# Phorid (horrid) Flies!



## Rochelle (Oct 9, 2007)

I used the search function and tried the whiskey/cigarette trick..with limited success. I tried the juice/dish liquid traps, too..also limited success. 
We have an 80 gallon tank full of hissers, and I am finding 1 or 2 DOA adults every other day or so. We do not use substrate and I clean that tank every day.  (They're pets). No food is ever left uneaten in the tank. I don't think the adult/sub adult deaths are due to age. I am hesitant to move the tank to the garage..seems like there'd just be easier access for more Phorids? We currently keep them in the basement.  The tank is simply too large to cover with pantyhose... There is never food left out in the house for humans, either. Everything is kept in tuppers or the fridge/freezer... I have never seen them in the other species' tanks...
So- where are they coming from? (we don't use crickets )
How do I get RID of them?


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## Matt K (Oct 9, 2007)

They are attracted to dead animals and/or feces.  Thier larva feed on decaying material.  If nothing dies then typically they go away.  I would wonder why you have one or two deaths every day.  I think if you could solve the death problem you may also solve the fly problem.

One helpful thing to do is get window screen to cover your tank.  If you take two pieces and offset one over the other then you have smaller squares in the screen.  These can be held in place with a few dots of hot glue here and there.  Then take the two off-set screens and mount them to a wood frame that fits around the tank top, and hot glue all around the frame where screen meets the wood.  This is not the most aesthetic screen top, but can be very functional and inexpensive to make.  

I think somewhere on these boards someone made a screen top using the aluminum window screen kit, and then glued the off-set screen on that for a finer mesh.

The screen may cut down on the fly issue, but you'll still have to find out why they are present.


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## Rochelle (Oct 9, 2007)

...thanks. I'm pulling my hair out at this point!
I can't figure why the deaths are occuring. The water is clean. The food is organic. NO pesticides are used on premises EVER...the neighbors don't use either. (I asked).
No perfumes. No astringents. No sprays of any kind. I'm going to try your suggestion..I don't have anything to lose but more of my "babies".. 
Any further ideas/suggestions are appreciated GREATLY.


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## Rochelle (Oct 9, 2007)

We burn candles down in the basement, occasionally while we "commune" with the collection...think that could have anything to do with the mystery deaths?
I know it's a long-shot, but have to ask.:? 
What about cigarette smoke...and such?


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## Stylopidae (Oct 9, 2007)

Search for phorid flies and you will find literally hundreds of threads on their control.


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## Rochelle (Oct 9, 2007)

Did that. I even used YOUR tricks..lol  
Still having a problem. Any other ideas - other than a block-wide firestrike??? The Armory is right down the street!:evil:


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## Stylopidae (Oct 9, 2007)

Hmmmm...interesting.

Are you sure you have the ID correct?

Could be a similar looking dipteran which breeds in soil.

Do you have potted plants?

Are you sure the hisser deaths are related to the flies?

I'm assuming you've checked for mites, but have you seen any eggs on your roaches?

Is there something which could be attracting them to the tank?

I think Matt's right. The phorid flies don't seem to be causing mortality, rather the dead critters are attracting the phorid flies from...somewhere.

But it's only one or two a day and they're quickly removed.

Have you inspected the hides?

How do the roaches die?

Have you inspected every tank in your house for phorid flies?


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## Rochelle (Oct 9, 2007)

Cheshire said:


> Hmmmm...interesting.
> 
> Are you sure you have the ID correct?
> 
> ...



Yes on the I.D....heavy research.

No substrate...no potted plants near the roaches. (In T. room - no phorids in there; Thank The Creator!)
Not sure it's related to flies. No mites - no visible eggs. Could I be missing something?

Have inspected every tank like a NAZI...

Can't tell what's going on from the corpses...but the dead ones have maggots occasionally. 

No evidence on the otherwise visibly healthy population. Again..what could I be missing?

Nothing in the yard that might attract. No garbage. Dog poop cleaned regularly.. Neighbors have clean yards.

(Almost) never find juvies/nymphs dead...

What the hell is going on???:? :? :?

