Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Interested in how it pans out GD - keep us all posted

Gnasho6,

I hope to let them grow a bit.......the more the merrier!

When I took a look at them this evening, there were hundreds of them. In fact, the bread and milk seemed to be alive with them.

Gary

Gd i bet if you were to put the container over your fish tank the creepers will crawl out and fall into the fish tank by them self.(auto feeder) i know they like uncooked corn too

Hi CB,

i'd like to try the self-feeding option at some time in the future but, at this stage, I just want to learn more about breeding useful quantities of fly larvae consistently.......in circumstances that don't have people wanting to throw up at the suggestion.

So far, my bread and milk operation only emits a cheesy, yeasty kind of smell.......just enough to pull in enough curious flies.....without attracting the invidious attention of the Minister for War and Finance.

Gary

Hi,

I obtained the following analysis of maggots from a Chinese maggot farm:

Dry Matter 24.7%
Crude protein 47.5-50.1%
Lipid 19.3%
Cellulose 23.2%
Minerals 9.1%
Ca 1.5%
P 1.2%
Mg 0.3%
K 1.3%
Na 4528 ppm
Mn 196.5 ppm
Fe 425.7 ppm
Cu 19.7 ppm
Zn 235.8 ppm

The interesting part of this analysis is the protein level - 47.5%+. They seem to be quite high in iron, too.

Hey that's a nice breakdown, and the milk/bread looks reasonably clean there in that white container too.

The cellulose is a nice ratio, is there a breakdown of these carbs? Interested in nutritional retention here as opposed to content.

Not impressed with the copper content, but where it reads in relation to other fish foods would be more relevant than saying 'oh no, copper'!

Lot of salt. Makes em tasty! Almost 0.5 %. Nothing wrong with some alkali... 200 maggots = nearly 1 maggots worth of salt. Thinking this is not so high as the 4528 ppm looks when read like that.

Some good trace elements in there.

What are the maggots on the farm being fed in relation to yours?

you know me - pedantic!

Great stuff!

Does anyone have a design for a small self feeder?

Hi Johnnie,

Jaymie came up with a simple self-feeder idea using a fan shroud I think.

She places the bait in the centre of the fan cover and as the maggots move out of the bait (for self-cleaning) they drop into the tank.

I'm going to keep the larvae a bit longer to see if I can grow them bigger.

AA....the Chinese maggot ranch was using "fermented grain residue namely brewery spent grain. The fly attractants include animal manure like pig and poultry wastes ; animal offal from the abattoir, dead lizards, birds, rats and other animals - we also use decaying fruits like mangoes. Mango is a good attractant."

For reasons that most people will comprehend, I'll be staying clear of the dead lizards, birds and rats.

Gary

Gary, I've just removed my fan-maggotry from the tank. The bait got toooo ripe for comfortable living.
I'm trying to work out some way of getting a big clear plastic bottle on a polystyrene float, but with a hanging bait tray (first find a big clear bottle in a house that doesn't do soft-drink, hmmm)
I'm thinking of using a small piece of gutter-guard for the bait tray (so the maggots fall out easily).
I want the bottle to be just over/even just in the water so the flies can't get away again.
Did this make sense, it's still rattling in my head at this stage, but I think it may be better than the fan grill (flies got away from that one)

On maggots

"Maggot meal. Maggots (larvae of housefly) when dried to 7 percent moisture content contain 53 percent crude protein, 18 percent crude fat, 11 percent ash, 2 percent nitrogen-free-extract (NFE) and 3 840 Kcal ME/kg. A 10 percent maggot meal in a corn-soya base diet performed equally well or better than those fed preparations containing the same level of fish meal, meat and bone meal or soybean meal protein in terms of feed consumption."

Jaymie,

There'd be no shortage of large drink bottles in any garbage bin outside of yours. Regrettably, I don't think most parents are that cautious when it comes to what their kids drink.

As my recent posts suggest, while I like the idea of a self-feeder, I want to grow the maggots to a larger size than a self-feeder permits (as I understand it).

Try the milk and bread thing......it really doesn't smell too bad. In fact, you've got to be very close to it and, even then, it smells like stale cheese or yeast.

I've placed the little dish that featured in my last photo into a larger plastic tub with a few worm castings in the bottom. The maggots use the castings to clean themselves as part of the process of becoming flies. Of course, I haven't yet shared with them that becoming flies is not part of my plan

I can also keep the whole set up in darkness which most maggots prefer (so I read).

Gary.

Jaymie;
How about the plastic bottles they use for drinking water at businesses? They are big (5 gallons ~20 litres) and semi clear (usually tinted). Someone you know probably stands around the water cooler at work. Maybe they can get one or two for you.

I am thinking a floating 1 L ice cream box ... flies can get in and out .. they lay theor eggs and bugger off .. but maggots, grown on a bit of bread and milk eventually wriggle to freedom when they are big enough .. and then drop in the water.

If the females egg laying flies could be guided towards the water surface in the same trap .. so much the better ...

I think we can certainly get our heads around this one!

No bad smells!

Interested in all this maggot talk
My chooks have been laying all year (very unusual) and consequently they are nearly bald. The side effect is that their egg shells are sometimes very thin and break when they sit on them.
I noticed the resulting mess in the egg boxes getting really maggoty so I have been trying to emulate the moist mix of sugar cane mulch (the egg box nest material) and broken eggs. Gets a bit smelly but not too over powering.

My fish are now big enough to try this in earnest.

Gary - you're aware that maggot pupae composition changes quite a bit from larvae composition?