked for a link to my recipe, so I am updating here it with the most current version for reference. 

As a productivity note, over the last 10 days, out of 12 melanogaster cultures, I have pulled about 6oz. of FFs, by weight (yes, I measured). Similar numbers of hydei were produced from 12 jars.

Dry Mix (made up ahead of time)

4# Potato Flakes
2 Cups ea. Soy Protein Isolate, Powdered Sugar & Nutritional Yeast Flakes
3 tbs. Tegosept (Methyl Paraben)
1 tbs. ea. Spirulina, Chlorella, Tomato Powder & Paprika

Grind to a fine powder using blender, as stated in original recipe. 

Pour in Liquid 
Measured per dozen cultures made.

3 litres water
2 cans apple juice (production went to nearly zero and my cultures literally exploded, as in burst their tops, when this was replaced by sugar)
1.5 tsp agar
1.5 cups of flax seed

Grind flax seed in blender (dry) to a mealy consistency. Boil water, juice concentrate, and agar for a couple of minutes, stirring to prevent agar from settling and burning. Add ground flax seed carefully to boiling water, stir constantly and reduce to a low boil. DO NOT neglect the mixture at this stage, it WILL boil over and make a terrible mess if neglected. Boil for several more minutes. Add 1 cup of this mixture to 1/4 cup of dry mix in jar, stir. Spray down sides of jar with water to wash down mix caked on sides. Let set overnight.

Next day, add a sprinkle of yeast, stuff with excelsior, spray down excelsior lightly, and add flies. For the first 4-5 days after adding flies, I cover the jars with the previous weeks box (the jars come in boxes of 12, and I just set one box of jars on top of the other), this creates a high humidity environment, allowing the culture to better establish. Once larvae have crawled to the top, remove the covering, or they will chew through the top and you will have a giant mess. 

Some notes

I tried replacing the fruit juice with an equivalent amount of sugar, and things went very poorly, I think the acid in the fruit juice regulates the yeast production, preventing it from getting out of control.

I no longer add flax seed to the dry mix, and grind it before I add it to the wet stuff. It serves as a binder to the mix in addition to a nutrient source.

I tried not adding active yeast to the top of the cultures, for melanogaster there was a very slight decrease in culture output. For hydei, not adding active yeast meant zero production.


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## Arklier (Mar 1, 2004)

MartyA said:


> Im currently trying to cook up my own form of the 'Orange' cubes (by Flukers?) to place in the tanks to keep FF's down and for maggot gutloading.


I sometimes make something similar for roaches. I just use some agar and a jar of fruit baby food. Not sure how FFs would like it, though. Might be best just to put a piece of fruit in the bottom of the tank.


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

Mixed up a batch of this stuff a couple a weeks ago.
BTW: when Clayton said "cans of apple juice" that means concentrate.

Observations:
Melagonaster production is about equal to, or less than the power mix I have been using for years...I'll get back to y'all when the cultures stop producing on how long a melagonaster culture on this stuff produces, vs. a culture on power mix.

Hydei production...is where this mix shines! Production was at least a week (and I'm being conservative) earlier than with power mix cultures.

If you use mostly hydei, you'll love this media!


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