Bugs from Substrate

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RosieRedfoot

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I know someone posted on this before, but I can't seem to find the post..

I keep finding small flying gnats around my tortoise pen inside. I use a mix of cypress mulch and sphagnum moss (for the wetter side). I make sure there's not leftover food pieces and periodically mix up the bedding. When I had Rosie outside I mixed up the substrate and had a fan blowing on the open pen to try to blow away some of the gnats but it didn't seem to have a huge effect.

I don't have room to freeze the bedding or bake it before using, so what can I do to limit these bugs?

How often do others do a complete substrate change? My last complete change was about a month ago. I clean out her water bowl where she poops most and clean up any other poops I find.
 

wellington

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I use coconut coir. I get the same bugs. I have frozen it, and microwaved it, neither worked. The way to do it is to bake it or boil it. Neal boils his and uses his same substrate for quite some time with no problems and no bugs. I do believe they will eventually die out, if not, you are going to have to bake or boil it.
 

fbsmith3

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Although, my enclosure is for a box turtle. Before I use the substrate, I put the substrate into 5 gallon buckets and dump a full tea pot in each 5 gallon bucket and place the cover on and shake it up. I let it stand of 1/2 to a whole day. 1) the substrate is nice and wet when i need it. 2) No bugs, sometimes I find a lot of sand, though.

I think you're stuck with the little bugs though.
 

Madkins007

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The bugs don't really come from the substrate in many cases- they just colonize there when they stumble across it. They are living on the plant decay in the humid/moist areas. A good bake or freeze will kill off what is there, but keeping the substrate dry is the only way to completely avoid them.

You can fight them a few ways- biological control with some sort of pathogen (I forget the name), ignore them, or culture sow bugs in your substrate to prey on them.
 
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