Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Black Soldier Fly project

Hey Randy. BioPods have a container underneath to collect the filtered liquid. The amount of liquid the black soldier fly larvae produce is relative to the water content of the waste you feed them. My neighbor, the good Mr H, gave me a bunch of spoiled cucumbers from his garden last week and my larvae have been putting out a lot of liquid since I started adding them. Last year when I was feeding the larvae only dry hog feed I had to add water everyday. The feed was pretty cheap (17 cents/lb) and I'm going to use it to regulate the amount of liquid in my unit. If it gets wetter than I want it to be I'll just add a few handfuls of the dry feed which will absorb it.

I get very few gnats or other flies in my container now that the BSF larvae are thriving. Are your containers covered except for some small vents? An enclosed space helps to concentrate the larva's info-chemical that repels other flies. More larvae in the container will have the same effect I think. If you combined all of your larvae into one container and covered it well I doubt you would have many gnats. My unit currently has a 2-3 inch layer of larvae.

Another reason you may be getting excess gnats is because you're adding too many scraps for the number of BSF larvae you have. Whatever you feed them should be completely gone in a day or so. Maintaining that balance will also keep bad odors from developing.

I've also noticed that fish prefer the grub-colored immature larvae over the final stage coffee-colored larvae. I think that when I'm feeding my pond fish the mature larvae on a daily basis that they will get conditioned to them and take them just as eagerly.

Randy, have you confirmed that you have wild BSF laying eggs in your container?

DJT, thanks for the encouragement, I hope the Pond Bossers can accept "our type" (me and other BSF lovers) around here.

I don't believe there is a bait that will attract BSF without attracting other flies initially, but there may be a procedure to accomplish what you're talking about. To get to the point where other flies are repelled you need a substantial BSF larvae population in a relatively closed container. You could get to that point very quickly by adding a few thousand BSF eggs or young larvae to a new container and then closing it off to outside flies completely. Once the BSF reach a certain density in the container you could open it to outside flies and I expect that species other than BSF would be mostly repelled. One problem might be that the initial larvae would mature and migrate out at roughly the same time and you could have a gap between their presence and that of the new larvae deposited by wild BSF. That might be solved with a second introduction of eggs or small BSF larvae to stagger the population.

DJT, feeding filamentous algae to the larvae is on my list. I also want to see what they do with duckweed and other pond weeds.

Definitely a legendary thread.

BSF's already have the highest calcium and Ca/P ratio of any feeder worm and probably wouldn't require 'gut loading' at all for feeding to herps (especially turtles and their high calcium requirements). However, I am curious to see if a high calcium diet for BSF larvae carries through. Particularly, I want to start my colony off on a diet of primarily mustard & turnip greens and something relatively new called Green Amaranth (or Chinese Spinach). The Amaranth sounds especially promising as it is the highest level calcium green veg I've been able to locate.

Now I just need a biologist to compare before and after calcium levels of the larvae.

I agree with the others - GW, you have really poured a lot of time into this and have educated many of us. Great job!
Yes, I'm getting new eggs all the time - lots of activity. From what you said above, I think my problem is that my containers are too large, and not not heavily populated enough. I'm away from home for a day or two and will consolidate all the containers and put a lid on etc when I get back.
Thanks again, Randy

I've abandoned my bsf liquid fertilizer experiment. My can has started producing less and less liquid. It seems that some of the basil that was watered with the bsf liquid did a little better then the basil that was watered with just water. In the squash I could tell little difference if any. I believe I've got to much spent organic material that the maggots won't break down (leaves). I've started to see a surge in a different maggot variety in the bin, even though there are bsf maggots through and through. These new maggots are skinnier, don't get nearly as big and can curl them selves up and spring a good distance.

Here's a picture of my homemade bsf bin (you can see a pan under it for liquid collection. The bin is up on bricks)


I think my bin is way to tall/deep. Also, I think I'm not feeding it enough material. I think those two reasons are why I've got other flies in there. Still, the population of those flies is very small compared to my bsf population.

To the left of the bin you can see my worm bin. There's suprisingly few number of maggots in the worm bin. I was really worried they'd infest it and eat up the compost for the worms before the worms could get to it. But, I just make sure to keep the stuff in the worm bin well covered with other worm compost and it's worked out well so far.

