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Fruit flies

AliCat37

AliCat37

Michelle's Candied Corns!
With all the rain we have had this year, my reptile room is infested with these tiny little fruit fly things! How do I get rid of them?? The first place I noticed them was in my cricket container for the lizard, easy enough to get rid of.
I then started noticing their eggs or larvae in all the baby water bowls, I clean them daily when I am home, but the three days a week I am gone seem to be enough for them to swarm back. Now they are living in the racks, even in the fresh clean aspen!

What do I do to get rid of these things????

None of the cages or tubs have wet bedding, so I don't know what they are eating and living off of. They need to go!
 
Sounds like you have a member of the family Phoridae (phorid flies) and if you figure out how to get rid of them, please let me know as I know MANY people down here that have been dealing with the little (insert nasty word here) for years, myself included. Using a heavy duty drain cleaner, keeping everything as clean as possible and some of the liquid fly baits can help, but every time you think you got rid of them, you'll get another hatching.
 
Susan said:
every time you think you got rid of them, you'll get another hatching.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I have discovered this!
At least I am not alone in the battle right now.

I have out out a few bowls of vinegar with funnels into them for now. I hope it will work!
 
Susan try using an enzyme based drain cleaner, I know it's one of the only ways to get rid of drain flies. Maybe it would help take care of what you have?
 
Put all snakes on newspaper. Treat drains. Sticky fly traps... Non poisonous... Just sticky.

The idea being, to take away all the hiding places these things enjoy.

They WILL hide in the aspen... And breed like mad. Feeding off of the little bits of poo you might have missed.... Under all that aspen.

Newspaper defeats this.

In my opinion.... It is IMPERATIVE... To rid yourself of this nuisance . If ONE snake in your collection is sick .... The flys will spread it to epidemic proportions.

Not to mention, they COULD bring it to your collection from wherever they came from.
 
Nanci said:
What is an enzyme-based drain cleaner?
Click to expand...

A plumber told me to put some of that enzyme digester that is used in those doggie septic tank devices down my drains. Said it helps with digesting tree roots that can clog the lines, and generally helping to remove scum build-up.

Makes sense if those flies are attracted to the stuff in the drains. I tried it, and noticed that my drains don't have much odor.

Kathy
 
Hmm, I just happen to have some of that!

When I got a dog, in Florida, I assumed I would "need" a Doogy Dooley. 'Cause I did in MN. I did not know Florida has dung beetles that take care of such matters, in as little as 12 hours! So I'm not using the Doogy Dooley.
 
Speaking of drains, my pest control guy told me to run water in any unused sinks/showers/bathtubs once a week, to keep water in the trap, to keep bugs from coming in.
 
I put in one of those Doggy Dooleys, then about a month later, got a letter from the Water & Sewer Department (not targeting me specifically), asking people to bag their dogs' waste, and put it in with regular trash. :rolleyes:

OP, sorry to derail your post. Some good advice given here, and you can also try carnivorous plants. I bought some pitcher plants, and have found a few bugs in the pots.

Kathy
 
No worries about the derailment!

I will start switching everyone over to paper, but I find the highest concentration of them in my baby racks which are already on paper towels, so I don't know if getting rid of the aspen will exactly work either.

I will go to the store today and get some fly paper and carnivorous plants. Thanks for the idea!
 
i have a few sundews in my room and they've been catching all kinds of small flying things. dunno if they'd work with phorids.
 
i've been dealing with the same nasty little flyers. i missed a cleaning in july (i work 7-12's in the summer) and next thing i knew those things were everywhere. i scrubbed everything and cleaned bedding, even changed the room the snakes were in and they're back, just in lower numbers. i'll be switching everyone over to newspaper this weekend and hope this takes care of it.
 
I don't have the flies but I have seen what you are talking about. I wonder if air flow has something to do with allowing them to grow/reproduce. I have been inside greenhouses with poor air flow and it can create issues for the greenhouse. I'm fortunate to have good ventilation built in my room and good air flow in my racks. I haven't seen those flies.

For others that have the flies or don't have them, I'd be curious to know if how powerful your ventilation system is and how your cages are set up? Do you have lots and lots of air exchange in you cages? or just a few holes? Do you vent room air outside of the room? Do you have a fresh air intake for the room? Do you just run a fan with no ventilation of air from the inside to the outside?
 
They are also attracted to light, even though they like dark, moist places for laying their eggs. A blacklight bug killer that drowns them will catch a lot of them. Also, containers of fly bait (like Blue Diamond or Golden Malrin) set out around the room will draw them in for the kill. If it is wet, it will get even more of them. Be sure cats or dogs can't get to the containers, though.

Once you get them, I don't know if you will ever totally get rid of them. But you can keep the numbers down with these strategies.

Be especially careful with boxes of eggs that are ready to hatch. The flies will lay eggs in the "egg goo" from hatching babies. The fly eggs hatch really fast, and the maggots get into the umbilicus of the babies, and eat them from the inside if they don't hatch quickly enough. Keeping the hatching media on the dry side makes it less appealing as a place for flies to lay eggs. Vermiculite or Perlite is less attractive to the flies than sphagnum moss.
 
I always use egg containers with no holes, and just open them once or twice a week to air them. If you have any fruit flies at ALL in your house, though, the minute the eggs pip and you are opening and closing the egg boxes to get hatchlings out, flies are just lying in wait to get in.
 
Fruit flies have been bad around here the last week or so, I think everyone I know has them. Yesterday one of my friends told me to set out a container with 2/3 C apple cider vinegar, 1/3 C water and a couple drops of dish soap mixed together. I was skeptical, but within 30 mins I had like 10 of those tiny fliers floating in my concoction.
 
I had them one year that I think hitched a ride in some produce we got from a co-op.

The were a pain and ended up killing some clutches I had. They got into some egg boxes and laid some eggs between the eggs that I didn't see and the larvae buried into the eggs. It was a sad year.

Anyways, I got one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Gardner-Manuf...=UTF8&qid=1381111601&sr=8-3&keywords=fly+trap

Religious cleaning and one of these and they were gone and haven't had them back. When I say religious, I mean religious. I'd check every cage 2x's a day for any signs of the eggs/larvae. That fly trap caught an ungodly amount of flies though - worked really well for them (it's pretty terrible for house flies though).
 
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