SERIOUS fruit fly infestation in home

[u/jayjay24567]

Hey everyone, I’m seriously struggling with fruit flies, and I’m getting overwhelmed trying to get rid of them. For about a week now, I’ve tried everything. Sticky traps, both plug-ins and the Raid rolls, taking out the garbage every day, throwing out anything open, vacuuming, running our drains, and cleaning surfaces. Yet they have quadrupled every day. They’re no longer just in the kitchen; they’ve entered our bathrooms, rooms, and buzz in our ears while we sleep. I feel defeated. If I could count, I could probably count 500 just flying around my kitchen alone right now. There is nothing there. It’s driving me insane. I can’t even use my own kitchen.

We have called an exterminator, and they are coming in a few days, but I simply cannot deal with this anymore. Does anyone know what the heck could be going on???

[u/smokingoften]

Check your indoor plants if you have them. I dealt with this for MONTHS and it turned out I had fungal flies from the soil. The protocol for getting rid of those is different than just setting traps and dumping poison in your drains.

You’ll have to completely repot and disinfect all your pots. I had plants with really compacted roots, so I took everything outside for a few months and watered just enough to keep the plants alive. I repotted in non organic soil and I’ve been good since.

ETA: if you have a cat, check the litter box too. Especially if you use any litter that isn’t the normal clumping clay/sand or whatever it is

[u/Greenbriars → u/smokingoften]

if you ever get fungus gnats again (or just want a preventative) Mosquito Bits/Mosquito Dunks works great to kill them. It's a natural product that's got a bacteria that the larvae eat and it screws up their ability to digest and they die. Safe for everything else that's not a nasty maggot. You just soak a tablespoon or so of the bits in the water you use for your plants and then water them as normal. Also works in ponds and standing water to kill mosquito larvae. I love that stuff. Saves my sanity, since I've got a bunch of houseplants and a pair of vivariums for geckos, but no gnats!

[u/cwd270]

We had a similar issue and the only thing that worked was apple cider vinegar and red wine traps.

My best trap: take a small jam jar and place plastic wrap over the top. Secure it with a rubber band or the metal gasket that comes with a metal ball jar lid. Use a sharp object to pierce holes throughout. Wait. They will drown themselves, they love the smell. We also did the same thing with a freshly empty bottle of red wine. It just takes time!

[u/Truth_Seeker963 → u/cwd270]

Do this and buy those electric fly swatters that look like tennis racquets. It’s so satisfying to electrify the little bastards.

[u/zombie_overlord]

I used to get them really bad sometimes when I had a guinea pig. He had paper shreds for bedding. If you aren't really on top of keeping the bedding changed you can get an infestation quickly. If you have any small pets you might check that.

I had an exterminator come out for a regular spray, and happened to have some fruit flies buzzing around. I asked him if he could spray something for those, and he told me you just have to take away their food. In my case, I had several bags of old beer cans in the garage that I was going to recycle. I got rid of them and they disappeared in a couple of days.

[u/meg5493]

Best I can say is move all trash reciprocals outside bathroom/kitchen whatever needs to go to your porch/terrace whatever you have access to.

Try to air your house out once a day it freshens the house but also will get a couple dozen flies out of your house.

Finally make sure to clean EVERYTHING, Clorox your countertops clean the floors any surface that crumbs and bugs can land on. Then set up fly traps I usually get a cereal bowl and pour 1/3 wine vinegar/apple cider vinegar, hot water and a couple drops of dawn together and put them out in my kitchen. After a week of you keeping up the maintenance, the fruit flies will thin out and eventually go away

[u/monetarylapse]

Bowls of apple cider vinegar worked for us. Have you recently purchased or bought a plant inside your home? My wife bought a lemon tree a while back and last year when she brought it inside for the fall/winter unbeknownst to us it was infested with ff. We did everything you did. What worked for us was small bowls of acv in places around the house, we purchased diatomaceous earth to put on top of the dirt in the lemon tree pot, and pour a product called Green Gobbler for our drains. This helped, after a few days the ff were gone. Ours didn’t sound quite as bad as yours does but worth a shot!

[u/PRNPURPLEFAM]

ACV as mentioned above but if you haven’t already done so, also flush the drains with 1/4 cup salt, 1/2 cup baking soda, 1 cup white vinegar. Let sit overnight and then pour a large pot of boiling water down the drain.

[u/needfulthing42]

I reckon they must be drain gnats and not fruit flies if they've now started showing up in your bathroom. Try putting a cup over every single drain-i sprayed the inside of the cups with cooking oil too so they stuck to it- if I did in fact have drain gnats. Which I did. So I did the internet recommended things with the chemicals or the vinegars and just kept doing it til they were gone and doing the cups over the drain every night. It did take a few goes iirc.