Running Out of Fruit Flies: What to Do When You’re in a Jam
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By Allen Booth and Derick Michael
Allen has 30+ years in the exotics industry. Derick runs MLE's dart frog breeding program in New Jersey.
When I started my dart frog collection it was one morph. I wanted the blue dart frog, Dendrobates tinctorius azureus, and my wife looked at me and said "you want what?" I told her I was only going to build one terrarium.
Long story short: many years later I'm at over 30 species, between the hobby side and the breeding facility for MLE. What started as one melanogaster culture a week is now, well, a lot more than that.
I've had cultures crash. I've had weeks with so many flies I didn't know what to do with them. But the worst is the crash you find on a feeding day, when the frogs need food and you have nothing producing.
It happened to me constantly in my first few years. It hasn't in a long time now, but how I produce cultures and keep them booming is a whole article of its own, and it's coming. This one is about what to do when you're in it right now.
First: your frogs are probably fine
Before you panic, understand what your actual window is.
If you've been keeping your frogs well fed, every other day for adults, once a day for juveniles as a general rule, and you have cultures going that just aren't producing yet, there is normally no issue waiting four or five days for those cultures to come in. That's the best case you can be in on a feeding day with no flies. Your frogs coast.
I don't like to go more than five days without feeding. But five days on a well-fed adult is not an emergency.
How do you know if your frogs are actually well fed? The banana test.
When you feed, put a small piece of banana in the terrarium and check after the feeding. A few flies left over means you're feeding the right amount. No flies left means you probably need to feed a little more. Lots of flies left means you're overfeeding and can probably skip a day next feeding.
Run that test regularly and you'll always know where you stand, including whether your frogs have the reserves to coast through a crash.
Froglets are different. Don't assume the five days applies to them.
This is the one place people lose animals. Froglets have almost no reserves compared to adults.
If you keep springtails, this is where they save you. Dropping springtails in works as a gap filler for any of your frogs, but especially for froglets. Feed them every other day on springtails and they'll survive.
If you don't have springtails and you have froglets: they will probably survive five days if they've been fed well. But don't test it. Treat this as urgent and go get producing cultures tonight.
If you have nothing: your options, worst to best
The big box pet store (probably a dead end)
Some of the big chains carry flightless fruit flies now. In my experience they've all been dead, or not producing yet, and the counts are small. This is not a real solution. You can try it and you might get lucky, but don't build your plan around it.
The local exotic pet store (better, and there's a secret here)
If you have an exotic pet store near you, they will almost definitely keep cultures. The catch is that the ones on the shelf might not be producing yet, and if they're brand new the wait could be longer than five days. Pick some up anyway so you have them coming.
But here's the secret. They almost certainly have producing cultures somewhere in the back, the ones they use to make more cultures to sell and to feed their own animals.
Don't talk to the salesperson. Ask for the manager or the owner. Explain your situation. If you already have a good relationship with them, even better. You may well walk out with a producing culture, and if you're a customer they know, they might just give it to you.
The community (the best option)
This is what I'd actually do, and it's the best option on this list.
The exotic animal community lives on forums and social media, and if you're in this hobby you're probably already in a few groups. Put out a note that you need producing flies in your area. With something close to 99% certainty, someone will save you. Hobbyists help each other with this specific problem constantly, because everyone has been there.
The catch: build that network before you need it. A post from a known name gets help faster than a cold post from a stranger. If you're not in your local groups yet, join them today, not on the day your culture crashes.
If you're in New Jersey, reach out to us and we'll help you out. Email us first though. Please don't just show up at the store.
Ordering online (don't count on it in an emergency)
I've never had flies shipped overnight. I have tried ordering producing-only cultures and they come in two days, but I don't love this method. Sometimes they say producing and they aren't. Sometimes they don't produce at all. It's fine for restocking. In a jam, you want another option.
Once you're out of the jam
The moment you have a producing culture, make sure you keep enough flies back to make new cultures right away, so you're not in exactly the same spot a week from now. It's easy to feed everything you just got your hands on and then be right back where you started.
I would always rather have too many flies than not enough.
The backup test: do you actually have enough?
Here's the simple version. When you're done feeding your frogs and done making new cultures, do you still have flies left that you could feed? If yes, you're in good shape. If you're empty, you don't have enough for backups. You're running with no margin, and the next crash will catch you.
You always want to have more than you need so this doesn't happen. But it has happened to everyone, which is exactly why having a local community matters.
One more thing: vacations
The same math applies when you travel. If I'm doing a long weekend, I'll overfeed and then let the adults go four or five days without food, which is fine. But I have someone come feed the froglets. Same asymmetry: adults coast, froglets don't.
There's more to it than that, and we'll get into how we handle longer trips another time.
Coming soon: our secrets to producing great booming cultures, and how we run production at MLE so this stops happening in the first place.
Need flies now? Shop fruit fly cultures and supplies. Keeping springtails as a backup is one of the best habits in this hobby: shop springtails.
