# Store-bought FF media v. homemade



## Cuthbert (Mar 30, 2011)

Do cultures using store-bought media produce better than those using homemade media? I've tried both but I don't have enough experience yet with either to spot a difference. I know there's a lot of recipes out there for homemade (I'm currently using "Fruit Fly Culturing - mini HowTo") but I haven't found anything about how they stack up with commercial varieties. Anyone have any thoughts?


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## Gamble (Aug 1, 2010)

Home made media can do just as well if not better than store bought media.


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## oddlot (Jun 28, 2010)

I agree with Nick.I make my own and it seems homemade to me has more longevity and just as good if not better production in my opinion.


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## BrainBug (Aug 25, 2010)

If you have to much money and not enough time store bought is the way to go. It's much cheaper and worth the small amount of effort it takes to make your own.


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## phender (Jan 9, 2009)

BrainBug said:


> If you have to much money and not enough time store bought is the way to go. It's much cheaper and worth the small amount of effort it takes to make your own.


I don't know. I order the 12 lbs fro Josh's and I am not sure I could make it myself that cheap. Its not that much more expensive than just potato flakes. I know I couldn't if you figure in my time.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

The biggest things that will affect your cultures' fly production are temperature and how quickly they dry out


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## Cuthbert (Mar 30, 2011)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's sounds like all other things equal, homemade is just as good as store bought. Which is great because I know I'll slack at some point and run outta media when I need to start some new cultures--it's obviously a lot quicker to run the the grocery store than wait a week for a shipment of pre made.


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## JohnVI (May 1, 2013)

I bought a big brick (cheap in ebay) of food grade Damascus earth, spread it in my big Tupperware bin, and have my light hooked up to a thermostat set at 68-70. When I feed I take my paint brush, dust off the bottom tap them into the container, dust with vit, and feed. I also spray my lids of my cultures with mite spray, let them dry while my culture is cooling down before I add the flys,,,

Working out awesome, mites are waaaaaaaaay down from when I didn't use this method...and by spraying the lid, the mites tend to stay at the bottom lessening you risk of tapping them into your feeder cup

Wanted to share as this forum have given me a ton of incredible help from all the awesome members!


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## radiata (Jul 24, 2010)

"Damascus Earth"? No bells chimed in my head, but once I Googled, it is just "DE" or "Diatomaceous Earth".


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## JohnVI (May 1, 2013)

radiata said:


> "Damascus Earth"? No bells chimed in my head, but once I Googled, it is just "DE" or "Diatomaceous Earth".


Yeah,
Long day, took a stab at the spelling of it..


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## IEatBugs (May 15, 2012)

You should be able to make your own media for a bit less than buying it really. Sure it takes maybe an hour at most to actually make it but that's not something you have to do weekly or even monthly depending on the number of cultures your making each week. I can make 17+ lbs. of media for about $40 compared to the $55 you see 12 lbs. sold for. Not a huge savings but worth noting for sure.


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## Toxic (Jul 9, 2012)

Has anyone tried using sweet potatoes in their FF culture?


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## daggekko (Jun 27, 2011)

I've been using the Repashy mix(probably will end once I run out) but as far as production goes it originally seemed like I was getting longer production than from my homemade mix. A while back I finally started using excelsior and that made a HUGE difference. The big difference I have noticed is that the Repashy mix smells much better than my homemade mix. Repashy is much more expensive though.


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## Cuthbert (Mar 30, 2011)

Toxic said:


> Has anyone tried using sweet potatoes in their FF culture?


Is there a reason you would want to? Is it possible to get instant sweet potatoes? Would that make the FF sweeter tasting? The frogs might like that.


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## Cuthbert (Mar 30, 2011)

Mentioning Repashy media made me wonder if any of the suppliers add calcium and/or vitamins to their media. Could there be any difference as far as nutritional value of FF cultured on one compared to the other? Is there any gut-loading going on when using high-quality store-bought media?


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Toxic said:


> Has anyone tried using sweet potatoes in their FF culture?


I'm sure it would work. I remember reading that someone was working at a diner or restaurant and they found a bunch of fruit flies and larva in a closed ketchup bottle. Essentially a ketchup culture. So I don't think the flies are extremely picky. In nature they eat rotting fruit.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Cuthbert said:


> Mentioning Repashy media made me wonder if any of the suppliers add calcium and/or vitamins to their media. Could there be any difference as far as nutritional value of FF cultured on one compared to the other? Is there any gut-loading going on when using high-quality store-bought media?


