Excelsior Aspen Shavings – Perfect for 50 or More Cultures

Enhance your fruit fly culturing process with premium Excelsior Aspen Shavings, specially designed to provide the ideal climbing and breeding substrate for fruit flies. These shavings will increase the output of your Flightless fruit fly culturing, so it is invaluable for dart frog keepers, reptile breeders, and anyone culturing Hydei or Melanogaster fruit flies.

How to Use Excelsior Aspen Shavings

• If you are concerned about making a mess, use a large tub to make your excelsior balls in.  The wood fibers get every where while you are making them, so the tub will help.
• Pull the shavings into a loose ball around the size of a baseball, or a softball if you are making a hydei culture. A loose and light ball is best, the wood fibers are there to give the flies walking around room, as well as a place for the larvae to climb up out of the media.
• While excelsior is definitely helpful in culturing your flies, it is by no means essential, at least for melanogaster cultures, so if you find it too annoying to deal with (it bothers some people, the dust is an allergen for some people, and the fibers make a mess), then just don’t use it.  You’ll get a little lower output, but the cultures still produce. Hydei are another matter and you won’t have a successful hydei culturing experience without two things that the excelsior provides…one, they seem to need some additional cellulose, so my new and improved culturing technique with paper towels fills that need (see the culturing sheet on the caresheets page) and hydei also really need something to move around on and avoid being in a big pile when they explosively hatch out.
• Replace excelsior with each new culture for optimal hygiene.