Big Problem

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WoolyMarmot

First Instar
Long story short, I neglected my dubia colony and left it in the closet. I felt terrible and I thought maybe I should make it a habit to check up on them again. Today when I opened the bin I was greeted by a horrible smell. It was terrible! There were small worms everywhere and fruit flies are dancing around the bin. It was such a horrible sight when I turned their feeding dish, literally hundreds were stuck under wiggling like crazy. How do I get rid of these flies?

 
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Just take out the dead insects and change out the really bad egg crates and give the bin a light rinse and put them back in.

 
I used a combination of crates and newspapers and most are all mushy and worms are all over it. I really don't want to touch anything right now. I was thinking maybe cutting their water supply? The roaches would last a week without water, I just don't know if the larvaes last as long.

1 more question: where could they have come from? It's literally like a dubia and gnats breeding bin right now

 
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Then just wait it out and let the smell get worse and other roaches get sick and die.....then toss everything and start over...There is a very good reason cricket farmers around the world don't have bins with limited ventilation and this right here is one of them.

 
Buy a pack of disposable gloves if it's too gross to touch. :) I always have a mega pack in the house for DIY projects and for messes! Makes it so much easier to deal with nasty things when you don't have to get your hands dirty. (Also great for chopping onions and garlic.)

But you have to get the live roaches out of there and into a clean area if you want to salvage the colony!

 
okay, I've separated the adults I want to keep and I plan on culling everything else. My only issue is that there are about 5-8k of nymphs(ex-smalls/smalls) and it would be nice to keep some.

Regarding the flies, I seem to see them the most inside dead or rotting roaches. I will keep an eye on any deaths and discard the bodies as soon as I see it. I'll also crank up the heat and keep the lid off to keep it dry.

 
Do you have anything with holes that if you pour contents it will make dirt go through holes and on top the nymphs will remain so you can put them in a clean bin? Kind of like how gold is found, its a screen that allows water and dirt to pass leaving the chunks of gold on the screen for easy picking.

 
Keith said:
Do you have anything with holes that if you pour contents it will make dirt go through holes and on top the nymphs will remain so you can put them in a clean bin? Kind of like how gold is found, its a screen that allows water and dirt to pass leaving the chunks of gold on the screen for easy picking.
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Yeah, I've already thought of using mesh screen to separate them but the majority of frass are from the adults and they're larger than normal. Never really made a container that separates frass from small nymphs, I usually just dump everything in my large bin full of nymphs. I guess i'll just throw a few eggrates in there and if I'm lucky they will go onto it haha.

Also, I've been watching the adults and I found that some are behaving unusually. When I look around I always see a few roaches dragging their butts on the floor, almost as if they're scratching it. Could this be a parasite introduced by the flies?

 
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Update: the deaths do not stop. Everytime I checked on them theres always new deaths and I keep seeing fruit fly cacoon and an occasional larvae. These roaches are 6-8 months old so it cant be from old age

 
More update: my second colony had a massive death. I left it for 2 days when I went on vacation and somehow a fly got in. The minute I opened it there was a fly flying away. I checked the dead bodies and I found a few fly larvae. Again, the smell is terrible.

 
Can you catch some of these adult flies? (fly strip above the bins?) It might be that the flies are there because of the dead roaches or bin condition rather than causing the dead roaches. But they may be carrying some pathogen between bins.

I wonder if it would be possible to clean the bins thoroughly, modify ventilation to fly proof the bins, and move them to a location that the flies are not in. Then wait for the adult flies to die in the regular location.

Another thought, list off your general feeding schedule and foods used. That they're wiping their frass off makes it sound like their frass is too soft. What's the humidity in your bin?

 
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Sometimes they just cannot recover from a certain amount of neglect and they eventually wither away. Just because something is still alive doesn't mean it's not already dying. Phorid flies are a symptom of dead roaches, not a cause, just like fruit flies are a symptom of rotting fruit but they do not cause the ripening process.

 
WoolyMarmot said:
Long story short, I neglected my dubia colony and left it in the closet. I felt terrible and I thought maybe I should make it a habit to check up on them again. Today when I opened the bin I was greeted by a horrible smell. It was terrible! There were small worms everywhere and fruit flies are dancing around the bin. It was such a horrible sight when I turned their feeding dish, literally hundreds were stuck under wiggling like crazy. How do I get rid of these flies?
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I think there was too high level of humidity - the flies (worms) live in dead cockroaches.

Separate live cockroaches to other container and the flies will not be there.

 
I'm so sorry for your loss. This is just a heartbreaking situation - I hope you get a new colony up and running, soon!

 
I have those flys all over my house and they were in my roach colony at a low level until it cooled off a little around here. I keep them down by some daily cleaning. I leave some frass in there but not much else.

 
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