So you’ve researched the heck out of everything you need to know about your jumping spider but you have just go some foul smelling pot delivered through the post and when you open it a torrent of fruit flies spills out. One thing to easily overlook is how to care for your feeders, and also how to deal with them. Hopefully this blog with tips and tricks on feeding flies to your jumping spider.
Fruit Flies If you are getting a young phidippus regius (5th instar are most common but some breeders let them go younger) you’ll be looking at feeding flightless fruit flies. These are fruit flies specially bred to inhibit their ability to fly, not that they know this. If your spider is younger than 4th instar you’ll be looking at drosophila melanogaster also called d.melanogaster or small fruit fly. After 4th instar you will be needing drosophila hydei, also called d.hydei or large fruit fly. Both of these flies come in two options: Live Flies or Culture. Live flies don’t last very long with a short lifespan, to get the most out of your pot of live flies add fruit slices such as strawberry or banana, or a jelly fruit pot. Most come in a large plastic tub with a cardboard egg carton type insert. If you receive a smaller, crowded vial. You may want to upgrade them to a larger pot where they can be easily fed because if you drop a bit of strawberry into a small vial the chances are you’ll squish the majority. The other option and the better one in my opinion is a fruit fly culture which consists of a vented top either cloth or sponge, wood straw and a very smelly food paste at the bottom. These cultures are life cycles in a pot; so for a fruit fly it is a slightly gross version of the butterfly life cycle. The flies mate in the pot and lay eggs, the eggs hatch into maggots that swim about eating the food paste, they will eventually crawl up the sides of the pot and on the wood straw to pupate in little brown cases where they will eventually hatch into flies to start the cycle all over again. Because any un-used flies have mated and laid eggs, new ones will hatch out to take their place. So for a few weeks you’ll have a nice fresh supply of well-fed fruit flies. When you buy these online you’ll often be given a choice of size and stage. For most keepers with one to 3 baby spiders, a standard size will do. If you have many more then a go large will suit you better. There are 3 stages of culture to choose from; newly made will have a few flies, more eggs and hardly any maggots. This is great if you have time to wait or you want to buy some now to have ready in a few weeks but not if you want to use the flies now as most will probably die in transit, those who don’t will be needed to strengthen the production numbers. A newly made one shouldn’t be harvested for flies until you can see maggots crawling up the sides. An intermediate culture is best, this means you can harvest a few flies a day and it can last up to a month. Add a just a few drops water to the culture to stop the food paste from drying out if it starts turning dark brown. A mature culture is great if you need a lot of flies fast, or of they are out of intermediates, this will have less paste in it and won’t last as long. Most cultures that are not sold in stages to choose from will be intermediate or mature and ready to harvest. How long a culture will last is unpredictable so always aim to buy a new one before you run out.
The culture or hatched flies are best kept at room temperature, although they can be slowed down and made easier to feed by popping it in the fridge, too long or too cold and you can kill off the flies so don't leave longer than about 3 minutes. Keeping a culture too long may encourage mites, these can be passed on to your spider and although most are harmless they are annoying and unsightly for keepers. To prevent this place your culture on sticky mite paper. This paper will trap any mites and can also stop a fruit fly outbreak of you forget to replace the bung which I may have done once or twice. Keep the culture away from your enclosures, especially if you are using mite paper, no one wants a escapee spider getting struck, but it will also lessen the chnaces of spreading mites. Also keep the culture out of your kitchen, it is one thing having them on your spider but a whole level or ick having them in your food.
To help you feed them to your spider here is a little trick. Cut a small hole in the top of the pot (hatched pot or culture), about 5 - 8mm square and bung this hole with a bit of kitchen sponge. When you need to feed you you can turn the pot on it’s side and let a few wander out where you can gently knock them into your spiders enclosure before re-sealing the hole, or you can keep the pot upright and let a few a few flies crawl up into a smaller pot, making them easier to get into the spiders enclosure.
I often sell small cultures when they are readyto harvest , you can also buy a culture kit from places like Amazon and Ebay to make your own.
You simply mix up the paste in the bottom of the culture container according to the manufacturers instructions, add the wood straw and then tip in some flies from your current culture. It’s really simple, but it may take a few weeks before it is ready to harvest. The other downside to making your own is eventually the defect that stopped them flying is bred out and they can take to the air again. There is nothing more annoying than a fruit fry who can fly.
Curly Winged Flies
I will be completely honest with you, I have never been able to get these to hatch. I completely skip this size feeder and move onto green bottles, but their care and hatching is much the same as the bottle flies which I'll talk about now.
Green Bottles and Bluebottles After their 7th instar most spider will eagerly hunt these larger flies. They are sold as hatched flies and as casters. Casters is the common term used to describe pupating stage of the flies life cycle and they are best kept in the top of the fridge or in the door, this will slow down their development and hatching. Take out a few of the casters and place them in a larger vented pot to hatch with some sawdust, wood straw and a fruit jelly pot. I sell a hatching kit in the Arachnamoria shop to help you get started/ Place in a warm, light spot to hatch. Now this can take over a week if the casters are really fresh, if they are old they may hatch quicker than expected, including in the fridge. Darker casters generally denote an older one, lighter are newly turned. Giving them a light spritz with your mister can encourage caster to hatch sooner, but go easy, too much water can cause them to mould and die off. Is your fly looking white or grey and not the shiny blue or green you expected? This is because they have just pulled themselves out of their pupae, they will dry out and soon look like what you are used to. You can still feed them to your spider when they are freshly hatched, but while they dry then tend to find a dark spot and not move, making them very uninteresting to a hunting spider. They will eventually perk up though.
You can pop your hatching pot in the fridge to slow the flies down to make them easier to feed to your spider. If you lose a fly in the house, they will aim for sources of light, so keep a little catching cup near the window to apprehend that on-the-lamb fly. A great trick to feeding is to make a hole in the side of your hatching pot near the top and bung it with a bit of kitchen sponge. When you want to feed one to your spider, stand near the window and aim the hole you made towards the window light, get a small catching cup (the travel vials your spiders arrive in is great for this), gently shake the fly pot and remove the bung. Place the catching cup over the hole and flies should start to climb the side near the window, and one will slip out straight into your catching cup.
Making sure your flies are well fed means they will stay buzzing for longer and insure they pass good stuff onto your spider. Reptile fruit jelly pots are a great way to feed them without mould and hash smells. You can purchase these in the online shop.
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