D. hydei Culturing Issues

[Lynx]

Thanks for the heads up. Despite my best efforts, I have a serious mite problem. I have to discard cultures after about the weeks, sometimes less. I don't know if they can be cultured out or if I need to start from scratch.

[berksmike]

A good method is the first dust the flies with your calcium powder and then sieve the powder away with a vey fine mesh sieve. This will hopefully dislodge the mites. Also using mite papaer helps - as well as washing your hands after handling cultures.

On the plus side most dart frogs will readily take mites as a food source - my azureus love them so I keep a few mite infested cultures in the shed for that purpose (well away from my active fly cultures tho)

[Lynx]

A good method is the first dust the flies with your calcium powder and then sieve the powder away with a vey fine mesh sieve.

I can't wait to try it! That might also have the added bonus of cutting down on escapees...I seem to have more trouble with that when re-culturing hydei. Thank you so much for the tip! How did you learn that?

Also using mite papaer helps - as well as washing your hands after handling cultures.

I'm having difficulty finding the mite paper, so I've been using paper towels treated with mite spray. I keep the cultures in a different room than my frogs, and keep the older ones in a different room from the newer ones. And, of course, the hand washing

Ah, azureus. Someday I hope to have a few, but not in the near future

[berksmike]

Heres a US source for mite paper:
Bug Kill and M'Lady No Bugs Insecticidal Shelf and Drawer Paper and Covering for Mite Control

Ebay might be worth a try too. Another alternative is to keep your cultures in a shallow tray of water. Keeping old cultures away and regularly making new cultures also helps keep mites under control. Unfortunately tho I have found despite your best efforts they are a continuing problem but you can take those measures to keep on top of them