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Why a regime?
Looking after Drosophila is quite easy when you get the hang of it. When cultures crash its usuall because they were left unattended. The life span (just like the development time) is temperature dependent, and does not much exceed 2 weeks as a fly. It is critical to follow a careful regime to allow maximum production. This can take a few minutes each week and thats it. HOWEVER, miss a week and your yield will be drop, miss 2 and you may well loose your cultures! If you can not attend to the flies, its best to keep them cool (20 deg C) until you can.
In general flies should be kept at around 25-28 degrees C. This provides a quick turnover of flies for feeding and allows a weekly regime to be followed. They also like a relatively high humidity; If yours are not kept in a humid room, consider keeping the vials in a centimeter of water.
The vials that the flies live in are separated into 3 categories-
1. The present generation of adult flies- laying eggs for future generations (3-4 vials - top shelf of picture)
2. Vials containing chrysallised larvae, and newly emerged flies.(10-20 vials - middle shelf of picture)
3. Flies or larvae for feeding fish (3-4 vials - bottom shelf of picture).
Once per week newly emerged flies are collected from 2. These are housed in fresh vials, and are designated 1 the present generation. After 3-4 days these flies are moved again, onto new media- the old vials (which are loaded with eggs or very young larvae) go back in 2, to make future generations. Once the week has passed, the flies making the present generation can be fed to your fish, and their vials may either go back into 2, or be left for a few days to provide larvae. Of course a new generation of adult flies is again collected from 2 at the same time. There are many advantages of keeping to a strict regime such as this
- Each vial will contain only flies/larvae of approximately the same age, resulting in eclosion (hatching of the adult fly) over a relatively short period. This reduces the time you have to hang onto older vials-making fly collection easier and lessening the chances of mold.
- The longer flies are kept on the same media, the more runny it becomes- if the flies are collected after a 3-4 days, it will still be quite solid. Runny media can drown flies, stick them down and goes everywhere when the jar is inverted.
- All flies will have reached sexual maturity and have reproduced before being fed.
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