Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Following the impromptu departure of my first batch of maggots, I set up my latest fly larvae baits today.......slices of calf liver.

The flies have already been to visit because there are clusters of tiny eggs at a couple of points on the sliced liver.

My "cowpat" of sugarcane mulch, milk, bread and egg was crawling with minute young maggots this morning.
But then I noticed a parade of ants picking them up and carrying them off.
So I hung the cowpat by a string above the pool.
The bloody ants still found it and I have watched them ransack the maggots all day. Hopefully some of the more intelligent ones have buried themselves deep down

We'll see.

Try putting some vaseline on the string to stop the ants. It works for roses and fruit trees also.

gd...can you run through your growing/farming process.....eg. do you cover the liver and eggs with bran after they have been layed etc

Hi BK,

Since my first lot of maggots left home, I've been re-thinking the farming process.

I currently have three baits......two consist of a slice of calf's liver and the other one is a bread and milk mixture.

Once the baits have been blown properly, I'll probably cover them with mill run (a mix of bran and pollard) although everything I read says sawdust is even better, Regrettably, I don't have any sawdust.

Apart from the discovery that worm castings are not useful cleaning media for maggots (despite information that I'd read to the contrary), the other important outcomes arising out of my first trial is that if you mess about with the maggots, they will leave.....if they can.....so the container in which you're practising maggot farming has to have a close fitting lid.

Jamie has also discovered that ants will carry the tiny larvae off, too.

My next trial will involve a beef heart which, once blown, is wrapped in newspaper for several days, after which all that remains is maggots and a few stringy bits from the heart......allegedly!

Gary

This was the link I put on Gary's thread in case anyone missed it:
http://www.fishsa.com/gents.php

I reckon something ate your maggots Gary, and ants would do that without too much difficulty. I watched ten steal a cocooned moth off a spider today.

thanks gd and ke14. I had that link/method in me fav's on explorer but lost it lol.

Now to get some chicken livers and not be tempted to turn em into patte lol

yeah i am considering it too, thanks to the link King Erik the 14th posted, just a lattice of veins where the liver was sounds nicer to handle than any sort of rotting or fermenting food

Daniel,

I'm going to try a variety of methods and I suggest that you do the same.

One thing that occurred to me is that, unless a beef heart yields at least the same weight in maggots, we might be better off chopping the beef heart up and feeding that direct......with no mess......just good quality protein.

Gary

gd, how do you think this will go in the antarctic stats...ie vic lol........it will just take longer for a result?

Yeah, i didn't think of that.

A friend once tried to grow maggots for bait, using a dead carp, and well lets just say it worked (but boy did it reak)

Derekh - thanks for the vaseline idea - I'll use it.
This morning I came out and saw a flurry of activity in the water underneath the hanging cowpat.
A steady stream of maggots about 8mm long were falling into the water!
There was still a steady stream of ants going to and from the maggot home - but those flies must have layed literally thousands of eggs.

Tonight after an extremely hot day I came home and there was no activity in the cowpat. It looked quite dry from the heat (although under cover).
I sprinkled it with water and will see what's happening tomorrow morning.

I guess if there are any maggots they are going to be much bigger - it took just 24 hours from them to grow from little beasties about 2mm long up to almost 1cm.

If there are no more - I'll recharge the thing with more milk and another egg (I have a surplus of eggs) - vaseline the string to keep the ants away and see what transpires.

What I like about this was the lack of smell. It smelled as bad as wet chicken shit
That may be pretty bad - but with 12 chickens I am used to it

I reckon a piece of heart or liver is going to really reek.

Jamie - is the 'cowpat' wrapped in netting or something to stop the mulch from falling into the water?