Learn from me - Mites are awful

[DigitalPunk]

Hey all. I know hard to believe that I am posting with a mistake I made (read the sarcasm into that first part pretty thickly).

I have always been a huge fan of sharing mistakes so that others will learn from my errors and avoid the cost, time, and heartache that follows.

I have had zero issues with fruit flies for nearly a year. I don't use mite paper and thought I had a pretty good system down until this past Friday..... What a nightmare....

I noticed 4 of my cultures looked like they had 1000 dead flies in them. I looked closer and saw them... little white mites all over the cultures. I then looked through other cultures. By the time I was done I had 15 cultures teaming with mites, more than half of them had all dead flies in them.

Here was my system. Sorry I don't have pictures to go along with it.

I have 2 shelving units 1 for Hydie flies and the other for Melonagaster. I always placed the newest cultures on the bottom of the shelf and each level up was older, and older, and older cultures. This was working great, but I made one simple mistake that has cost me Money, Time, and a lot of frustration. My mistake was not keeping my oldest cultures away from the freshly started cultures. I had everything right near each other and was basically inviting mites to come on by for diner.

So take it from me. Have an area where you keep fultures that are between 0 and 14-21 days old and another area for 22 - end old. This will help reduce the likely hood of mites infesting all your cultures. You should also use the 10 - 14 day old cultures to start your new ones. this will all but ensure you don't transfer mites into a fresh culture from the word go.

I have bleached and cleaned more than I wanted to this past weekend. I have more cultures enroute and I plan to not ever have to go through this nightmare again.