Umm... more later.

One of the flies is oviposting (laying eggs) and the 3 others are looking for a place to.



Black Soldier Fly upclose



Maggots upclose eating an orange

That's really cool.

Is there some way that I can place a special bait outside my farm, that would be extra appealing to BSF, just so I can see if they are found in my region?

doesn't require any special bait Bruce. My dog got into a fight with a possum. Possum crawled under my house to die. I figured all this out 2 days later when it started to stink and I had to go fish out the dead possum. That thing was so filled with soldier fly maggots that I don't think there would have been much left of it in a day.

Bruce, just place a bucket with food scraps (fruits, veggies, dead fish, dog food, bananas) in any area of 1/2 sun and shade and let it sit a few days.....or wait 'til GW checks in and he'll give you some good advise.

I'm just afraid that our everyday houseflies...or whatever they're called will get there first. Then my wife will have another grounds for divorce.

Great photos mrgrackle. It seems odd that you have another species of fly larvae in your container, could it be some other type of insect all together? The fact that they're jumping is interesting, can you get a picture of them? You should also be able to observe the other species of adult fly around the unit, if that's what it is.

Bruce, I think the best bait is dry dog food, kept slightly moist. The bad news is that you will get house flies first, and if you use any meat or animals you'll also get blow flies. Of course if you use fruit you get a ton of fruit flies, plus house flies. I had to tolerate the house flies for a little over two weeks when I started my colony. I never had anything like a swarm of house flies, just a constant presence of 4 or 5 at a time. You need to be a lot more careful working around house flies than with BSF, but it was easy to collect the house fly larvae and feed them to my small fish which was fun.

You can also look for BSF without setting out any special bait. If you have a closed garbage can that's fairly full of food waste you can observe the area around it on a sunny afternoon. BSF are relatively large at up to 1 inch/25mm and they don't fly very fast.

You can also look for their eggs on the outside of a garbage can. I never have found BSF larvae in our garbage but I do see their eggs, mostly on the can liner where it's exposed around the lid. BSF try to find protected places to lay, so often you'll find the eggs in the folds of the can liner. People probably don't see BSF in their cans very often because it takes several days for the eggs to hatch and most people will have thrown out their trash by then.

Here's what the eggs look like:


You could also acquire some BSF larvae and set up a minimal container for them. The scent of actively feeding larvae is a strong attractant to adult BSF females. If you find that you have wild BSF in your area you could release the imported larvae to pupate or feed them to your fish. If you don't attract wild BSF you have the option of destroying the larvae after they mature, or using them to seed your area.

GW

I figured out what the tiny maggots are. Cheese Flies.

http://gardener-matt.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-with-jumping-worms.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_fly

The fly itself is 4mm long so it's tiny. Maybe I just haven't noticed them or maybe they deposited the eggs on some compost before I got it in the bin. They eat fats.. meats and cheeses. I don't put meat into my bin but a little cheese might end up in there from time to time.

I'm really surprised that the BSF larvae aren't repelling them. Please let us know if they remain in your unit.

Do you guys have pictures for a system that would require little maintenance? I was thinking that I could get a 5 gal bucket and put it on a couple cinder blocks a few feet into the water and just let the larvae fall into the pond. I only get to visit my pond once every couple of weeks so I would like to have a constant, cheap food supply for my BG, and small LMB.

Brett, you might be able to rig up something simple that you could dump a bag of cheap feed/grain into when you visit. You would need about a 40 degree exit ramp, shade, a lid and some small vents. If you can make the ramp lead to a pipe you could extend the pipe out over your pond and the larvae will drop into it.

Honestly it would be hit and miss and it would be tough to get a significant amount of larvae.

gw - like i said, it may have been that the cheese fly eggs got lain on the compost before i put it in the soldier fly unit. I first noticed one of them in the unit a couple weeks ago (their numbers are increasing.) I think part of the problem may be that my can is to deep and the bottom of it is filled with composting (rotting) leaves. There really isn't much soldier fly activity down their because they're at the top where the good stuff is being put in. I think I need to empty my unit to get the decomposing leaves out and keep it less full. Even with some of the problems I'm having I'm still producing a LOT of soldier fly larva. I feed 30 bluegill in a 300 gal stock tank 3 times a day till they won't eat anymore.

