Gnats/Fruit Flies, what the hell

tech_hunter · May 2008

So I seem to have been plagued with fruit flies. I found a trash bag in the utility room that I guess had some plant matter in it but wasn't thrown away for some time. I had been noticing a few of the suckers buzzing around the place and tracked down the trash bag where I guess there has been a constant fruit fly orgy going down. Probably the only sex this place has seen in months anyway I tie a knot in the bag seems like I had trapped a majority of them, but now it seems they are everywhere and getting into everything. Is there a way to rid myself of the little critters without fogging the place? Don't they only live for like 2 weeks, can I just wait them out. Swatting them is about impossible they are so small and agile. Should I purchase a predatory reptile?

Trillian · May 2008

Get a small cup of fruit juice (or a few!) and add a couple drops of dishsoap to break the surface tension. Put that where the fruit flies converge. They'll converge in it, and die.

Mephistopheles · May 2008

my mom takes a little jar (or tupperware thing, think a yogurt cup), punches holes in the lid, and puts apple cider vinegar in it. Things are gone in a few days. Be sure to have one near your cupboard (or in it) as cereals, etc are prime real estate for fruit flys.

japan · May 2008

They only live for a a couple of weeks once you've removed whatever they were feeding on/laying eggs in. I had an infestation which stemmed from a potato dropped down the back of the cooker. All you have to do is remove anything they can feed on and wait for them to die.

The fruit juice thing above can speed things up, or you can get fly strips.

TechBoy · May 2008

Maybe this is stereotypically college, but apparently leaving out a cup of beer also works.

The beer attracts them, they fly in for a swim, get stuck and drown.

Just make sure that if you don't accidentally drink the cup. (You laugh, but if there's a party going on and people are leaving drinks all over the place...)

Rainbulimic · May 2008

This happened in my house at one point, but there were so many of them that we literally had to wander around with a newspaper and clap it together to kill them for about an hour.
The fruit juice thing would probably have been better in retrospect.

bowen · May 2008

japan wrote: »

They only live for a a couple of weeks once you've removed whatever they were feeding on/laying eggs in. I had an infestation which stemmed from a potato dropped down the back of the cooker. All you have to do is remove anything they can feed on and wait for them to die.

The fruit juice thing above can speed things up, or you can get fly strips.

We had a bag of potatoes that rotted and liquified. Took damn near a month to get them all.

The juice/vinegar/soap things all work, it may just take a while once you removed what they feed on.

Daenris · May 2008

bowen wrote: »

We had a bag of potatoes that rotted and liquified.

This is possibly the worst smell I have ever smelled in a kitchen... and lingering... horrible. And somehow I'd never even heard of potatoes liquefying until it had happened to me.

But on-topic... this is probably a dumb questions, but have you since thrown the bag out? You mention finding it, and tie it closed, but you don't actually mention throwing it out.

As to getting rid of them, good suggestions have been offered. One additional thing you can try is getting fly-paper strips (at a hardware store, or many convenience stores). I think they're more designed for regular house flies, but I've used them very successfully for fruit flies as well.

tech_hunter · May 2008

Thanks for all the great ideas I think I will try some of the entrapment techniques. I am pretty sure I took care of what they were feeding and breeding in now I just need to destroy the vile spawn.

bowen · May 2008

Daenris wrote: »

bowen wrote: »

We had a bag of potatoes that rotted and liquified.

This is possibly the worst smell I have ever smelled in a kitchen... and lingering... horrible. And somehow I'd never even heard of potatoes liquefying until it had happened to me.

We had it in our pantry, we had just gotten back from a 2 month stay at a hospital and it smelt like an animal had died in our kitchen. I opened the cupboard for it, and the potatoes had actually soaked into the board and the maggots were eating the laminated wood (fake wood of some sort). I emptied a whole can of Lysol on that.

The fucking maggots were eating the wood. What the fuck.

vonPoonBurGer · May 2008

Mephistopheles wrote: »

my mom takes a little jar (or tupperware thing, think a yogurt cup), punches holes in the lid, and puts apple cider vinegar in it. Things are gone in a few days. Be sure to have one near your cupboard (or in it) as cereals, etc are prime real estate for fruit flys.

You don't need to destroy a tupperware container to do this. Just put some plastic wrap over a glass containing fruit juice, apple cider vinegar, or red wine, and punch some little holes in the plastic. The fruit flies are able to follow the smell of the liquid to find their way in, but there's no smell they can use to find their way back out. Red wine would be my bait of choice, fruit flies just can't stay away from that stuff. We used to do this all the time at a bar I worked at, in high summer fruit flies were inevitable no matter how clean we were. Putting out a few of these simple traps was generally sufficient to destroy any fruit fly population.

Akilae729 · May 2008

Ill also vouch for the apple cider vinegar trick. I worked at a fast food place that had a problem with them. And we would use 1 part dish soap 1 part vinegar. Worked wonders

nuclearalchemist · May 2008

I had the problem in a place I lived, the beer trick worked for me. They seemed to prefer brown beers. Wink Wink. As well, you can try putting a cone in the top of a 2 liter bottle, and putting some fruit puree or banana peels in the bottle. They fly in, but can't fly out again.

The best way is to remove any way they have to breeding. Thats the only sure way of getting rid of them, otherwise you're just treating symptoms.

Penny Arcade

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Gnats/Fruit Flies, what the hell

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