Mold in fruit fly media

[Jill Hendrickson]

Well, this won't be very comforting, but I've found that the only way to 
get rid of mold once you have it, is to put the flies in a new bottle 
every day for 3 or 4 days.  They clean themselves off and poop out all 
the mold they eat so the mold only goes away if they get put into a clean 
bottle after that.
Maybe you could put them in a new bottle every two hours or so on the same 
day if you only have access once a week. Might have the same effect.
I haven't found any mold inhibitors that work.

Jill

On Sat, 9 Nov 1996, Nelson Gee-con Chen wrote:

> Hello,
>   I am an amateur trying to breed some fruit flies for an experiment, but
> I have a problem. I do not have access to the flies all the time, and with
> access limited to aroun once/week, the fruit fly media tends to grow mold
> which kills the flies. The fly media I'm using is supposed to have a mold
> inhibitor, but apparently it is not working well enough. Any advice on
> combatting mold in the media would be greatly appreciated.
> Sincerely,
> Nelson Chen
> (nchen at utk.edu)
> 
> 
>