fruit flies in betta tubs?

[ozymandias]

I recently was given a dozen or so clean betta tubs from PetSmart -- you know, the tubs that they are sold in with the lids with *really* small holes...

Can I use these for fruit fly cultures without plugging the holes somehow?

 

[Hmong_Xiong]

might be to small

 

[ozymandias]

might be to small

What about hydei? The flies in my existing culture seem much bigger than the holes.

 

[Wheat]

My father keeps his fruit fly cultures in salad containers. They're about double the height of those containers. He puts holes in the lids with a standard hole punch and covers the holes with a single layer of coffee filter paper.

 

[nitsua98]

I'm not sure about the size of the holes on top, but the container itself is pretty small. If they are the same cups I am thinking of, you won't get good production out of such a small space. There isn't much room for media on the bottom and they would get cramped really fast.

I never cultured hydei, so I cannot say this for certain. I bred darts for fun a while and from my experience I wouldn't use a container any smaller than the standard for fruit flies.

 

[ozymandias]

I'm not sure about the size of the holes on top, but the container itself is pretty small. If they are the same cups I am thinking of, you won't get good production out of such a small space. There isn't much room for media on the bottom and they would get cramped really fast.

I never cultured hydei, so I cannot say this for certain. I bred darts for fun a while and from my experience I wouldn't use a container any smaller than the standard for fruit flies.

Honestly, I don't know what 'standard' is. I got a little vial of the flies cheap from the petstore, and saw people using various sized bottles to do this.

 

[nitsua98]

I'm not sure of the dimensions, but I believe they are usually 32oz. containers. They are the only ones I ever used because you can re-use them.
Now that I think about it, it should be easy to use something around that same size. Although, the one's meant for culturing fruit flies are pretty cheap.

 

[Wheat]

Check out this site :
http://www.edsflymeat.com/products1.htm
My father uses the ones that aren't dishwasher safe. When the media is just about gone (about 2-3 weeks) He starts another container. It cuts down on mold problems.