Fruit flies VS. Dubia Roaches Round 1

[JeffreH]

1) Are you positive they are fruit flies, and not phorid flies? The latter are usually called 'scuttle flies' because they usually scurry around quite a bit before taking flight. Fruit flies won't harm your roach colony at all, but phorids are rather annoying to deal with.

2) You can try a couple of things:

A) You can make a funnel trap. Place a piece of fruit in a cup or glass, then make a funnel out of plain old paper and set it into a cup so that the larger portion is facing up, funneling down into the cup. Tape the funnel so that it holds its shape, and it should fit snuggly in the cup. The fruit flies will enter through the funnel for the fruit, but will not be able to escape... They can't quite comprehend to re-use that little entry point at the tip of the funnel.

B) Take a bowl, and fill it with a combination of fruit juice and just a couple of squirts of dish soap. Then, wrap plastic cling-wrap around the bowl, and punch small holes into the cling wrap. The soap breaks the surface tension of the liquid, so that the flies will sink and drown upon contact. The holes in the wrap are their entry points, and make it harder for them to escape in the event they do get out of the liquid.

3) Dermestid beetles are good, but not necessary in most cases. Roaches are pretty good decomposers in their own right. You can allow a large amount of frass (poo) to accumulate in your B. dubia colony. I only get around to cleaning my colonies every 6-8 months or so after a couple/few inches of frass accumulate. I'll try to manually remove dead bodies and some sheds periodically, but I don't do a whole lot of maintenance on my colonies.

4) http://www.frogforum.net/food-feeder...r-roaches.html =)

[AbranV]

Thanks for the reply....

They are 100% fruit fly escapees and a bunch of gnats. I'll look up the scuttle bugs to be safe and give your trap a try.

Thanks again