Yes there can be differences in nutritional content... very little of it good from adding supplements to the media....unless you know exactly what you are doing. 

The flies can't have their calcium content increased as they can excrete calcium extremely efficiently.... If you are adding supplements, they uptake and store vitamin E potentially to levels many times above and beyond the levels in the media.... 
In addition, flies convert vitamin D3 to cholesterol so this is probably something you don't want to bump excessively... corneal lipidosis hasn't been to my knowledge reported from dendrobatids but that doesn't mean that boundary should be pushed..... 

People often argue that the most productive media is the best media.. which is a problem as it ignores the whole issue of quality over quantity with the flies.. for example, most media recipes are very poor in carotenoid diversity which is okay with the flies as they require very little vitamin A to succeed as a fly and the majority that is available is in the form of beta carotene which is either hard for the frogs to use or cannot be used by the frogs... 

As a further issue, there can be genetic components that impact the success of a media and can give false impressions on production levels... as an example, flies that are genetic selected for fast development and from the first emergence from pupae are inefficient feeders that are also very intolerant of conditions that occur slightly later in the culture. This can result in large blooms with a sudden decrease in numbers of flies produced. As a result of the genetic selection, production can be viewed as poor but it has nothing to do with the media.. This has been discussed in the past more than once. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## whitethumb (Feb 5, 2011)

which commercial fruit fly media would you recommend? quantity over quality? you can pm me. 



Ed said:


> Yes there can be differences in nutritional content... very little of it good from adding supplements to the media....unless you know exactly what you are doing.
> 
> The flies can't have their calcium content increased as they can excrete calcium extremely efficiently.... If you are adding supplements, they uptake and store vitamin E potentially to levels many times above and beyond the levels in the media....
> In addition, flies convert vitamin D3 to cholesterol so this is probably something you don't want to bump excessively... corneal lipidosis hasn't been to my knowledge reported from dendrobatids but that doesn't mean that boundary should be pushed.....
> ...


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## Cuthbert (Mar 30, 2011)

Ed said:


> Yes there can be differences in nutritional content.


Very helpful, thanks for the feedback. So would I be correct in making the following assumptions? I would guess that if flies are properly dusted with supplements and eaten right away then the difference in nutritional value is minimal regardless of whether raised on homemade or commercial. Or does fortified media still give even dusted flies a significant advantage nutritionally? 

But for specifically feeding my large vivarium (48"x48"x32") frogs, I would think it'd be more important for me to use a fortified commercial media--based on the fact that a lot of those flies aren't getting eaten right away and are losing some or all of their supplement coating. Does this seem correct?


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## Jeremy M (Oct 19, 2012)

I know this isn't entirely what you meant when you said 'Store-bought media", but I recently bought a small container of flightless fruit flies from petco as 'betta food'. The container actually had a spinnable top like you would find on a salt shaker or spice shaker, with different sized holes you could set to shake out different amounts of flies for your fish- needless to say, this whole product was absolutely worthless for its intended purpose. I only bought them to seed some cultures from media i would whip up easily at home (potato buds plus water, some cider vinegar, honey and yeast ontop) . The media it came in was this disgusting blue-colored processed stuff which have no idea what it's made of, but I assumed couldn't be good. 

To get to the point, today I went in to transfer some flies from this bought "culture" to another homemade one today, I (wasn't) surprised to find that every single FF maggot was dead. No loss, I just transferred some flies from the other culture i'd seeded -which, despite having been taken over by mold from about the beginning (due both to a broken microwave and being out of yeast) was still doing well.

I can't really say that this relates to your question at all, because all it really does is tell us what we already know about Petco


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Cuthbert said:


> Very helpful, thanks for the feedback. So would I be correct in making the following assumptions? I would guess that if flies are properly dusted with supplements and eaten right away then the difference in nutritional value is minimal regardless of whether raised on homemade or commercial. Or does fortified media still give even dusted flies a significant advantage nutritionally?


It depends on what you are adding to the media... As I noted above, what you add can significantly change the profile of the flies... for example, in the diet you want a 10 to 1 to 0.1 of vitamin A to D3 to E... if you add vitamin E to the media, then you can easily disrupt the vitamin ratios resulting in conditional vitamin deficiencies despite using a good supplement and the flies being consumed right away. 

The best thing you can do is use a good quality media, avoid genetic selection for intolerance (fast development), use a good quality dusting supplement and make sure to include a diverse carotenoid source in the diet. 



