Little flies in tarantula enclosure

[Conor10]

My G. Pulchra’s enclosure has little flies in it, there are not very many of them and they seem to blend in with the springtails. She only had about 70% humidity with moss. I thought there maybe was a roach that went unnoticed and died, but there are none of those. Are these flies harmful to the T?

 

[Arachnophobphile]

What size is your pulchra?

 

[Sterls]

Not harmful. Substrate moisture matters, not air humidity. Depending on the size of your T you can dry it out and the flies should disappear. Springtails might help, I use them and I still have the little flying buggers though. Personally I ignore them unless the numbers get really high, but I have other enclosures that it's too difficult to rid them of.

 

[Conor10]

She is about 6 inches and her substrate is a little moist. She has some springtails that also keep on wanting to drown in her water dish.

 

[Sterls]

Just let her cage dry out, keep the water dish full. Flies should be gone (or at least lessen) unless they're also living in other enclosures.

 

[Arachnophobphile]

She is about 6 inches and her substrate is a little moist. She has some springtails that also keep on wanting to drown in her water dish.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but a 6 inch G. pulchra prefers it more dry I thought. That's alot of the info I've found. I've also seen Tom Moran's husbandry video on his G. pulchra displaying that.

Substrate should be more dry than moist. When refilling water dish just overflow it and that should be it.

 

[Poonjab]

Sounds like fungus gnats. They are harmless. Just annoying

 

[Polenth]

If you have no dead feeders lying about, it's probably fruit flies (check for red eyes) or fungus gnats (dangly legs when flying). These are harmless and will disappear as it dries out, as others have said. If you see tiny long worm things soon, they are most likely fly larvae. These are also harmless. My guess is you have one of these two based on what you've said so far.

If you do have dead feeders, you might get phorid flies (hump on the back, they don't have red eyes). Some species of these can be a direct risk, but the most commonly seen ones just want to scavenge dead stuff. These can bring in infections. Keeping old feeders cleaned up and good maintenance of feeder colonies does the trick here.

 

[Conor10]

Ok thank you for the info, they are probably gnats but might be fruit flies I will clean out the enclosure for dead feeders.

 

[viper69]

My G. Pulchra’s enclosure has little flies in it, there are not very many of them and they seem to blend in with the springtails. She only had about 70% humidity with moss. I thought there maybe was a roach that went unnoticed and died, but there are none of those. Are these flies harmful to the T?

In all my decades of owning Ts only had flies due to dead prey found by the flies

 

[SquidStina]

I would let the enclosure dry out for a little while.
Also, if you have houseplants, they may have come from there. I only had flies in enclosures when I overwatered my houseplants and ended up with fungus gnats. They'd get into enclosures looking for any little bit of moisture. I remember watching my poor huntsman spider literally kicking flies away from him, the same way we'd be swatting them out of our own faces.

 

[Smotzer]

little flies and moist soil sounds like fungus gnats