How long is the incubation for Phorids? I can't remember..too much info at once while "researching"..lol


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## Stylopidae (Oct 9, 2007)

You mentioned cigarette smoke...is it possible you could have dropped one in the cage and not noticed?

It's gotta be the deaders.

How big is your colony again? Approximate number of individuals.

Would you be able to get photos of the deceased and how exactly they died?

I'd like photos of those maggots, too. They could be nematodes (pretty easy to mistake). Organic food farms are known to use nematodes as biological pest control.

On their back and twitching *usually* mans some sort of chemicals. If they just stop moving and are face down, it could be some sort of parasite/infection.


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## Matt K (Oct 9, 2007)

Humidity level?  Intestinal nematodes would be a rare but interesting possibility... There is also a protozoan that can wipe out roaches....

...If it were me, I would split the colony.  When I have had problems in the past, splitting the colony is like a fire-break in a forest.  Though after you do that you have to decide if you are dividing young from old or lethargic from active, or apparantly possibly sick moved to tank "B" and the possibly healthier to tank "A", and expect to lose one of the two tanks to disease.  Also, FREQUENT hand washing before and after handling EACH roach will help cut down on disease transmission.....for that matter you may try to go a few weeks without picking one up.

Just some "thinking out loud"....


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## Rochelle (Oct 10, 2007)

Everyones input is appreciated SO much.
As for dropped cigarettes - none. I smoke near the tank, but never while doing something IN the tank..lol
As for approximate numbers...LMAO!!!   They are LEGION.  We have THOUSANDS of them. Seriously - no exaggeration, here.  
The deaths are occuring while they are still upright....but NONE of them seem lethargic or ill in any way. I am absolutely STUMPED. 
Will try to get pics up this evening...


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## cacoseraph (Oct 11, 2007)

jbrdswifey said:


> We burn candles down in the basement, occasionally while we "commune" with the collection...think that could have anything to do with the mystery deaths?
> I know it's a long-shot, but have to ask.:?
> What about cigarette smoke...and such?


though nicotine is a really powerful insecticide i would be surprised if cig or candle smoke was the culprit

i have blown packs and packs of smoke at a pet blackwidow and it was fine... till i accidentily solarized her. *sigh*


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## Moltar (Oct 11, 2007)

Could be thy're reproducing elsewhere in the house and are finding their way o the roaches. Under the toilet rim, funky drains, maybe naturally dead insect pests under the sink or something?

i stumbled upon an effective trap for them by accident. I have some glue traps on the floor to control escapee crickets. I noticed that one of these traps had also caught a large number of phorids. Try baiting a glue trap w/ a freshly dead roach to attract the phorids. monitor the trap and as soon as you see maggots chuck it in an outdoor trash can. Between this and maniacal cleanliness in the t room i've managed to (mostly) quell an ugly phorid infestation in my house.


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## Rochelle (Oct 11, 2007)

Manical cleaning in WHOLE house...(housewife = married to the house) 
No food out of any kind. Dishes washed up immediately.
Solid/clean plumbing & fixtures...
No dead bugs under anywhere...
Quality screens on windows...
Neighbors have similar cleanliness..(thank the Creator)
Household garbage out daily...(away from house)

I am TRULY, TRULY stumped. I've gone over this a thousand times and it actually keeps me up nights... 

I did try the strips o' sticky - but with limited success... 
Now I have traps with dishliquid/juice and they're ignoring it altogether...ggrrrr.:evil: 

Any other ideas???
Pleeeeze?


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## Stylopidae (Oct 11, 2007)

Well, we need to see what we're dealing with.

We need to see if we can't figure out the source. You seem to think they're coming from your hisser tank, so if you post pics of that we might be able to see something you missed.

If you have thousands of specimens, I think some of that might just be natural background death.

Pics of the flies and maggots will help a little bit, as well.

You might not be waiting long enough for things to clear up. Even after you clean up and set the traps you need to keep doing this for roughly a month or so.

It took me a few weeks to clear up my phorid problem...maybe a month or two max.

