Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had an unexpected second clutch of which all the eggs are bad except one, and thier all stuck together. For some reason, there's a terrible smell and tiny flies are fluttering around in there, any ideas how to clean up the situation without hurting the one good egg? thanx

Every two or three years I get these what I believe to be fruit flies. Your guess is as good as mine on how to get rid of them. I usually open the top of the container and let them fly out. Then I moisten the eggs slightly and remove any bad eggs possible. Look in the substrate and see if there are and little brown looking eggs, if so replace the substrate. If you don't you'll get worms.

I have had what I call "carrion flies" (probably phorid -sp? - flies) as a problem. They look like fruit flies, but eat meat. So far, they only ever attacked dead or punctured eggs. The only real problem was when the babies began to hatch. Because they may take a few days to completely hatch, and the maggots only take a couple of days to reproduce, they can infest the hatchlings that take too long. I have had them get into the umbilical scar and eat out the insides of the babies. The best control I have found so far is to use an ultraviolet bug killer nearby, otherwise keeping the eggs in complete darkness. The bugs that I have dealt with are attracted to the light. Also, if you keep the eggs on the dry side, it helps. The bugs breed better with more moisture. Keep the eggs just damp enough to prevent denting.

Be careful about removing dead eggs. You can sometimes carefully twist them back and forth many times and they will come loose. But if they stick, I just leave them.

I agree with cathy. If my bugs get to bad I take my backyard bug light and plug it in down the hallway and within a couple of days all the bugs are gone(if you don't have eggs or worms). If you do just repeat the process every 7 days, I have figured it is about 7 days between eggs and adults.

tom
xtremeherps@yahoo.com

Good to see I'm not alone in the phorid fly thing. Man I hate the little monsters but unfortuantely with the crickets I have on hand they are just part of the game. They love dead crickets and they love snake eggs even more. I have seen the same thing as Kathy in that when the 1st hatches if the flies get in the empty egg they can get through to the unhatched ones and kill them if you don't watch out. What I do when they are a problem is to keep the snake eggs in an airtight container as in no pinholes and I simply open it onece per day for fresh oxygen. Works like a charm as the flies can't get in to begin with.

Also what was said about humidity is correct in that the drier it is the less the flies get out of control on you. Another trick if you already have them in the egg container is to take a pill bottle or small container put one pinhole in the lid and drop in a dead cricket or dead pinkie the next day many of the flies will be in the pill bottle and can be removed.

Phil