fruit flies gone wild

[steppedinds]

soooo...I've been noticing a bunch of fruit flies around my apt the past few days. today when I opened up the FLIGHTLESS fruit flies I bought from petco last week, I noticed about 10 flies billowing out....turns out the ff's ive been using for the past week are fliers...they've made it into my cricket bin.....and....holy crap...had to take the crickets outside and prey they don't die before I use them all up.

anybody else ever have this happen?

 

[Trillian]

Always! They are such a pain! Keeping the crickets clean and dry helps, so removing any uneaten gutload every day. You can also set up a fruit fly trap by putting a little apple cider vinegar in a jar and putting a little liquid soap/dishwashing soap in it. This way the fruit flies are attracted to the fruity vinegar, but can't stand on it because the detergent has taken away the surface tension and they all DROWN... Google fruit fly traps for similar ideas...

 

[steppedinds]

awesome. will definitely get on that asap

 

[sandrachameleon]

dont let your flightless flies get too warm or too old (make new cultures using young flies / first hatches out of previous culture) and make sure the medium is sterile.

cricket bin should not attract fruit flies unless you've got fruit or something rotting

 

[vgaines]

I had the same problem and I tried the vinegar traps and had no luck. Ended up having to buy the sticky traps that hang. I found that cleaning any wet food from cricket bin daily and cleaning it every two or three day helped a lot.

I'm not saying not to try the vinegar traps because it may work for you. The hanging sticky traps are a pain and are ugly. lol

Good luck. Hope you can get rid of them soon.

Virginia

 

[juice28]

i think i got mine from my dirt...i bought some "top soil" just regular "dirt" to re-pot plants and out of no where there were gnats..before new fresh soil nothing after...more than id like to have buzzing in my room..i believe theyre "fungus" gnats, small dark almost black in color.. which tend to hang around lights, and warm damp places...and the potting soil in my cham cages is perfect its always moist..not wet but, well, like you want plant soil to be...thought about using he strips..i have them just havent used them yet. I figured id go GNAT-ural and get some carnivorous plants to keep outside the cages..ill let you know how thats going in a cpl weeks though lol