Drain flies are tiny, and often furry, little insects which like spending their life around humid and wet areas. When living in the city, these fuzzy creatures need to adapt to the urban environment, so they often happen to inhabit our drains and sewers. And sometimes toilets, too. If you noticed drain fly larvae in your toilet, it most likely means that this is the place where your new roommates have chosen to breed.
Whether you are happy about it, or a bit less, the fact is that you are soon about to face several sewer gnats. So, to stay up do date, here is a brief writing explaining the main information about such phenomenon.
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How to Identify Drain Fly Larvae?
In order for you to be completely certain that those are drain fly larvae that you see in your toilet, it is first necessary to identify them.
There are so many species of such insects, so their larvae can also vary. However, some general observations state that they are almost transparent and feature a non-retractable black head. Also, such head does not have eyes. They can be quite hard to spot sometimes, as they are mostly just 0.16 to 0.20 inches (4 to 5 millimeters) long, although there are some species with a length of up to 0.40 inches or 10 millimeters. Their shape is very similar to a flattened cylinder, quite long but thin. Additionally, they do not feature any legs, but are made of several tiny rings (these are also called annuli). Some of these rings will have plates on the dorsal side.
Larvae are not able to breathe through water, where they usually live, but they do it with the help of a dark tube which is located at their back. They feed with bacteria which they find around the toilet and, after a period of nine days to two weeks, they will go into the following stage, also known as pupal stage.
How Do You Get Rid of Toilet Drain Larvae?
If your decision is not sharing your life space with sewer flies, but getting rid of their larvae instead, there are several ways to do that. Some of such solutions are commercial, while others are already somewhere in your home.
House Remedies
Let us start with some simple solutions which can help you resolving your issue with larvae and can be found in most homes.
A pretty strong and efficient way is using a mix of bleach and boiling water. Simply pour it into the toilet and scrub away as much larvae as you can. Such action can be amazingly effective, but it needs to be performed on a daily basis, at least for a week or so. Also, it is suggestable to combine such activity with pipe maintenance. This will ensure that adult sewer flies do not decide to lay eggs into a different part of your home. Or pipes.
Another immediately available solution includes a combination of baking soda and vinegar. These two, when applied together, create a bubbling acid-base reaction which is supper efficient in the battle with drain flies. It is necessary to rinse your toilet with boiling water both before and after applying the acid combo.
Whichever of these two house remedies you decide to apply to your toilet, it is crucially important to keep it extremely clean between the flushing activities. Larvae, as already mentioned a few lines earlier, feed on bacteria. And that is exactly why not allowing them to feed can ultimately make them disappear, too.
Bio Drain Gel Solutions
To make sure there is no place for breeding in your toilet (and, super important, pipes), it is suggestable to run a few flushes with the help of drain cleaning solutions.
Being extremely popular these days, some of such options are bio-friendly, too. Such innovative products do not contain strong and harsh chemicals, which can then be evaporated across your home. On the contrary, they are made out of natural ingredients. One good example of such product is certainly the InVade Bio Drain Gel. This probiotic product works on the base of enzymes instead of highly toxic chemicals. Such enzymes attack all the interesting places for breeding inside pipes, such as scum, and convert them to water and minerals. All this performance brings to the following facts: first, there will be no more living place which would be suitable for sewer gnats. And consequentially, they will refuse laying their eggs there.
To conclude, whatever cleaning product you choose to get rid of maggots in your toilet, it is vitally important to clean the pipes, too. The adults which are producing such larvae are most likely inside the pipes and getting rid of larvae only will not solve the source of the issue here. That is why it is critically necessary to combine such cleaning activities with pipe cleaning. To find out more about that, you might want to look at our complete guide on how to get rid of drain flies.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are several methods to get rid of toilet drain larvae. You can pour half cup of salt and half cup of baking soda into your toilet, adding one cup of white vinegar as well. Don’t use the toilet the whole night and next morning pour few gallons of boiling water to the toilet to flush down the mix. If this won’t work or your drain larvae are back then your infestation is more serious and you have to try other solutions as well. In this article we collected more than a dozen methods to get rid of drain flies.
Diluted bleach can kill drain fly larvae. However, such cleaning activity needs to be performed a few times to be effective, as bleach runs quickly through the pipes
Seeing maggots in your toilet is a clear indicator of having drain flies inside your pipes. Drain flies lay eggs across the pipes, and such eggs later convert to maggots (or larvae).
Drain fly larvae are not considered to be harmful for people. However, they do feed on bacteria which can later be transmitted to humans. Also, they can cause myiasis, and adult drain flies are known to trigger bronchial asthma on some people. Read more about this topic here: Are drain flies harmful?
Yes, drain flies can come from the toilet, however there are more chance to see them around the shower’s drain pipe. If you see drain flies or gnats around the toilet then check the seal between the toilet and sewer flange, it might be too old or broken.
Drain fly larvae look like small, black, legless worms. They appearing as black strip since they are about 4-10 mm (0.16-0.4 inches) long. The larvae also do not have eyes and use a breathing tube to get oxygen. More info: What are Drain Worms?
If you see small, black worms in toilet then they are most likely drain fly larvae. They live and breed in drain pipes and eat organic materials. It is advised to get rid of them as soon it is possible to avoid serious infestation, drain mailfunctions and other problems.