General Care Discussion :: Flies!

[Turtlemom224]

We have flies. Tiny ones. We did some research and believe they are midge flies. They magically appeared to torment us about 8 months ago. We gutted the old tank, we heavily bleached everything trying to kill the larva (we were super careful to rinse everything and even rinsed in water with dechlorinator prior to putting the tank back together. Took over 3 hours). Those larva were impossible to kill. We replaced the tank (our girl needed a bigger one anyway). Nothing from the old tank went into the new tank. We tried to kill all of the adult flies we could find before trading tanks. We put the old tank outside. Now we are finding flies again.

Please help! We have pond rocks in the bottom. We're considering getting fish but the larva hide in the rocks.

Suggestions? Anything safe to treat the water?

[steve]

The flies might be attracted to whats around the tank... food or waste in open areas. Does the tank have any surface agitation? That might help too.

[Turtlemom224]

It's in an office with doors that close it from the rest of the house. No food. No waste. Only slight agitation from the filter output. The flies seem to enjoy the ecosystem of the turtle tank

[steve]

What about where you put dirty nets? Can you post a picture of your setup?

[Turtlemom224]

You assume I have dirty nets. I will post when I get home today as I have to do Pictures from my computer

[Turtlemom224]

Here is the tank on the stand. We have not added doors. The buckets are empty and dry. They get used when we need to add <10 Gallons of water (any more and we just toss the hose in). When we drain we just drain right out the door. There is an exterior door about another foot to the right of the tank. We don't use this door often. The flies started in the old tank after we actually had it outside to strip it and scrub it.
I'm also attaching a picture of the fly.

[steve]

Hmm, I'm not sure what kind of those flies are. Have you seen any fly larvae in the new or old tanks? You have a lot of rocks in there, it might be hard to spot anything in there.