We need a lot more information than you're giving us because there's something everybody's missing and we need to know what that is. To know what it is, we need to find the missing peice of the puzzle.

How long has this been happening?

How long did you try the traps?

Approximately how many flies have you noticed?

Has this changed since you started doing the treatments?

So on and so forth.

Diagnosing problems over the internet is tricky, especially if you don't know what you're dealing with or if you don't know all the elements in the equation.


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## thedude (Oct 11, 2007)

i sorta know how you feel on this situation, i just decided to mount a praying mantis a month or 2 ago and some time during it's drying process i attracted phroid flies wich started eating it and eventually some how made it rot... wich i was really pissed finding this out caus i just got over a dermestid beetle infestation and it ate some of my big moths from new mexico (poplar sphinx) but ne way back to that story... i thought i had them under control by keeping dead bugs in the freezer and in air tight cases so i took out an old emp scorp to mount and the same night i bought 1000 crickets from a local pet shop.. i forgot that i would probly bring in more dermestids and phorids in doing so... and at first i didnt notice the flies and every so often id find a few in a T tank on old cricket remains wich i would then dispose of but in the last week from the build up of dead crickets and the drying scorpion i got literally thousands now to deal with... but after throwing out the dead crickets and putting all the half dried bugs back in the freezer the almost imidiately stopped... i just thought id share... not meaning to hijack the thread


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## Taceas (Oct 13, 2007)

I will be the first to admit that phorid flies are nasty critters from hell and are danged hard to eradicate. I've still got a few residual individuals, but nothing like before where you'd sit down to eat and before you could get a forkful of food, you'd have 5+ flies in your food, walking all over it.

But after reading this and how you really don't have a serious count of how many individual roaches are in this 80 gallon tank, I agree with Cheshire that some of these deaths may be just natural aging, it was the first thought that ran through my mind. Then again I don't have hissers, only Dubia and Lateralis, but I too find dead ones a few times a week. I never thought to get all bent out of shape about it though. 

My most recent infestation came from cups of waxworms from Reptilefood.com. When I opened the lids, a cloud of flies flew out, and it was already colonized with pupae. It doesn't matter how small the openings are, they lay their eggs and the tiny maggots can squeeze in _any_ size hole and even eat through paper towel, as I tried in vain.

I just have to keep my snake cages free of feces, regurges, or uneaten food...garbage emptied...compost bin emptied...no tomatoes/bananas left out.


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## thedude (Oct 13, 2007)

i cant tell wich is worse.. dermestids or phorids.  this question coming from some one who has ALOT of dead and mounted bugs on hand


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## Ted (Oct 13, 2007)

you light candles to commune with the roaches?:?

very interesting.


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## Ted (Oct 13, 2007)

thedude said:


> i cant tell wich is worse.. dermestids or phorids.  this question coming from some one who has ALOT of dead and mounted bugs on hand


lol..me too.
over four thousand in my collection and maybe another thousand in the freezer.

i think dermestids are worse..i havent had any issues with flies so far.
probably worse if drying large soft bodies inverts.

i freeze my specimens for a week, then relax them, then mount.
buy then most anything the flies would eat is pretty decimated.


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## Rochelle (Oct 15, 2007)

I know there are going to be natural deaths occuring...with these kinds of numbers it's inevitable to find a few; probably daily....but the phorids are a new element to the tank.  
I'm seeing as few phorids as only one or two, some days -- and then a hundred a few days later. ..... Argh!

I think the infestation came when we were given a tank of E.posticus....they were present when we opened them at home. My COLOSSAL bad, by opening them in a non-quarantine area....:wall: 
I've managed to keep them out of all our other tanks of roaches and T's...but live in darkest fear of them hurting my "kids"....hehehe:8o 
I won't be happy until every last evil little phorid is sent back to hell...or at least isn't in MY basement!!
I need to figure out how to make them GO AWAY.
All the way - AWAY!!!!

...and yes, Ted.  I often light a candle and inscense, grab a book and "the comfy chair"...and sit and watch the hissers....sometimes for hours. 
It's better than cable...


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