I never even thought to look for something like this until I heard Rob from NERD mention it on Snakes and Stogies.
If you have carrion flies, fungus gnats, fruit flies, or any other small fly/gnat presence I highly suggest one of these.
Flies are one of the most common vectors there are, and the havoc they can wreak isn’t limited to spreading disease.
I’ve heard of incidents where flies have colonized the digestive tract of hatchlings but my experience was much worse. I had pipped a clutch that was running a little late (63 days) right before I left town for work for 3 days. When I got home and checked the incubator, there was an exposed rib cage showing out of one egg and one weak looking baby that had dropped it’s yolk sac. That was the only survivor. I opened the rest of the eggs the yolk sacs all had maggots in them, and two of the hatchlings were partially consumed. The maggots ate so much tissue in 3 days that several had bones exposed. The weakling had a will to live luckily and took a small meal before it shed it’s egg skin. I still have her.
After a couple years of DIY fly traps I can say that this thing is awesome. Beats the heck out of apple cider vinegar trap. The light draws the flies, the fan sucks them in and they stick to the glue board. It was $40 on amazon, but there are a lot of options for similar devices. I’ll never not have these in my room again, and I’m working on incorporating one into an incubator build because I think the fan is strong enough to handle circulation as well as kill those pesky gnats. You really can’t understand how much of a pain they are in the incubator until it happens. Mites are less of a PITA than these gnats can be.
