Just me and the fungus gnats.
Ok, I’ll back up. We’ve been infested with these little guys for a while now. They’re supposed to be a pest of greenhouses, but ours don’t seem to know that. We’ve tried two different sprays, the usual kind and some all-natural pesticide (ah . . . minty fresh), and the gnats died, but kept right on breeding anyway. Finally, yesterday I set off bug bombs. Everyone stayed out of the house for hours, I went back in to turn on fans and ventilate the fumes away and–THEY LIVE! In greatly reduced numbers, but the little bastards are still here! So, on to Integrated Pest Management™. Cover the trash with a pizza pan at all times. If I see them sitting on the wall, wipe it down with bleach so they can’t rest. Spray them, squash them individually, keep up the skeer, I’m sick of having to cover my coffee between sips if I don’t want to find itty bitty corpses floating in it. There’s an idea; set traps! Some website said bait them with cider vinegar, so I got out the sealed bottle of rice vinegar that’s sat in my cupboard untouched for years, and put some in a cup by the sink. The results were disappointing. I’d go by every so often to see one or two perched on the rim, their beady little eyes peering into the depths below, but they weren’t diving in in senseless kamikaze fly lust for nummy-nummy vinegar. So screw the advice from the Whatever School of Agriculture. I’ve made extra coffee just for the fungus gnats, left a cup of it enticingly by the sink, and I hope they drown.
Milk and sugar, guys?
We’ve had gnats too, and I sympathize. I’m sure I’ve drunk at least one or two.
I read somewhere that they breed in drains, but I question that, because I never see them around the sinks. But maybe that’s the answer – bleach or vinegar down the drains.
Terro works for ants. Do they make a product for gnats?
Go to Lowes, Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Sam’s Club, etc. One or two box stores (with a liberal return policy) per room of the house. Buy whatever shop vacs or similar they have (as long as it’s got a hose). Spread the machines throughout the house, and let them run for 29 days (or one day before the return-by date, whichever is later). I have no idea how effective it will be, but since everyone’s hearing will be shot you can swear pretty loudly and not care. Um, swearing out loud was your goal, right? No, wait… I think I got something wrong.
Fungus gnats and vinegar flies are different critters.
Fungus gnats, according to the Ohio State Extension fact sheet, look like this:
“Adult fungus gnats are about 1/8 to 1/10 inch (2.5 mm) long, grayish to black, slender, mosquito-like, and delicate with long legs, antennae and one pair of wings.” They breed in damp, humus-y soil.
Sounds to me like you have vinegar flies. The key to trapping them with a cup of vinegar is to cover the vinegar with plastic wrap, and punch some holes in it. Vinegar flies check in. They don’t check out. Actually, I’ve had better results with wine. If yours like coffee, try coffee.
To get on my soap box for a minute, blasting something as benign as a vinegar fly with a bug bomb is excessive. They’re annoying, but they don’t spread disease or destroy stuff. Bug bomb for fleas? Sure. Bug bomb for vinegar flies? No. (People, read labels and know your pests. If you choose a pesticide that’s effective for fungus gnats but you have vinegar flies, you’ve got a problem. And with pesticides, more isn’t better. Apply it as the label directs.)
The whole premise of Integrated Pest Management is not eradication, but reducing populations to tolerable (in the case of harmless things like vinegar flies) or non-damaging (in the case of things like soybean aphids) levels.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the annual vinegar fly invasion is annoying as hell. But at least it is short-lived.
Back when I was an apartment dweller, I was pretty much bug free …
Any dry good goes into the freezer for 3 days, then into a glass or plastic container.
Shopping was brought home in my own string bags, roaches and other bugs will catch a ride along in paper bags and boxes.
Fruits and vegetables get immediately washed and processed and put in the fridge. Tupperware type containers are your friends.
Wash all pots, pans and utensils as soon as the meal is prepped. Wash and dry the counters, put away the leftovers ASAP, and wash and dry the dishes. Get small plastic bags, and take your garbage out as soon as the meal is done so there are not food scraps in the house. Wash and wipe dry your sink.
Do not decoratively leave fruit out on the counter. Do not leave any food out and exposed. Vacuum up any crumbs and wash up any droppings as soon as possible.
A bit of chlorine bleach in the rinse water when you wash your floors is great for destroying any organic traces that bugs follow [like ants leaving pheremone trails]
Clean your bathroom, dont let anything organic hang around - empty the trash daily, wipe down and dry the sink and tub/shower, get a case for the toothbrush.
Bugs are attracted by anything remotely organic, and water. Remove the sources, remove the problem.
I’ve had a lot of trouble with them (see this thread).
I don’t how what they came into the house for sure, though I suspect a particular chinese evergreen (that had had a problem at my office a year or so earlier, but which seemed to be resolved). Anyway, ultimately they infested the majority of the plants in the house.
They seem to be 99.9% gone now, due to a combination of:
[ul]
[li]Sticky yellow traps (more diagnostic than curative, those strips got COVERED in the damn things)[/li][li]Pouring out any standing water in the bottom of the pots - the saucers underneath, or the built-in saucer area that comes with some plastic pots[/li][li]dosing the soil with bacillus thuringiensis israelienses granules (sold in garden supply places, they may be listed as to be used for mosquito control in standing water; don’t get any other BT varieties as different varieties work with different pests)[/li][li]Underwatering the plants to the point of neglect. We did lose one plant - an English ivy - as a result, but the rest have been relatively forgiving.[/li][li]Covering the tops of the soil with a layer of plain sand, which seems to provide a bit of a barrier to the hatching bugs.[/li][/ul]
It was foul for a while - we had to put all the plants in the basement if we were expecting company because otherwise we’d have black bugs in the food. Not very welcoming for the poor guests.
They definitely lived in the plants, not any drains. We could tap the side of the worst-infested pots and see them fly around. They never appeared to harm the plants, though an otherwise-unhealthy plant might be more at risk. Basically fungus grows on the organic material in the soil, and the gnats’ grubs feed on the fungus.
We repotted one plant - my big ficus tree - during all of this and I saw that the potting soil in the plastic bag had quite a population of things flying around as I disturbed it. Dunno if that’s where the bugs came from initially (we’d had the bag for a bit) or if it got infested when bugs from the houseplants got into the bag of soil. But I mixed a whole lot of the BT granules in with the soil as I potted the tree, and it seems to have cured that problem.
We still see the occasional gnat, but it’s more along the lines of 1 a week rather than 10 an hour. That’s a level I can live with (but I’m still parching the poor houseplants).
Er, on reread, you think your problem is not fungus gnats. :smack:
If you do have houseplants, it could be that. I’m not too familiar with vinegar gnats. Good luck though!