Matt K
Eurycotis
So here is my short story:
Due to the size of my roach/arachnid/reptile collection, it can be difficult to thoroughly maintain every enclosure as often as I want to (thoughy I do so more often than many people I have found). Regardless (or regarding this fact) I have had various levels of "miscellaneous" insect populations I did not intend to keep: dermestids, grain beetles, fungus gnats, phorid flies, 'dust' spiders, etc. The real annoyance and/or problem has been when fungus gnat and phorid fly populations surge for often undetermined reasons.
Lately, I have had a real explosion of fungus gnats and an even bigger surge of phorid flies despite alot of effort to combat them (cleaning cages, pulling any old or dead from old age roaches, uneaten food items, etc.) and the flies are starting to land in drinks or food items elsewhere in my house which is somewhat larger than many homes. Needless to say my wife and a couple friends make comments about this....
So here is what I found (hopefully I am not premature in posting this!):
Phorid flies, aka coffin flies, filth flies, humpback flies, scuttle flies, sh** flies, (I can't remember other names they have been called..) have a nemesis: a very tiny parasitic wasp. After trying EVERYTHING you can name to eradicate these flies from my home, I finally stumbled across a parasitic wasp that is very very tiny, and appears to be rapidly reducing the phorid fly population.
I bought some Hypoaspis miles (predatory mite) to combat my fungus gnats- which works very well- and found a product at the same place sold as "filth fly parasite" which was not on thier website the last time I was there, so I thought I would try it (at this point I wouldhave tried anything). When it arrived I was delivered a small paper sack full of aspen shavings and pupae unlabelled. Not knowing what species was sent to me I thought to just open the bag and leave it on a counter top in the room where I could observe it (concerned I was about to be over-run with yet another insect and that it may or may not be harmful to the roaches). After a few days very tiny wasps began to emerge- and I mean they could crawl inside the empty head of an ant. Within 24 hours or so they were beginning to show up in various roach enclosures and other containers around the room. A couple days later (today) I checked a couple bins that were recently notorious for being loaded with flies, and few to none were present. In fact, I have not really seen more than a few anywhere. Where have they gone ???
If there are any other results of this "discovery" I will post about it. If you want to try these out yourself, go to http://store.evergreengrowers.com/prostore...vlet/StoreFront and order them for yourself.
So far I am excited enough about the results to make this post, anyway.....
Due to the size of my roach/arachnid/reptile collection, it can be difficult to thoroughly maintain every enclosure as often as I want to (thoughy I do so more often than many people I have found). Regardless (or regarding this fact) I have had various levels of "miscellaneous" insect populations I did not intend to keep: dermestids, grain beetles, fungus gnats, phorid flies, 'dust' spiders, etc. The real annoyance and/or problem has been when fungus gnat and phorid fly populations surge for often undetermined reasons.
Lately, I have had a real explosion of fungus gnats and an even bigger surge of phorid flies despite alot of effort to combat them (cleaning cages, pulling any old or dead from old age roaches, uneaten food items, etc.) and the flies are starting to land in drinks or food items elsewhere in my house which is somewhat larger than many homes. Needless to say my wife and a couple friends make comments about this....
So here is what I found (hopefully I am not premature in posting this!):
Phorid flies, aka coffin flies, filth flies, humpback flies, scuttle flies, sh** flies, (I can't remember other names they have been called..) have a nemesis: a very tiny parasitic wasp. After trying EVERYTHING you can name to eradicate these flies from my home, I finally stumbled across a parasitic wasp that is very very tiny, and appears to be rapidly reducing the phorid fly population.
I bought some Hypoaspis miles (predatory mite) to combat my fungus gnats- which works very well- and found a product at the same place sold as "filth fly parasite" which was not on thier website the last time I was there, so I thought I would try it (at this point I wouldhave tried anything). When it arrived I was delivered a small paper sack full of aspen shavings and pupae unlabelled. Not knowing what species was sent to me I thought to just open the bag and leave it on a counter top in the room where I could observe it (concerned I was about to be over-run with yet another insect and that it may or may not be harmful to the roaches). After a few days very tiny wasps began to emerge- and I mean they could crawl inside the empty head of an ant. Within 24 hours or so they were beginning to show up in various roach enclosures and other containers around the room. A couple days later (today) I checked a couple bins that were recently notorious for being loaded with flies, and few to none were present. In fact, I have not really seen more than a few anywhere. Where have they gone ???
If there are any other results of this "discovery" I will post about it. If you want to try these out yourself, go to http://store.evergreengrowers.com/prostore...vlet/StoreFront and order them for yourself.
So far I am excited enough about the results to make this post, anyway.....
She won't be able to tell the difference between the flies and wasps anyways. XD
If you end up putting in H. miles in let us know if they knock down the phorids, I'd be interested to see if it would help.