Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Best method of trapping Fungus Gnats that I have found!!, 0 by davidwv

davidwv wrote:
In addition to the aphids, white flies, spider and broad mites that we have to contend with during winter storage of our brugs, we sometimes have to deal with fungus gnats also.

I try to keep my brugs very dry during the winter, actually I keep them too dry and suffer die back. But to the point, I also over-winter many other tropical plants that just can't stay as dry as the brugs that I am attempting to keep dormant. Therefore I occasionally have an out break or two of fungus gnats during the winter.

Whether you are using the mosquito dunks or Scanmask to control the larval stage, you need to get the adult population as low as possible before using these products so they will be more effective.

I recently ran out of the skeeter dunks, so I purchased the Scanmask since it is very highly recommended. In order to get the adult population down I decided to just make my own sticky yellow traps instead of buying them. I'll try to save a buck anytime I can. LOL

Well, the yellow sticky traps were catching a few adult fungus gnats, but not enough to my liking. I hade to come up with a different solution. So this is what I did.

Using 20 ounce plastic soda bottles, I cut four of them down to a height of 2 inches. I then used Tangle Trap to coat the inside and outside of the little plastic cups about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch down along the top of the cup. I then filled the traps with an "attractant" just to the level of the Tangle Trap on the cup.

LOOK at how many I caught in just a 24 hour time frame and just on one trap to boot!! I am going to have to clean them off and reapply the Tangle Trap just so I can trap more.

I love it!! I should be able to apply my Scanmask in the next day or two at the rate that I am catching these little buggers.

What I used for the attractant is: Potato Sour Dough Bread Starter.