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moth-flies and fruit-flies
There is a small possibility that the fruitflies infesting a house or fish
room are something else. Generally a fruitfly infestation lasts only as long
as a lost piece of fruit holds out. It need not be fruit, after all many fruit
fly culture media are grain or potato based, instead any food or organic
product left out, or left overlong in a wastebasket.
What else could they be? Psychoda are tiny black flies the size of fruit
flies. Called drain flies or moth flies, they can infest many live food
cultures and even aquariums containing fish. They can grow as fully aquatic
maggots inside your sewer pipes and then come up through floor drains, sinks,
toilets, anything connected to a drain pipe and enter your home. Even if they
land on a fish aquarium to lay their eggs, fish leave them alone. They have a
lot of dust on their wings which they sprinkle on the water. It is reflective
and fish that would gobble fruit flies pay them no heed. The maggot usually
hides in debris, although if dislodged the fish quickly eat them.
I once mistakenly cultured these. I found them in a stream nearby. It was
overfertilized by runoff from nearby lawns. Once I realized how uncontrollable
they were, I had to inspect every aquarium and culture daily, and every
evening pour a cup of bleach into every drain and porcelain in the house.
Considering their habits, it should come as no surprise that they carry many
diseases, and are vectors for some weird diseases I'd never heard of. This was
worse than making the mistake of culturing bloodworms in the house, but that's
another story.