I am finding fruit flies, but where are they coming from?

[Moltar]

I forgot this earlier; i've also had some luck catching them by baiting a rat sized glue trap with a couple of dead crickets. Then I put that trap right on top of the cricket box. I got a surprising amount of them that way.

 

[cacoseraph]

they are not smart creatures

i noticed when one would get stuck and die sometimes others would be attracted to the deader and get stuck themselves


i just laughed and laughed at them when that happened. and verbally abused both them and their mothers. stupid flies.

 

[gambite]

Thanks for all the help. I am not really sure what they are. They are small, a little bigger than a comma on screen here (,). They dont seem particularly wing-y.

At the same time, I do have a lot of dead stuff building up. So I guess its mainly a sign of me being behind my maintenance. Will clean up first, and try the orange juice dish thing if it doesnt go away. I dont really want anything too obvious; I doubt my roomate would take kindly to seeing fly strips or traps hanging about.

 

[IdahoBiteyThing]

what??

goodness, i would not introduce B. thuringiensis into your collection. the various subspecies can attack a frightening array of inverts and are generally fatal. i dunno what B. t. israelensis is built for but it seems a little like cleaning up fallen leaves in your front yard by pouring gasoline on them and lighting them

If you dunno what Bti is built for, take 30 seconds to check it out. Here's a sample:

"Bacillus thuringiensis serovar israelensis (Bti) is a group of bacteria used as biological control agents for larvae stages of certain Dipterans. Bti produces toxins which are effective in killing various species of mosquitoes, fungus gnats, and blackflies, while having almost no effect on other organisms. Indeed this is one of the major advantages of B. thuringiensis products in general - they have very few, if any, non-target effects."

Works great, it's a whole lot safer than organophosphate based pesticides (or gasoline- you're killing me here!). If you have a lot of houseplants, you're bound to experience fungus gnats at some point and all the flypaper in the world won't get 'em all.
You can even use it in fishtanks to control both mosquitoes AND fungus gnats that will establish themselves in the filter medium if you're using biological filters with substrate boxes.