House Fly Pupa

[Vibrant Chameleons]

How long will it take for a house fly pupa to transform into a fly? I found 50+ pupa in a bin of crickets outside and I want to feed these off to my smaller chameleons. I know they love flies because I've caught a few around the house and threw them in the cage and they went nuts for them

 

[boothy]

i just googled it ,

http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/urban/flies/house_fly.htm

 

[filip]

Are those flies a good staple diet for smaller chams? I have heard that they aren't nutrient...

 

[Vibrant Chameleons]

Are those flies a good staple diet for smaller chams? I have heard that they aren't nutrient...

Well the Kammers sell them specifically for the babies so I'm assuming they are fine. I assume people just don't want flies overtaking there place.

 

[Vibrant Chameleons]

i just googled it ,

http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/urban/flies/house_fly.htm

I googled it and found the same info before I posted here. It tells the time period from Larvae to Pupa, but it doesn't tell how long the pupa takes to hatch into a fly. Unless I'm totally missing it in there...

 

[filip]

The pupae hatches depending on the temperature. It takes something around 7-10 days at room temp., but it can be faster if you keep them at over 30C...

 

[Heika]

Keep in mind that WC flies harbor parasites. It is best to get farmed pupae for feeding.

Flies gutload really easy.. they eat anything. I mix up my gutload and then wait for the fly poop to match the color of whatever I am feeding them. I can be reasonably certain that they are very well gutloaded at that point.. The fact that flies will eat anything can be a problem, because they will quite happily eat chameleon poop and anything else yucky that might be in the cage. I feed only a dozen or so at a time to try and avoid that. Plus, if you over do it, the poor chameleons seem to be annoyed by the flies landing on them.

If you don't want flying flies, you can incubate the pupae at a high temp (95-100 degrees) in a container with a layer of wet vermiculate, covered by screen, and then the pupae placed on top of that. Provide only a small vent in the lid to keep the humidity extremely high. The flies hatch and can't dry their wings.. they curl as a result. About 90-95 percent of the flies that hatch will be flightless. Hatch rates are lower when you use this method, though, about 70 percent.

www.spiderpharm.com sells pupae at a very reasonable price.. might want to check and see if they will ship to Canada. Raising flies is pretty easy, too, and doesn't have to be a nasty stinky mess. The trick is to provide lots of air flow.

Heika

 

[Vibrant Chameleons]

Thanks for the replies Filip and Heika! Appreciate it.

 

[boothy]

oh sorry man i thought it was in there ,my bad, but i hate googling stuff sooo many things come up thats not even compared to wat your looking for lol

 

[Vibrant Chameleons]

I've decided to flush all of them down the toilet. I don't want to risk my chameleons' health with parasites. I'll just stick with feeding these guys silkworm for now.