How to feed Wingless Fruit Flies

[DonLisk]

I tapped about ten of the tiny fruit flies into the viv and soon after I saw the dart out and about.

What are you all using for a sifter with the vitamins and calcium?
It will be a few days before I have the supplements.

[wesleybrouwer]

Around here, you just have to wait before the mites will come to the medium.
I suppose the mites occur all over the world and everywhere they will come to the fruit fly cultures, i may be wrong ofcourse
I always try to give the flies a head start by removing as much mite as possible,
eventually they will miraculously appear again on the medium, so completely free of mites is not possible.
But don't worry, a healthy frog also like to eat them, as long as it isn't to much.
It's more because you're fruitfly larvaes will be attacked as well, causing your'e culture to stagnate or even stop.

What i use for the sifting, is just a plastic jar i also start my cultures in.
The top is provided with a plastic mesh.

Just add youre supplement in, tap flies into it, shake them to get them covered,
this will make them slower and climbing the walls less due to the powder attached to them.
Eventually i keep the jar upside down and shake to get the surplus powder and mites out of it.
Now you can throw in the dizzy flies, without them crawling all over the place before you manage to close the doors of the viv

I'll add a picture to make it clear.
I also use a kitchen sifter sometimes.

You can also make yourself some sifters for other feeder insects, like the beanweevil for example.
Find yourself a mesh with a diameter letting the bugs trough, but keeping the beans in the sifter.
Works so much easier with the feeding of such sort of insects.
Otherwise you have to put in the entire tray in, this way you can somewhat dosage how much you put in there

Good luck with your first poison dart frog btw.

[DonLisk]

I'll have to order some cups then :-)

I have the vitamins coming this week and I used a little Repti Calcium with D3 this morning after watching some videos on Black Jungles Website. After I watch my little dart eat I realized 10 fruit flies was just a snack. I put barely a pinch of the calcium in a cup., dropped in a small amount of flies and swirled them around like in the video. It worked pretty good but the cup seems so much easier.

Dumb flies run to the water so I had to save a few but the frog is now a little chubby and looks pretty happy.

I also found a piece of glass from a picture frame so I covered the top more to bring up humidity since it was running around 70 percent. Hoping to hit at least te 80 prcent mark or more.
Temps are 85 right now and at night drop to 70 - 72 which I hpe is also ok.

Thanks for the help Wesley.

[DonLisk]

Man I love this little Dart. He has explored the viv and has found some cool places to hide.

I see the fruit flies like to congregate in the water dish. I still see many fruit flies walking around the viv so should I put more in every day or other day?

He is usually up by the time I get up at 6am and makes his way to the water dish by 8am.
Humidity in the day is now around 85 percent and temps around 85 degrees.
Night temp was 75 and humidity rose to 95 percent.

Hopefully I'm on the right track here. I do have one cricket in there that is bigger than a pinhead but not quite a 1/4 yet so I'm going to try and remove it.

[DonLisk]

I see the fruit flies like to congregate in the water dish. I still see many fruit flies walking around the viv so should I put more in every day or other day? Wait til there are only a few seen?
It really does look like there are plenty in the viv.... anyone have any comments on this?

[RikoAustria]

Hmm... 85 is a bit on the high side for darts. Is there any way you can drop it down to maybe high 70s? Or put lots of shaded areas that they can hide under.

Also, the FF kit(s) on joshsfrogs.com are awesome to start off with.

Keep us posted on the progress

[DonLisk]

Thanks Riko, I lifted the viv this morning to allow for some air to flow under the bottom in hope to reduce the temps created by the under-tank heater. I also replaced the 40 watt lamp with a 25 to see if I can drop temps some.

Thanks again for the reply.