Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So..
Anyone ever had a plague of gnats? I started having a few show up in my snake room a few weeks back and they pretty quickly started increasing in number.
Now they never reached truly plague-like proportions, but I could always see a couple in most of the cages.
So I scoured down everything. Cleaned every cage, replaced all the substrate and cleaned every surface of the room. All within hours of each other.
So here we are a couple days later, and I notice the first new snake dropping in a cage is already covered with a half dozen of the buggers. (It was of course, immediately removed and flushed.)

Anyone else had this problem? I've heard of egg clutches getting infested with carrion flies.. but not cages.
How can I rid myself of these damn things?
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-Paul

email Home Grown Herps abuot getting some stick tape he has some stuff that is very effective Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com

n/p
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-Paul

I've recently switched to aspen bedding and I found that I now have those little buggers too. What is home grown herps?

When I get gnats, I go to the nursery and pick up a couple of carniverous plants. Their is one that has a sticky slime on its leaves that attracts the gnats to it. Then the plant eats the gnats and in return puts up a pritty little purple flower to show its happyness.
I dont put the flower in with the snakes, just on the cage!

Good luck!
Jasonmc

Any idea what species of plant you are talking about?

They are known as fly paper traps.
These plants are great. Here is a link with the info about them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivorous_plant#Flypaper_traps

I first tried them about four years ago when I had a similar gnat problem. I put the plant just outside of the cage and all the gnats were attracted to the plant and died within a few days. The plants are cheap, like only $3.99 ea.

I would reccomend anyone with gnats go to your local Armstrong or other nersery and pick up on or two. Its a great and natural way to take care of this destructive pest!

Good Luck:
Jasonmc

And if you can't find them locally (like me) you can order them online from Black Jungle Terrarium Supply (http://www.blackjungle.com/). They have a lot of really cool stuff.

Ya know, I thought about this method too.
It does work, yeah? I might have to go get myself a sundew or two.
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-Paul