Fruit flies and eggs

[Kibbleswhites]

I have a clutch of eggs that is due to pip in 2 weeks. I usually only vent the tub a couple times during the majority of incubation up until the last week. Anyway, the last time I vented, about 2 weeks ago, I noticed two of the eggs had gone bad. There was also one slug stuck to the clutch that was in the tub with the remaining healthy 5 eggs. Welp, I guess the last time I vented the tub a fruit fly got in and laid her billion eggs on everything. When I opened the tub today, there were lots of fruit flies, pupa, and maggots. The maggots were only on the two bad eggs and the slug but the eggs were still all stuck together! After a quick thought, I decided to set up a clean tub and cut the good eggs free from the maggoty ones. I was as careful as I could be to not to let any of the fruit flies or their babies into the new tub. Hopefully I did not miss any. The good eggs have fly droppings all over them so they look like white robins eggs but otherwise no harm done. I have never had to remove a bad egg from the clutch, they usually do not hurt the good eggs, but in this case, the bugs would have infested the babies as soon as they pipped. Lesson learned here, I will be removing bad eggs in the future even though they may have to be cut away.

[Peoples]

Fruit flies don't hurt the eggs, I usually get some cotton balls and wipe the larvae away, this takes about 3 days as the fly eggs keep hatching.

[MarkS]

Those aren't fruit flies. They are probably phorid flies. I like to seal my egg boxes pretty tight using press'n seal It works to keep 'most' of them out.

[Kibbleswhites]

The eggs all hatched fine and they are all in shed now. Pics after they shed. Whatever little bugs they were, it sure looked gross with all those little larvae crawling around.

[Hannahshissyfix]

Glad everyone made it out alright! Maggots are one of the few things I hate dealing with for any reason!