Fly infestation

[Nikos]

My heterometrus wroughtoni enclosure is infested with little flies (phorid??)

Is there any way I can clear it WITHOUT having to change the substrate?

Also having to let the substrate dry is not an option.

Any comments/ideas are welcome.

 

[Richard_uk]

It may be possible to kill the flies off somehow but I would still reccomend thoroughly cleaning out the tank and replacing all the substrate with fresh. If the conditions are good for flies to breed, they are also excellent for mites and other little nasties. Substrate doesn't cost the earth. I wouldn't think twice about doing it.

 

[Bob]

The flies are probably coming due to dead cricket parts laying around. You need to keep the cage clean. Try removing them and the flies will die off. It is better to replace the substraight though. This happens with my centipeds too.

 

[Nikos]

Guess I'll change the substrate one of these days...

No cricket parts and other left overs are found inside the cage cause the scorpion simply doesn't leave anything and cuase I feed him mainly mealworms and beetles.

The flies were introduced by a small plant that I placed inside the cage....

In order to limit tha flies I placed some small orb weaver spiders inside it and they are having a party!!!!

Thanks for the replies.

 

[Reitz]

Alright, I'm probably going to get some flack on this, but here's what I'd say.

A) be happy about the flies. Their existence means that the plant had not been recently treated with pesticides that could have considerably shortened the life of your pets

B) Don't change the substrate--unless you are planning to get rid of the plant. Once you put the plant back in the soil you'll end up with more flies. I know because I washed almost all of the dirt off of the roots of the plant I put in the tank, and I still got flies.

C) You can try drying out the substrate, but odds are the fly eggs with just go dormant--or whatever they do. Instead, try soaking the substrate in the tank while leaving an open juice bottle (empty but smelling like juice) about 5 feet from the tank with a little soil in the bottom. The flies will stop laying eggs in the tank, the ones already in there will die, and you will have much fewer flies. I actually did this with 24 empty cans of beer and 6 40's of Old English High Gravity instead of juice--so you can get creative. The bottles were lying around my room (from a . . . psychology experiment) and I found that they prefered the mold in the 40's to the soil in my tank. After I threw out all the cans I had much, much fewer flies than I did before.

Chris