Help - black fly full life cycle in my indoor plants!

Maddie

We've been suffering from a plague of little black flies in our flat for some time now and i've always put it down to not taking the bins out often enough .

However, I've now noticed little clear worms in some of my plant pots (yuk) which I presume are the larvae. I think I must have overwatered my plants over Christmas and provided some sort of perfect ecosystem for black flie :eek:

Is there anything I can do other than keep on hoovering up the flies and hoping they die out? I'm also planning on letting my plants dry out as much as possible and hoping they can survive without water for longer than the larvae.

GreenNotM

besides posting a picture of the lil clear worms...

wash the plants and crush/wipe off the black fly in the bath, use a very small amount of a plain soap on your hands/sponge, this will also get rid of the eggs, look under the leaves, otherwise you will have increasing larger generations of blackfly over the weeks. By washing in the bath I mean just rinsing the leaves and stems, not a fully soaking/immersing them under water - unless you have access to a hose outdoors but you do say you are in a flat...

Leaving the plants to dry out will only effect the plants not the bugs..

chrisbur

Sounds like they could be scariad flies which do rather like soggy compost. Suggestions to get rid of them I have seen are
Provado insecticide
Using a few drops of washing up liquid in the water when you water the plant
Immersing the pot under water for a couple of hours
Putting a layer of grit on the surface of the compost to prevent new eggs being laid
Always watering from the bottom to keep the top layer of compost dry

Cannot guarentee any of these methods as have not tried them, if any of mine get these flies I get rid of the plant.

Maddie

Thanks for the info, I'm finding it hard to work out exactly what they are so will post pictures later.

A_Clock

Maddie wrote: »

Thanks for the info, I'm finding it hard to work out exactly what they are so will post pictures later.

I would say they are scariad flies as well, ive got the little !!!!!!s in my cactus pots, going to chuck them out in a min I had them before and they made a nest in my old wooden window frame, took me months to get rid of them!!!

Maddie

Here's a pic;



They are probably about 4mm long. So what are they?

Thanks, Maddie

GreenNotM

hmmm would seem to be blackfly http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=blackfly&gbv=2 the lavae are in the second row of the link.

chrisbur

Still think that they are sciarid flies. Have now corrected the spelling of their name.
Picture on http://buzzorganics.co.uk/biological-pest-controls.htm

GreenNotM

http://images.google.co.uk/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&q=Sciarid+Fly yeah these have the clear lavae too

Here is a biological control http://www.bio.scarletts.co.uk/Sciarid_Fly.html

Maddie

Thanks a lot for all the help, good to know what they are and that there is a cure!

I'm planning on getting very agressive with the hoover and might buy the biological control if I don't see any improvement.

Cheers,

Maddie