Planter box has flies around, help!

[innovest_11]

hi all

Do you have any experience of getting rid of the mosquito-like flies aound the pond? I put in guppies to eat the larve eggs, but the edges of my pond are quite wet due to sometime the koi splashing of water over to the sides...

Help!

[thee_boss]

did you built a pond into the planter box?

can show picture?

What you have are probably midges. As long as they are not mosquitoes, it should be more of a nuisance than a health hazard. You can tell they are midges because they fly very slowly and are very easily squashed.

Unfortunately, once they get into the system its really hard to purge them. Reason being their eggs end up everywhere and the only way you can get rid of them 100% is to maybe bleach ur pond and start your pond from zero.

Dimilin helps to control their numbers, but the problem will come back again after some time. On another forum, I have heard of another type of medication that is stronger and seems very effective on midges. However, it seems to affect the koi mildly as well, not to mention the midge population will bounce back eventually. Most medication is a temporary fix I think.

My personal solution is to clean my filters more frequently. You should find your first level mechanical stage filters would be LITERALLY crawling with the bloodworms that are the midge's young. I have heard of people breeding these to feed smaller aquarium fish.. The other upside is cleaner filters mean better water for your koi. heheh..

I hope someone finds better solution though coz they are quite irritating.

I didn't know it's so difficult to get rid of them. If we're talking about the same thing, I got mine resolved naturally after a spider builds a web across my small pond and eventually traps them all.

(I don't know how to encourage spiders to build webs).

Originally Posted by Rock

What you have are probably midges. As long as they are not mosquitoes, it should be more of a nuisance than a health hazard. You can tell they are midges because they fly very slowly and are very easily squashed.

Unfortunately, once they get into the system its really hard to purge them. Reason being their eggs end up everywhere and the only way you can get rid of them 100% is to maybe bleach ur pond and start your pond from zero.

Dimilin helps to control their numbers, but the problem will come back again after some time. On another forum, I have heard of another type of medication that is stronger and seems very effective on midges. However, it seems to affect the koi mildly as well, not to mention the midge population will bounce back eventually. Most medication is a temporary fix I think.

My personal solution is to clean my filters more frequently. You should find your first level mechanical stage filters would be LITERALLY crawling with the bloodworms that are the midge's young. I have heard of people breeding these to feed smaller aquarium fish.. The other upside is cleaner filters mean better water for your koi. heheh..

I hope someone finds better solution though coz they are quite irritating.

my filter box is covered and yet it has those midges as u said.
I recently put in a large bullfrog in there. it could be a "placebo" or pschological effect but it seems to help somewhat.

but having said that my filter box (even when covered) has quite a big of space inside

[innovest_11]

Super fed up with the flies, saw so many of them, suddenly exploded in huge number of them, i bought sheltox and used to spray and kill them all, got layer of it gone into the water, not sure how it will affect the koi, keep my finger crossed....

It is bloodworm flies like Kohaku said. I have them too, but am not bothered by them. If u spray insecticide, and it gets to the water, that is not good for the fish. Suggest u skim off the surface layer manually by hand if u dun have a skimmer or overflow outlet.

The spider solution sounds good!