WilcoxAE
Established Member
If you are one of us that insist on having live plants in our chameleon's houses, you have probably had a run in with those wonderful and pesky friends that fly up your nose, Fungus Gnats.
The females happily flit all around from plant to plant laying eggs in the soil. Making more gnats and annoying your house guests and landing in your food, flying up your nose, and leave you fanning at "invisible things" in front of your friends.
Instead of using something that could poison your chams either through ingestion of the plant or through accidental ingestion of the spray, get a sack of sand.
Yes, sand with granules larger than beach sand which is way too fine and would sift into the soil, but smaller than your common aquarium gravel. Almost like decorative sand. Almost like the grain of the stuff used in japanese table top rock gardens.
It will prevent the gnats from getting to the moist soil and laying eggs as the sand more or less stays dry on top. Additionally, it's small enough grit to hurt the larvae that are already in the dirt as they crawl up and die in the sand.
If your cham ingests it, nothing happens. It's just grit. In fact, I tripped over this by accident while attempting to keep one of my male veileds from his favorite past-time of eating dirt and getting constipated from it. (Silly fool. He did it when he was sexually frustrated. He get's plenty of nutrients...just get's upset when he doesn't get any.)
Hope this helps. It has both cured the gnat problem and the chameleon eating dirt problem.
Cheers!
Wilcox
The females happily flit all around from plant to plant laying eggs in the soil. Making more gnats and annoying your house guests and landing in your food, flying up your nose, and leave you fanning at "invisible things" in front of your friends.
Instead of using something that could poison your chams either through ingestion of the plant or through accidental ingestion of the spray, get a sack of sand.
Yes, sand with granules larger than beach sand which is way too fine and would sift into the soil, but smaller than your common aquarium gravel. Almost like decorative sand. Almost like the grain of the stuff used in japanese table top rock gardens.
It will prevent the gnats from getting to the moist soil and laying eggs as the sand more or less stays dry on top. Additionally, it's small enough grit to hurt the larvae that are already in the dirt as they crawl up and die in the sand.
If your cham ingests it, nothing happens. It's just grit. In fact, I tripped over this by accident while attempting to keep one of my male veileds from his favorite past-time of eating dirt and getting constipated from it. (Silly fool. He did it when he was sexually frustrated. He get's plenty of nutrients...just get's upset when he doesn't get any.)
Hope this helps. It has both cured the gnat problem and the chameleon eating dirt problem.
Cheers!
Wilcox
