[mkschaefer]

Good evening,

Does anyone else struggle with fending off phorid flies? I go through four thousand crickets every month, feeding my Ackies, Phelsuma, and Strophurus. Despite my best efforts, I have these flies lurking in the house.

When I receive the crickets, I dump them into my clean cricket bins and do my best to "filter" the few dead ones out. I do this outside, regardless of the time of year, to minimize the chance of bringing phorid flies at any life stage into the house. I invariably bring in some as I frequently have small amounts of phorid flies in my cricket bins and enclosures. I am pretty meticulous about keeping the bins clean and almost daily remove any dead crickets. I constantly see a few flies running along the interior sides of my Ackies' enclosure and flying through my lizard room. I have cleaned out all drains and other assumed areas where they may breed, other than the enclosures themselves, but still find them. My wife is beginning to notice a few in the finished areas of our home. With a two month old baby, this is an area of concern for us.

I'm doing my best to keep things clean and dry, but believe I will constantly be battling this issue. I have tried traps, attracting them into a small jar with dead crickets and then killing what I capture, and mixing up the substrate in my enclosures to disrupt any eggs. I'm starting to see flies on some eggs I have going in my incubator and I'm sure the eggs are good.

Is this a constant issue for those of us who keep insectivorous lizards must deal with?
Are there any ways I can eradicate the flies? I don't have large numbers, but one is too many, in my wife's opinion.

Any ideas or thoughts?

[Dyesub Dave]

Oh ... so that's what those tiny little bugs are called that consume my cricket bins and swarm in some of my reptile cages. The ones that land on my ears and fly up my nose!! They are VERY annoying!! I'd also like to find a way to get rid of them. A few isn't a problem but I find them everywhere in my place now. I can't leave a drink out for too long or I'll get some floaters!! ~GROSS~

I figure that if I dropped the temps down for a few days it may help but I don't think the reptiles would like that much!!

Dyesub Dave.

[PhelsumaUK]

I line the base of the cricket bins with paper toweling. Any cricket that dies tends to dry out very quickly, rather than going black and decomposing. Any green food is only supplied in small quantities so that it doesn't hang around. I think that keeping everything as dry as possible helps. I still occasionally get a little outbreak in my breeding tanks where I think they make use of the substrate mix in the laying boxes. If that happens I chuck the box out rather than try and incubate the cricket eggs as the hatch rate is usually very poor anyway if the flies are present.

[heiser]

Hi,

Here is a trick that worked for me. Phorid flies (assuming what you have is in fact phorids) can breed in sink traps that have grease in them. This is most traps. So, even though you keep everything meticulously clean they can "hang on" in the sink traps. Yo umay occasionally see one or two near a bathroom or sink. I was told to take boiling water (not just hot water) and pour it down every trap in the house to kill any larva. You need to use a fair amount of water (full teapot or better yet a pasta pot full). This helped me tremedously.

Regards,
John

[DavidK]

Hi,

You may also see a benefit if you circulate the air in the area where you keep your reptiles with a fan. This has worked for me in the past. Fly strips work as well -- most of my friends that breed dendrobatid frogs use these to catch the phorid and wild fruit flies in their frog rooms.

Regards,
Dave

[Palor]

You can hook up case fans for computers for solid air flow and i read this can help immensely.

[Ingo]

I tried for several years to get rid of them. Especially, since I lost literally hundreds of soft shelled eggs due to infestation with phorid flies.
Flies position eggs close to the lid of incubation boxes and tiny larvae manage to find their way through many lids. They start eating the eggs from underneath, so when the eggs start looking abnormal, it already is too late. Took me three years to identify a lid system which is phorid safe. Now I have to open the boxes once a week for ventilation but I can live with that.
Even worse, phorids seem to have a good smell for fresh eggs. Thus some clutches are infested with phorid eggs already during oviposition.
A nightmare. Here in Germany, these flies were virtually non existent till the mid 90s. But since then there have been reports by more and more herpers.
I have them since 2001. Obviously the species present today is an invasive one, introduced from Asia. I am pretty confident, the phorids in my house are Megaselia scalaris.
No chance to get my house free of them. In larger rainforest tanks, there is always enough debris to allow small populations to survive and swarm out, wehnever they smell fresh reptile eggs.

Ingo