Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Black Soldier Fly project

Since switching to this feed the BSF container just smells like corn and it seems very "clean". I shot a video to illustrate the density and activity level of my little buddies.


CAUTION: THIS MOVIE CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF A LARVAL NATURE. PERSONS WITH AVERSIONS TO NATURAL PROCESSES ARE ADVISED TO LEAVE THE THEATER IMMEDIATELY.

That's WAY larval.

I showed my wife the video and she wasn't impressed. Especially when I told her I wanted one of those tubs full of worms.

Just keep them in the closet and don't tell her.

You guys are not being very helpful.

First, you start inadvertently leaving bowls of tic tacs candy laying around the house. You know, like in a cubard, or under a sink. Make sure to use all the tic tac colors at first; then eventually whittle down to just the white ones. Span this out over a few weeks so no one thinks twice when they see a container of white tic tacs.

And then next thing you know, there's a tub of larvae under the bed, and no one thinks twice about it.

"Sunil, honey, your Tic Tacs are moving!"

I noticed more dead larvae today, something like 100 total. They were from all stages of development. This still isn't a large % of what could be more than 20,000 individuals, but I need to monitor it. A few days ago I guessed that it might be due to the higher activity level and subsequent heat created by the concentrated new food. That's still a possibility, but I have another idea. I think I may be creating a problem by feeding only a dried grain product. I doubt that many animals could thrive on dried grain without having some water to process it with.

Today I added about 3 pints of water to the BSF bin and it was soaked up immediately. My theory is that by softening the feed it will be more easily digested and hopefully reduce the mortalities. I was hoping to keep the steps involved to a minimum, but at least water is easily acquired and basically free. It does present a problem for setting up a totally automated system though. For now I'll start keeping a bucket of water by the BSF and I'll add a measured amount of it each day. The larvae keep everything mixed up so I just pour the water in randomly.

I want to add that I would never maintain BSF without using them to process kitchen scraps, etc. The point of this test with the hog feed is to quantify how many larvae are generated by a fixed amount of a consistent feed. After the tests are over it's back to natures finest garbage disposal system!

I've come to the conclusion that the BSF population adjusts to the available food. By increasing the amount of food you increase the amount of time it takes the larvae to eat it. This allows the food to give off more scent which in turn attracts more adult BSF to lay eggs. If the quantity of food is small, it's eaten before the egg laying adults get a whiff of it. (For the sake of clarity I will mention that the BSF bin currently smells like a fresh corn muffin.)

Since I recently increased the amount of food I'm now seeing females laying eggs in the bin almost constantly. Sometimes I see 2 or 3 laying at a time. My guess is that within a few weeks I'm going to see a population explosion. The BSF aren't shy about landing in the bin while I'm there. When they were coming in I wondered what was attracting them so I stuck my head into the bin for a careful smell. The odor is still very faint, but that's when I smelled corm muffin. I had my head in a plastic box with 20,000 maggots and I realized I was getting hungry.

Clearly I've gone native.

...fair warning to anyone invited over for a country breakfast

I do love grits.

Corn Muffin flavored Tic-Tacs?

After adding 3-4 pints of water/day to the BSF it started getting too wet so I stopped temporarily. The amount of water needed will vary depending on ambient humidity, temp, colony size, etc.

Being a little wet didn't hurt the larvae, but the bin did start to smell a little alcoholic. It's not like rubbing alcohol in your eyes alcoholic, more like someone poured beer on your cornmuffin alcoholic. I can almost imagine what the BSF colony might be like if the feed has fermented enough to produce ethynol.

Woo.

The hog feed test is suspended because the bin has become unbalanced. Since I began the hog feed there has been a dramatic increase in egg laying and larvae production up to the point just before they would mutate to the final pre-pupa stage and self-harvest. Instead of making the final change in the bin they've been migrating out of the vent holes. The early migration happened both before and after I started adding water with the dried feed. Before the water I think they left to find moisture. By adding water I may have created a "hot" condition. Sometimes the added moisture seemed to make concentrated calories available to the larvae and their high activity level generated a lot of BTUs. When it would get around 100 degrees they would exit the bin. Other times the moisture level would be enough to begin fermentation of the feed. I don't think the fermented feed would harm the larvae itself, but it may have also raised the temp in the bin too much. These are just theories, but I'm certain that 1 lb of dried hog feed/day will not consistently produce self-harvesting larvae in this small container.