Cuthbert said:


> But for specifically feeding my large vivarium (48"x48"x32") frogs, I would think it'd be more important for me to use a fortified commercial media--based on the fact that a lot of those flies aren't getting eaten right away and are losing some or all of their supplement coating. Does this seem correct?


No... the flies are going to be imbalanced with respect to a number of required nutritional parameters ranging from calcium to phosphorus ratios to vitamin ratios. You cannot adjust these nutritionally, that is what I thought I made clear about the vitamin A, D3, and E above as well as calcium. 

If you are going to go this route then you need to modify your husbandry routines to include calcium rich substrates (clay), and supply an adequate source of UVB along with the ability of the frogs to adjust their exposure behaviorally. I would also suggest ensuring that you have a diverse micro-arthropod and annelid population as this can be an important source of nutrients (and you still need to dust and supply a diverse carotenoid source). By this I mean beyond springtails and isopods. 
In addition, you would also have to modify the husbandry to include significant dry seasons to allow the frogs to uptake and sequester various nutrients (like carotenoids) without the constant draining of these resources from overbreeding. 

This isn't really new information as it's been discussed for years. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Okay, it's clear you have a beef with Petsmart but you are including some flaws in your argument. See below. 



Jeremy M said:


> I only bought them to seed some cultures from media i would whip up easily at home (potato buds plus water, some cider vinegar, honey and yeast ontop) . The media it came in was this disgusting blue-colored processed stuff which have no idea what it's made of, but I assumed couldn't be good.


That is almost exactly the same thing you used for your homemade media (which is based on the Carolina Biological Supply Company's fruit fly media). I should note that your media is deficient in the exact same things as the media that came with the flies. The blue dye is harmless and is intended to ensure that the maggots are easily visible. It's harmless to the flies and the frogs... 



Jeremy M said:


> I (wasn't) surprised to find that every single FF maggot was dead.


I'm not sure how you can pin this on PetSmart.... You could have killed the maggots... say by CO2 poisoning... or over heated them... or bad conditions in your culture conflicting with the genetic tolerances of the flies. 

and it really has nothing to do with the thread.... 

I should also note, that the fungal overgrowth is probably your fault... and seeding from a fungus infested culture typically infests the new culture(s) with the fungus.. You could have heated the media without a microwave.. a stovetop works just fine or at least boiled the water. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Cuthbert (Mar 30, 2011)

Thanks for the above info. Although I realized I wasn't real clear in the wording of my questions. When I was asking about the nutritional value of flies raised on homemade media versus commercial media, I wasn't suggesting I'd try to fortify the homemade myself. I was just trying to generally quantify the nutritional difference of a dusted fly cultured on simple homemade media versus a dusted fly cultured on quality commercial media (although I still might not be articulating that real well). My guess is that those two are fairly close nutritionally because the big boost is probably coming from the supplement dusting. That was more just theoretical curiosity. My real question was answered by this:



Ed said:


> The best thing you can do is use a good quality media, avoid genetic selection for intolerance (fast development), use a good quality dusting supplement and make sure to include a diverse carotenoid source in the diet.


Thanks again for the feedback, I really appreciate it.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Cuthbert said:


> Thanks for the above info. Although I realized I wasn't real clear in the wording of my questions. When I was asking about the nutritional value of flies raised on homemade media versus commercial media, I wasn't suggesting I'd try to fortify the homemade myself. I was just trying to generally quantify the nutritional difference of a dusted fly cultured on simple homemade media versus a dusted fly cultured on quality commercial media (although I still might not be articulating that real well). My guess is that those two are fairly close nutritionally because the big boost is probably coming from the supplement dusting. That was more just theoretical curiosity. My real question was answered by this:
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks again for the feedback, I really appreciate it.


Standard medias are generally deficient in carotenoids that can either be stored (and converted by the frogs) or converted to retinoids by the flies.. This in addition to the fact that the majority of supplements use beta carotene as their source of vitamin A is one of the main reasons there has historically been a lot of vitamin A deficiency in the frogs. 
A fruit fly in a culture does just fine as needs only a tiny bit of vitamin A to complete metamorphosis and can get by with either very poor sight or being blind. 
If you were going to try and do something with the media, adding a diverse variety of carotenoids would be the route to go, however this comes with a strong caveat, you need to keep in mind that the microorganisms in the culture are also going to degrade the carotenoids so later fly production may have a lower carotenoid value. 

Keep in mind that production does not automatically equate to optimized flies. 

Some comments 

Ed


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