Black Soldier Fly: A Waste-2-Protein Solution

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Hey Folks,

Since this section is still empty, I thought I'd share my recent tinkering project to make a food waste processing unit that outputs nutritious proteins and fats.
I am referring to the Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia Illucens) which is a type of fly common in most parts of the world.

Unlike household flies or fruit flies that are annoying and (kinda) gross, BSFs are clean, non-disease carriers, and very shy insects in general. In fact, they will control the populations of house flies 🙂

Their larvae are voracious eaters / food-decomposers that can break down most kinds of food, including meat, fruits, vegetables, grains (although not so much garden waste like wood or leaves). This makes them ideal candidates for food-waste processing. Larvae live for approx. 14 days before they undergo a metamorphosis stage called pupation (turn into a pupae) where they will stop eating and go look for an exit to burrow themselves under the soil to transform into flies.
During the fly stage, they do not eat, but only drink water and seek a mate to lay eggs for a period that last only about 7 days. Thus is the life-cycle of BSF.

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My goal for this project is to farm the larvae and use as them feed for animals such as chickens and fish. BSF are nutritious almost 40% protein and 30% lipids (oils) by weight which is incredible considering how fast they grow and with minimal space. Although it really depends on what you feed them (remember, you are what you eat)

A community centre next door have chickens also, so they may be interested in this. However the real goal is to test/experiment the food waste processing capacity of these insects.
I'm all for composting, but I think resiliency is based on putting your eggs into multiple baskets, and this basket is great for producing proteins, especially in places with less access to nutrition.

Could you eat it? Why yes, of course. Drying, and crunching it into flour to make it protein flour as an additive to make use into bread, cake, or a dish are all possible, but not the goal of my project. It's virtually impossible to taste it if you don't know. I could go on about what makes this such an ideal feed for animals, especially for fish farms.

DIY Steps
For building this, I simply followed the guide from this video by Gardening Australia which includes a link to the manual. The only thing I'd add to the manual is to get an extra PVC elbow piece.
This setup cost me no more than $50, including the cost of buying BSF eggs (which is optional, but saves me time from attracting them in the wild). I'm also relatively new in the DIY scene, so I'm sure those of you who are handy-people can do it with great ease.

As I mentioned, BSF larvae will self-harvest themselves in order to transform into flies, so you literally need only to put a container underneath the pipe to get to them. About 5-10% will be kept as flies in a different net-cage so as to continue the supply of next generation of eggs and cycle. Yes, that's probably how the Archons feel about us too..;)

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Key factors:
- Temperatures between 20-32ºC is ideal. Although the are very resilient, they will live longer if conditions are harsher (interesting, no?)
- Food: Needs to be moist (70% water) best is to chop food into pieces. For hatchlings, I use a food blender to purée the food, like baby food. Do not overfeed them, but they can process 10-20x their weight, so quite voracious.
They can also eat manure, although that's out of my scope 🙂
- They like shaded, dark areas. You can put a piece of cardboard on top of them to give them privacy/shade if you like.

INPUT: Food Waste, Manure
OUTPUT: Nutritious larvae (protein/lipids) + frass (for use in your pot plants or garden) and liquid fertiliser (also for your garden).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbzedftrQJw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BhuGy-fGYU

I'll keep my progress posted, in the meantime post any questions or comments below 🙂

For more resources, I would recommend checking videos on Youtube. Also, these Swiss guys at Eawag (PDF) have researched/developed a medium-to-high scale waste processing unit in Indonesia and open-sourced the whole thing. Lots of information if you really want to get the idea (video below):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M6u9ZX5ecE