I'm going to let the BSF come back into balance over the next few days and I may start over using 1/2 lb of feed/day. I'm pretty sure it will work if the quantity of feed is reduced.

Two of the loggers who are clearing our pond sites have been fishing with BSF maggots most of their lives. They call them meal maggots and they said they often find them in livestock feed. They just hook them through the butt end and let them hang on the hook. They each left with a pint of maggots.

There would definitely be a certain, maximum quantity of feed which could be correctly processed into larvae in a given size container of BSF. You may well have found that limit.

I agree. I think that you could liken this situation to a pond, in that carrying capacity has been met, and that excess wastes that can't be assimilated by the BSF are being liberated partially as heat. This could "feed back" on the system and eventually cause a crash.

You're both right I think. My system would have crashed for sure if the BSFL hadn't been able to exit the bin.

I stopped feeding the BSFL on the 27th. For the second time since I started raising them there is a bad odor in the bin. It's not "knock a buzzard off a 5h:+ wagon" stinky, but it sure ain't no fresh corn muffin either. The first time there was an odor it was from larvae mortality caused by leaving the bucket in direct sun and the resulting mortalities. This time it's also from BSF mortalities, but I think the cause was overcrowding.

The good news is that returning the colony back to a healthy balance shouldn't involve more than waiting a few days. That's all I had to do last time.

I'll know that the colony is balanced when final stage larvae begin self harvesting again. I haven't seen that since shortly after I started the hog feed test. In retrospect the lack of final stage, self harvesting larvae should have alerted me to the impending collapse.

When the BSF colony is back to a healthy condition I will start the hog feed test again, but with a reduced quantity of feed, probably 1/4 lb/day.

VIVA LA MAGGOTS!

Vive le maggot libre!

It's been 10 days since I quit feeding the larvae. Today is the first day that I've had some larvae develop to the final stage and exit the container. There are about 100 larvae in the collection buckets, and the odor has been normal (pleasant) for several days now.

I will begin the hog feed test again, this time using only 1/4 lb per day.

I changed my mind about beginning the feeding again at this time. There are still many larvae left from the prior 1lb/day feeding test. I've decided to let them cycle through before adding any feed at all.

I'm having a little problem with larvae escaping the container when moisture condenses on the inside walls. Under these conditions the larvae can crawl straight up and out the vent holes so very few end up in the collection buckets. Lately it's been fairly wet so I wasn't aware of how many mature larvae have been developing. I emptied the buckets yesterday and was a little surprised when I checked them today. It was the biggest one day harvest I've had to date. This is surely the result of the 1lb/day feeding I was doing.



I'll start feeding them again when the harvest slows down.

For some reason when I saw the color of the larvae this time I though they were dead. Until I saw the video!

The final stage larvae are always that color Bruce. They also trade in their mouths for climbing hooks so they don't eat at this stage.

I started feeding 1lb/day of hog feed ($.17/lb) on Sept 10th and continued through Sept 27th. It has been another 17 days since I stopped feeding.

I didn't collect any larvae until 5 days ago and I have kept everything for the last 5 days.

5 day harvest:


There are many final stage larvae trying to exit from the container at this time, and I think the tub in the video will be to the top by the end of the day.

I understand that people should be very careful about giving out their addresses to people they only know from forums, I am. However, if anyone has an address they feel safe about sharing I will ship a small quantity of BSFL to you at no cost assuming it's not too expensive. I know that they sell small amounts (100) for $6 which includes shipping. If I can ship for $2 or $3 I'll happily do it as part of my experiment.

I started feeding again on October 27th. I'm using the same hog feed but this time only .25 pounds/day. The weather has cooled off so I really don't know what to expect. I'm not even sure if there will be any females laying eggs this time of year.

I don't know where I'm heading with the BSF for now, so I'll just keep adding feed and see what happens.

I noticed a female laying eggs in the container today. The nights have been down into the 50's lately and as low as 45 degrees 2 nights ago.

It appears that the BSFL population isn't enough to process the 1/4 lb of feed/day, but that's to be expected after a month of adding no additional feed. The population always seems to adjust quickly to the food supply. The new feeding program is more than the present colony can handle so some of it decomposes before it gets eaten. The slight odor given off by the excess food, signals nearby females that there is a food supply for her eggs. Within a few days there will be new recruits to help process the extra food.

GW,what's the latest on the BSF project?