Breeding fruitflies

Does anyone here breed their own fruitflies for their chams? Or is it just cheaper to buy them?

They can be costly , hard to believe as they are so friggin small so I breed my own and I usually end up with more than I need at feeding time. and tonight that is . I feed them to small geckos and small chameleons and of sourse baby tarantulas. So tonight I'll feed about 200 baby tarantulas and probably drop 10 in the bigger babies. Easy to do and cost effective.
They breed pretty fast, heck man faster than my T's

It really has to be a what will you feed out and an at end cost.

A 32oz culture will produce a couple hundred flies per day once established for about 3.5 weeks (they say 4 but Ive never had them go past 24 days).

If you have a large number of babies to feed a couple of times a day a kit is more effective, the flies will produce their butts off, so you can start with 2 32oz cultures, the extra medium and containers for 20 cultures for about $20 (last time I bought them) and grow your own for a couple of months. Or pay $4-6 each 32oz culture plus shipping.

Mike,
Fruit flies are a very poor choice for any chameleons as a staple diet. You are far better off with small crickets which you can gutload yourself. You cannot gutload fruitflies, and from nutritional standpoint, that makes them a very narrow, and not staple, choice of nutrition. 1/8" crickets or larger are fine, depending on the size of your chameleons. Judge by the distance across the top of the head of your chameleons. Do not waste your money ordering pinheads. For growing chameleons (first 4 months), a simple but effective gutload is any brand of fish-flakes, and either frozen green vegetables, or fresh collards or spinach greens. Forget the fruit flies, except as a snack.

Im sorry but I disagree about the gutload. I have tried different gotloads and fish flakes and veges are not sufficient.

There are publised articles about the ill effects of poor gutload for crickets esp where Chameleons are concerned.

http://www.chameleonnews.com/gutload.html


Fruit Flies are gutloaded IF they are on a premium vitamin enriched meduim.

OK, if it hasn't worked for you, then what do you recommend? "Vitamin enriched" medium? OK, fruit with vitamins? What is the medium you recommend for fruit flies that meets the nutritional needs of chameleons? I am very curious about the protein and mineral analysis of the fruit mediums? Fruit flies are OK if part of a varied diet, but are much further from what is considered a staple diet, and are not a good strting basis for any diet. Crickets and other bugs that eat a more varied diet have been shown to be excellent staple bugs. Even houseflies make far better staple bugs than fruit flies. Show me the data, eh? BTW, fish flakes and veggies, combined with basic vitamin and mineral supplementation which is recommended by all, do have a long track record of success with chameleons. And it is easier than making your own from scratch, which many keepers with just a few pets are not able to do. That link, while informative as background info , does not provide a simple recipe, or any recipe.

I suggested fruit flies for the first few weeks not as a STAPLE, reading can sometimes be a problem for those who write too much.

I have never suggested Fruit flies as a staple but as a from birth to a cricket sixed feeder.

Fruit flies raised on fruit lol that would be a riot

Fruit flies should and are properly raised on a vitamin enriched medium:

as such this is not what you would want to raise fruit flies on for newborn chams:
1 cup of water
1 tablespoon cornmeal
1 teaspoon agar (available at health food stores)
1 tablespoon molasses
1/8 teaspoon calcium proprionate (available at chemical suppliers)
1 package baking yeast
From: http://www.a1reptiles.com/a1ffcare.html

Fruit flies need to be gutloaded just as any other insect:


From: http://fins.actwin.com/live-foods/mo.../msg00005.html

I personally add

infant rice cereal
calcium
agar agar
yeast
vionate

then water
corn meal
agar
vitamins (like One-A-Day multivitamin pill)
mold inhibitor
yeast

grind fine in mixer then add water to texture, add adult flies to produce cultures

Wendy,
I started off my first post here by saying that fruit flies were a poor staple. That was not in criticism of anyone. No one had mentioned it as an exclusive diet for young chams at that point, and I didn't want to give anyone the impression that it was a good idea. Only this very last post of yours says its OK until the chams are "cricket sized", but not as a staple. That is a contradiction of sorts at this point, because if its all their eating, its staple. Who is "reading to fast"?
I give my opinion on gutload and staple diets. You post a disagreement and say its not sufficient, but do not explain. Am I wrong to ask for an explanation?
If you choose to feed your chameleon fruit flies for the first few weeks, it is then the staple for the first few weeks, and their diet must be beefed up as you have recommended in this last post. Our chameleons eat small crickets from their first day. That may not work for some, but they are "cricket sized" out of the egg for 4-6 day old crickets, depending on the temps that the crickets are raised under. At least now people can look at the fruit fly recipe. I have not used fruit flies in years, although I have worked with all of the chemicals and ingredients you mention, and many more, especially with propagating hornworms. That diet seems short on protein and amino acids. My experience is that fish-flakes and fresh green vegetables work much better providing you have an insect that can deliver them.

Sorry Jim, I didn't think I needed to explain why I felt fish flakes were a poor gutload when I gave the link the the article written on proper gutloads for chameleons.

Most types of Fruit flies are high in protein at birth but the protein diminishes as they age:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract

I have not reasearched the actual aminio acid content in fruit flies but baby bereal is high in amino acids.

Wendy,
As I have mentioned to you in the past, I try to put out information that I have tested at length, and only make conclusive statements when I have a body of experience relative to that specific topic. The article you cited contians a lot of good enecdotal information, but very few conclusive statements for the reader to follow. Too much of anything, even the "good things" can be harmful. That does not mean it is to be avoided. In the article, Jason backs away from the conclusions that you drew from the article, as I believe he knows that the information is not there to draw that conclusion.
Also, baby rice cereal is a poor source of protein and amino acids, which are virtually the same thing. The fruit fly recipe which you posted, while high in starches and carbo's, is weak in protein. As I said in my first post here, fruit flies are fine as a "treat" but are not recomended to be relied on as a staple, for reasons I have sited. The starter of this thread had no issue one way or the other about staple vs treat, it was only something I brought to the thread as I thought there room for it in the discussion. Its one thing to make a recommendation, and support for the recommendations is always a good idea. Its another to criticize that of another without having the goods.