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Fungus Gnats


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Does anyone know how to get rid of fungus gnats? Especially without harming my roaches. They have thrived in all my arachnid and blattid enclosures and it's extremely annoying?!

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I think they're, in general, inavoidable...

Not clouds, but 1 - 2 - 3 I see almost always in my enclosures, though cleaners like isopods, springtails and sometimes even snails seem to utilize every noticeable uneaten food. 

To diminish their activity substrate must be drier, without any remnants of edible organics. 

Either in roacheries or in arachnariums it's barely achieveable...

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  • 4 weeks later...

I feel your pain! I had an immense outbreak last year. There were thousands and they started migrating out of the roach room into my houseplants. Collembola help as they out-compete the gnats, but to really get them under control I had to set up yellow sticky boards in my bug room. You can find them on Amazon or at hardware stores. It's a little weird, but here's how I tackled them:

- Hung up sticky boards by light fixtures.

- Stuck small pieces of sticky board on the underside of enclosure lids ONLY with non-climbing species.

- Stuck a sticky board to the outside of a nightlight — so the light showed through the board — and let it attract gnats in the dark. This was surprisingly one of the most effective ways to lure them to the boards.

- Collembola in all of my damp roach enclosures.

- No roach chow or moist foods in the damp enclosures - just carrots.

- Let everything dry out as much as possible without jeopardizing the roaches. 

- Smashed all of them that I came across (RIP little fellers).  

- Be patient. It took a good 3 months of vigilance to eradicate them in my bug room. And now that it's summer, I'm starting to see a few again. I think it's inevitable. But they are cleaning up fungus in the enclosures, so they're not all bad. 

Hope this helps!

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Are you sure they are fungus gnats and not phorids? I know it's hard to keep phorids from roach cultures but fungus gnats seem to be unlikely except for rhinos or polyphagids where you build up wet decomposing leaves over time. You can try staying away from leaves for anything that doesn't really need it.

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