# Flying fruit fly invaders



## DartPlay (Jan 22, 2014)

Hi all,

I recently bought a white isopod culture that i am trying to grow. it's been only a few days, but when i opened it up yesterday, there were about a dozen flying fruit flies in there. I have the culture in a 6 quart sterilite tub with a 2" round cutout covered with no see um netting. it has eco earth, charcoal, wood bark, spaghnum moss, cardboard. 

I dont know if they got in or if i got a culture with flying ff in it.

Should i have any cause for concern? Is this normal?
I'm worried that they laid eggs in there and next time i open it there will be hundreds.

Thanks for any info


----------



## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Are you sure they were fruit flies and not fungal gnats or phorid flies? 

Ed


----------



## ngeno626 (Nov 14, 2013)

you can try to leave it cracked a bit with oj next to it to trap the flies in if there are larva in it. odds are they were probably gnats tho


----------



## DartPlay (Jan 22, 2014)

Thanks for responses. I have an apple cider trap next to the culture but it only has caught 3. But maybe they are fungal gnats. Reason I thought flies was because the culture had flightless ff in it when I got it.
Fungus gnats are normal then?


----------



## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

DartPlay said:


> Thanks for responses. I have an apple cider trap next to the culture but it only has caught 3. But maybe they are fungal gnats. Reason I thought flies was because the culture had flightless ff in it when I got it.
> Fungus gnats are normal then?


Fungus gnats can get into cultures when the substrate is pretty fresh. They are a common contaminant when enclosures are recently set up. 

Ed


----------



## DartPlay (Jan 22, 2014)

Great. Thanks for info. I feel much better then. Thought I needed to throw out culture


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Fungus gnats and phorrid flies in a culture, are going to take longer to run their course than in a tank.
You may be better off to select as many adults as you can from the culture, and restart them on sterile media. That's what I would do. Flying bugs can be rather invasive. I have lots of cultures around and don't want to take the risk of having invasive contaminants anywhere close. I don't want to risk losing 100 cultures while trying to save one. In may case it makes the most sense to salvage what I can from the culture (if I need to), and get it out of my house.
If you don't have other cultures to risk, you have more time to try to salvage the whole culture if you decide to try.
This is really more for springtails, but... http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/fo...clean-your-mite-contaminated-springtails.html


----------



## DartPlay (Jan 22, 2014)

Pumilo said:


> Fungus gnats and phorrid flies in a culture, are going to take longer to run their course than in a tank.
> You may be better off to select as many adults as you can from the culture, and restart them on sterile media. That's what I would do. Flying bugs can be rather invasive. I have lots of cultures around and don't want to take the risk of having invasive contaminants anywhere close. I don't want to risk losing 100 cultures while trying to save one. In may case it makes the most sense to salvage what I can from the culture (if I need to), and get it out of my house.
> If you don't have other cultures to risk, you have more time to try to salvage the whole culture if you decide to try.
> This is really more for springtails, but... http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/fo...clean-your-mite-contaminated-springtails.html


I do only have the one culture and there aren't that many isos in there. I'll get it going with the gnats (they definitely are the gnats). When I have enough isos I'll definitely start a couple more by grabbing a few. 

What troubles me is I just got the culture from an online vendor, and I feel that it should not have come to me with these gnats.


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

DartPlay said:


> I do only have the one culture and there aren't that many isos in there. I'll get it going with the gnats (they definitely are the gnats). When I have enough isos I'll definitely start a couple more by grabbing a few.
> 
> What troubles me is I just got the culture from an online vendor, and I feel that it should not have come to me with these gnats.


Unfortunately, it's pretty common in the hobby. The industry standard does NOT seem to be a clean, pest free, mono-culture. 
If it's not advertised as clean and pest free, it might not be.

It is also entirely possible that it is NOT the vendors fault. It has been pointed out that fungas gnats are extremely common in new set ups. That includes new cultures. Can I assume that you purchased a starter culture from somebody, rather than a full sized, producing culture? They you dumped it into your 6 quart container with materials that are known be contaminated with fungas gnats, mites, and who knows what else. How sure are you that you did a proper, 100% sterilization? Are you using .3 micron filters in conjunction with a tightly sealed container? How are you treating your foods and what are you using? Did you already have fungus gnats in your viv or house? Those little buggers can squeeze into the smallest of cracks.
Clean cultures can be found, and you might not even need to look that hard to find them . When you get them, you are going to have to do your own due diligence to keep them clean.


----------



## DartPlay (Jan 22, 2014)

no way i introduced any invaders, i have a vacuum sealed home. . i do have these gnats flying around my home. my neighbor has all kinds of fruit trees. and yes, i did dump the a starter culture into a 6 quart sterilite.
i've been opening up the container every night. outside of course, to let out the offenders. there have been only a few every night, so hopefully it'll diminish.
thanks for all the info.


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

"...eco earth, charcoal, wood bark, spaghnum moss, cardboard"

How did you sterilize those items?


----------



## DartPlay (Jan 22, 2014)

i just threw all those items in the container. so no sterilization done. are we suppose to boil/sterilize those items minus the cardboard? if not, then i expect my viv will have some unwanted bugs in it as well soon enough.


----------

