D. hydei Death at 69F!

[Mentat]

Keep my FFs in bedroom (coldest in house) with the darts. Last couple nights have been colder than normal and temps reached 73F day/69F night. The D. melanogaster are fine (both wingless and gliders); however the D. hydei flies (both Black and Gold) pretty much all died . I've moved them to a warmer room already.

One of the Gold cultures was producing, so that one can be used to re-culture future crops. The Blacks where just used to start new cultures on the 23rd; so they lived for close to a week in there. My concern is the bodies of 50-75 flies on top of medium might create a problem down the road. There are around 12 flies left alive in both cultures at the moment.

Guess my options are: to use those twelve flies to try and start a new culture? Or leave the 2 cultures with dead flies alone if no issues and hope the maggots (can't see any yet) survived. Maybe carefully take apart the excelsior and try to remove the dead flies from media?

Appreciate any opinions on this issue. Strange, thought D. hydei tolerated cold better than D. melanogaster . Thank you !

[DigitalPunk]

That sucks Carlos! Can you shake/tap the culture over a bowl and try to knock the living and dead flies into it. Maybe have that bowl in a bigger one so when the live ones climb out you can re-capture them and put them back in the culture?

[Mentat]

That is worth a try Paul; thank you !

[Mentat]

Well, dead flies were stuck on media like dinosaurs in tar ! Ended up preparing two new cultures, in one a "Gold" D. hydei from new stock and in the other, placed around a dozen and a half D. hydei survivors. The black ones are acting all weird so no big hope for them .

Then removed the excelsior and lightly scraped off the dead flies from media in the 3 affected cultures; my guess being, if they laid eggs in there (and hopefully did not scraped all out) will see some maggots soon.

Also noted some D. melanogaster cultures had casualties; but nothing as bad as the D. hydei.

[DigitalPunk]

Ugh that is super frustrating. Hopefully you can salvage everything and get production back up and running.

I am having a fly crisis of sort today myself. I need to make new cultures, but instead I am having to wait for larva to pupate so I can have enough flies to make the 4 cultures I need lol. I also bought some D. Hydie I am waiting to boom so i can make cultures from them. Soooo yeah. I guess I am going to increase my production from here on out to 4 or 5 Melanogaster from now on instead of 3.

I am also working on switching from the deli cups to Glass jars so I can wash them and reuse them. Trying to cut costs down some.