# HELP! how to mass kill Fruit Flies ?



## VanillaGorilla (Mar 11, 2007)

Check it out..

I have a 130gallon long tank with a MILLION flying fruit flies in it some flys got in there from around the house or somethin and that started breeding and now a million flying fruit flys in my tank. I closed it up originally and thought they would die off but they just made a million of em...


I need to kill them with something that is not harmful to the tank long term and doesnt stink ? ?

? thanks


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## Catfur (Oct 5, 2004)

Go get a block of dry ice, and toss it in there, seal the tank up well, and leave the lights off.


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## Jason (Oct 14, 2004)

Catfur said:


> Go get a block of dry ice, and toss it in there, seal the tank up well, and leave the lights off.


Just be sure your frogs or anything else you don't want killed are taken out.


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## Leap (Mar 19, 2008)

I cringe at the thought of that clean up. :shock:


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## HappyHippos1 (May 7, 2007)

I've heard the dry ice route works well.


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## zBrinks (Jul 16, 2006)

After you kill all the flies with dry ice, just add a bunch of springtails. They'll have the mess cleaned up in no time!


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## tkromer (Dec 20, 2007)

The dry ice method will work fine and you probably don't need to "cleanup" they'll degrade pretty quickly. If you add springtails it'll expedite the process for sure.


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## Jesse (Sep 19, 2005)

I need some flies, just get a handful of them and send them too me


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## divingne1 (Mar 21, 2008)

Where in the world do you get dry ice?


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## dart_king (Mar 2, 2008)

some plumbing place have it


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## salix (Mar 28, 2008)

Most grocery stores in my area sell dry ice. It's usually in a case in the front lobby area of the store. Otherwise, look in the yellow pages under ice cream and/or ice plants. Either place usually sells blocks of dry ice too.


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## Matt Mirabello (Aug 29, 2004)

VanillaGorilla said:


> I closed it up originally and thought they would die off but they just made a million of em..


The population of flies in a sealed tank will decline with time a s function of the resources available to them. There is some food source that they are using to create more flies. By using the "dry Ice" you do kill the flies by increasing the concentration of CO2 (poison) and also by limiting their access to oxygen. The flies will die back BUT if your tank then remains open and the food source is still there, then there is the chance that it will have a new infestation of flies just as the first one started. 

The suggestions to add springtails (or other invertebrates) is a good one. The can preferentially use that resource once it becomes available and hopefully prevent the flies from monopolizing it again.

Identifying the fly species (or genus or family) would help to fully understand how to treat the problem, and prevent it from happening again, as would finding the food source.

I have a tank that I add kitchen scraps to 1-2 times a week, a lot of it is prime fruitfly food. There are some flies in the tanks but the community is dominated by snails, isopods, mites and springtails.


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