- Joined
- Jul 16, 2014
- Messages
- 29,216
- Location (City and/or State)
- South Eastern Florida (U.S.A.)/Rock Hill S.C.
A few weeks ago, I ordered a bunch of feeder insects from Josh's Frogs.
I figured that mail order just made more sense
What I ordered was a "Chameleon mix". An assortment of worms and larvae. Several, I'd never seen or used before. Like the Black Fly larvae and egg cases.
My Veiled chameleons wanted nothing to do with the tiny, wriggling things, so on a tip from another forum, I dumped the small, shotglass sized cup of them into the potted plants of all 3 enclosures equally.
That way...As was the theory....they would hatch at different rates and supply edible flies to the chams.
Well, hatch they did. Three or four one day. Several hundred more over the next 24 hours.
So many flies in fact that my Chameleons were scrambling around trying to avoid them. There were so many that they sounded like an electric fan buzzing. A black floating mass of flies.
I put up fly traps of different designs. Whatever I found at Home Depot, closed off the room and grabbed the potted plants. Then the chams. And bought them all outside.
I noticed that the now hundreds of flies mostly stayed in the cages under the heat lamps and uvb lights.
The Chameleons were now in their outdoors enclosures and any future fly hatchlings would hatch out of the plants and fly away.....The flies were almost all still in the cages.
My plan was to spray the flies with a spray bottle filled with my now very precious isopropyl alcohol. I was thinking that I'd kill them. Vacuum them up and being alcohol, it would evaporate and not leave any harmful residue for the lizards.
So I turned off the uvb lights, opened up the cages and started spraying.
They dropped like.....FLIES.
All 3 cages, same results. Great.
But then at almost the same moment, they sprang back "to life" and shot out of the cages. Now attracted to the light in the ceiling of the room and the windows!
There are now a horror movie amount of flies in this room. I turned off the room light and all of the flies went primarily to one window. One with the blinds open.
In desperation, I pulled off the screen to that window and opened it.
The exodus was immediate. I could feel the wind from the wings as they sailed past my head.
I then wired the cage doors open. Opened both windows and placed a towel underneath the door and left the room. Several fly traps still hanging.
That was over six hours ago and it looks like I won the battle.( I've only seen two flies in the house and I quickly squashed them.)
So, what's the point of my story?
It's that if you order BLACK FLY PUPAE from Josh's Frogs, you sure get your money's worth!
I figured that mail order just made more sense
What I ordered was a "Chameleon mix". An assortment of worms and larvae. Several, I'd never seen or used before. Like the Black Fly larvae and egg cases.
My Veiled chameleons wanted nothing to do with the tiny, wriggling things, so on a tip from another forum, I dumped the small, shotglass sized cup of them into the potted plants of all 3 enclosures equally.
That way...As was the theory....they would hatch at different rates and supply edible flies to the chams.
Well, hatch they did. Three or four one day. Several hundred more over the next 24 hours.
So many flies in fact that my Chameleons were scrambling around trying to avoid them. There were so many that they sounded like an electric fan buzzing. A black floating mass of flies.
I put up fly traps of different designs. Whatever I found at Home Depot, closed off the room and grabbed the potted plants. Then the chams. And bought them all outside.
I noticed that the now hundreds of flies mostly stayed in the cages under the heat lamps and uvb lights.
The Chameleons were now in their outdoors enclosures and any future fly hatchlings would hatch out of the plants and fly away.....The flies were almost all still in the cages.
My plan was to spray the flies with a spray bottle filled with my now very precious isopropyl alcohol. I was thinking that I'd kill them. Vacuum them up and being alcohol, it would evaporate and not leave any harmful residue for the lizards.
So I turned off the uvb lights, opened up the cages and started spraying.
They dropped like.....FLIES.
All 3 cages, same results. Great.
But then at almost the same moment, they sprang back "to life" and shot out of the cages. Now attracted to the light in the ceiling of the room and the windows!
There are now a horror movie amount of flies in this room. I turned off the room light and all of the flies went primarily to one window. One with the blinds open.
In desperation, I pulled off the screen to that window and opened it.
The exodus was immediate. I could feel the wind from the wings as they sailed past my head.
I then wired the cage doors open. Opened both windows and placed a towel underneath the door and left the room. Several fly traps still hanging.
That was over six hours ago and it looks like I won the battle.( I've only seen two flies in the house and I quickly squashed them.)
So, what's the point of my story?
It's that if you order BLACK FLY PUPAE from Josh's Frogs, you sure get your money's worth!
Last edited: