From owner-drosophila@net.bio.net Fri Aug 30 23:00:00 1996 Path: biosci!agate!howland.erols.net!nntp04.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!van-bc!n1van.istar!van.istar!west.istar!ott.istar!istar.net!n3ott.istar!torn!watserv3.uwaterloo.ca!newshost.uwo.ca!aps2.genetics.uwo.ca!user From: bargirop@julian.uwo.ca (Bob Argiropoulos) Newsgroups: bionet.drosophila Subject: Re: fly food problems Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 14:21:30 -0400 Organization: U.W.O Lines: 47 Distribution: world Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: aps2.genetics.uwo.ca In article , jprice@sfu.ca (Jim Price) wrote: > We have recently been having problems with our fly food drying our too much. > > We are using a cornmeal/yeast/agar mixture with sucrose glucose and salts added. > > We tried reducing the agar from about 8 gms/ltr to 6 gms/ltr. This does > not seem to have helped. The problem started about the time we got a new > batch of cornmeal, and I am wondering if the meal could be causing the > problem. It appears to be the same courseness as the previous batch. > > We are now contemplating increasing the water in the recipe by 10%. If > anyone has any idea what may be causing our problem, and/or how to fix it, > your advice would be greatly appreciated. > > Thank you. > > Jim Price > > jprice@sfu.ca Our current recipe for fly food is as follows: 1 litre water 10 g/l agar (we have used both powdered and granulated) 15 g yeast 60 g sugar 100 g cornmeal (we have used many different brands of cornmeal) 3.7 g nippigan (anti-fungal agent) Add agar to boiling water, when melted add yeast, sugar, cornmeal and Nip (which has been dissolved in ethanol). After pouring, the vials are covered with paper towels and left to dry overnight. The vials are capped the next morning and put into dark autoclave bags. This recipe has never given us any problems. I hope I have helped you. -- Molecular Genetics Unit University of Western Ontario London, ON .