Help! Fruit fly infestation in my beetles enclosure

[mantiscatamp]

This is Frooby... And tons of fruit flies keep laying eggs on his fruit and there's like 40 flying out each time I remove the lid... How can I deal with the fruit flies without bug spray??? PS ignore the glove lol

I took all the random fruit out aside from what he's eating and it appears to have eggs on it. Now I own praying mantises so I'm gonna see what happens with the eggs and try n get rid of these loose flies

ANY ADVICE GREATLY APPRECIATED YEET

 

[chanda]

To control fruit flies (or phorid flies or other small flies) that might breed on the fruit, you just need to change the fruit daily and clean out the food dish frequently. Just feed the beetle a small amount of fruit each day, and remove the uneaten portion promptly. Even if the flies do lay eggs on the fruit (or in any fruit juice that might be in the dish), changing the fruit frequently will get rid of the eggs before they have a chance to develop. Also, don't put the fruit directly on the substrate, wood, or other decor. Any pulp or juices that drip out of the fruit into the substrate will also provide a breeding ground for maggots.

That said, it's not going to solve your problem. While you may have fruit fly eggs in your fruit, that's not the only thing you've got going on. A great many of those white spots on the grapes are not fruit fly eggs at all - they are mites. They will be living in your substrate and swarming all over the fruit to eat it. Mites are very common in invert enclosures. While some mites are parasitic and can harm your pets, these look more like grain mites. They are super common, really hard to get rid of, and can be a nuisance, particularly in large numbers - but are not generally harmful. You can reduce their numbers by cleaning out the enclosure, replacing the substrate, keeping the substrate a little dryer, and removing food promptly after feeding the beetle - but you are unlikely to get rid of all of them, and they'll continue breeding.

 

[viper69]

Keep a cleaner setup, mites can explode in numbers within a few days

 

[mantiscatamp]

Ty guys