I have some type of larva in my fish feeder. The larva are white until they begin to mature and then turn black. I am assuming that these are just commmon fly larva. Does anyone else get them in their feeders? They couldn't be the soldier fly larva could they?

James, they could most definitely be black soldier fly larvae, especially if you're in the southeast. Here's a good close up of some mature (prepupal) BSF larvae for reference:

(click to enlarge)

Finally figured a good way to get the bsf larva out of my bin without having to dig around for them. I don't have a biopod so I don't have an automatic collection system. What I do is this... I drink coffee every morning. When I'm done with my coffee I pour the used grinds into a small plastic starter pot. I make sure not to let much of the coffee grounds fall out through the drain holes in the bottom of the pot. Then I just set the pot on the top of the compost in my bsf bin and over it up. The next morning the pot will be absolutely teaming with bsf larva that have crawled up inside the pot. I just dump it out into a bucket and the larva are pretty easy to seperate from coffee grounds as opposed to the compost mess in the bin.

I would love to know why BSF larvae are so fond of coffee grounds.

hehe i think they're just fond of everything. what i do find they don't like are orange peels. i find it interesting because orange oil is used in many cleaning products and insecticides. i've got a seville orange tree in my front yard.. unfortunately seville orange trees are super sour/bitter (some people call them marmalade trees). but their peels do contain a lot of orange oil. the bsf will eat the entire inside of an orange if they can get the smallest crack, rotten spot, stem hole, etc. but will not go through the peel. once on the inside they'll clean it out and leave the peel intact.

hey i was wondering... i've read a few times that bsf have no moving mouth parts, etc. Today found a site that implied that bsf are nectar drinkers...

http://ipm.ncsu.edu/AG369/notes/black_soldier_fly.html

Haven't seen that anywhere else. Like I said.. I've always read that bsf have "no moving mouth parts." What does that exactly mean.. they really don't eat as adults (which I've always thought) or they don't have a moving mouth aka mandables. do they have a proboscis?

It makes sense that if the adults live for up to 8 days they must at least need to drink. If I learn anything about BSF mouth parts I'll let you know. Hopefully I'll speak with Dr. Olivier again soon, and if so I'll ask him about it.

It's not just orange peels that the BSF larvae avoid, the same is true of most fruit and vegetable skins. I've seen them eat entire cucumbers, potatoes and squash except for the skins. Once I added some pecans and they even left the super thin outer "skin" of the shelled nut. Like humans, BSF larvae can't digest cellulose, so they simply pass on anything with a high cellulose content. That's why they won't eat grasses.

GW, same with cantaloupe - they love the inside but don't eat the outside. I've collected about a cup of liquid - got to find something to experiment with it on.

GW that is exactly what they look like. I have found they make very good bait because their skin is tough enough to keep them on the hook. How can you tell if they are soldier fly larva or fly maggots?

James, I'm not sure how many flies might have larvae that closely resemble BSF. Blow fly maggots are smaller and the pupae are red, and house fly maggots are much smaller than BSF. Also the fact that you're finding these larvae in fish pellets makes it likely that you've got BSF. In south Georgia people often call BSF larvae "meal maggots" because they're commonly found in exposed feed that has gotten moist.

The best way to identify the species is to observe your feeder on a hot sunny day, after noon. If you have active BSF larvae in the feeder you can be pretty sure that there will be adults attracted to it as well. The larvae are a powerful attractant to adult BSF and that way they maintain their dominance at the food source.

It's really easy to identify an adult BSF. They are 3/4 to an inch long and have white legs. You can stand within a few feet of your feeder and they will still land on it. If anyone asks why you're standing there staring at a fish feeder, just tell them you're doing scientific research.



In the U.K. maggots are a very popular bait and most bait stores stock them. Here's a web page that describes rigging with them: PleasureFishing.com

I haven't found evidence of one black soldier fly in NW PA. I have had carrots, strawberry, lettuce, apple, cardboard, and scraps of paper in a bucket hanging on my porch for a month. The sun hits the bucket in the afternoon, shaded all morning. All I have seen is fruit flys and houseflys in it, maggots galore, nothing resembling a black soldier fly or its larva. My conclusin is we have none in Pennsylvania.

C'est la vie I suppose.