By Justin Smith
Ah, spring. The wonderful time of year when breeding season, at least for most of us, is kicking off! For whatever reason, this is also the season where I notice fruit flies magically show up in my room. We have all tried the apple cider vinegar trap in our rooms with decent success but there comes a point where it seems like they lose their efficacy. After asking around for other options that work better, I was pointed to the Katchy and man oh man do I wish I had grabbed some sooner!
The Katchy is a relatively small, plastic fly trap that features a UV light that leads to a fan. The bugs go towards the light, get sucked into the trap by the fan landing on a sticky pad that sits in a tray at the bottom of the unit.
When you buy one of these traps it includes a few sticky pads, the unit itself, power cord and usb wall plug, as well as an instruction pamphlet. Unfortunately the cord that is included is a bit on the shorter side which means it needs to be within fairly close reach of an outlet. It offers two different modes of high or low that offer a slightly brighter light and faster fan or lower light and speed. To me this seems almost pointless because the difference between the two speeds is minimal. Whichever mode is used, the job gets done.
Within the first three days of getting my Katchy up and running it was working its magic! Within the first week I already had to change the sticky pad that was covered in more fruit flies than I was even seeing in my room. When I bought my first trap I thought one would be enough for my smaller snake room, which for most standard uses should be plenty. But I ended up ordering a second one because they were on sale and I figured having a second one would come in handy for a quarantine area. That is where I think this trap is a game changer.
Crypto is a nasty, nasty little organism that can do serious damage to a collection. We all know quarantine is vital for keeping the unwanted pathogens out of our rooms until we know an animal is clean and clear. One of the biggest vectors (if not THE biggest) of crypto are phorid flies which look similar to fruit flies but slightly larger and they typically look for decaying, organic matter (regurged food, feces, etc.). These flies can already exist in your drains or other parts of the household that might have prime breeding ground so they don’t necessarily come from other collections!
What happens is a lizard or snake with crypto defecates, phorid flies find it, get the crypto spores on their legs and bodies where they then get into another tub with a different animal spreading the spores eventually infecting that animal. With the help of something like a Katchy in your room and most importantly a quarantine area, you have an extra layer of protection from the potential spread of crypto.
I’ve had my Katchys running 24/7 since I purchased them and they definitely put in work in controlling the fly population. I currently change the sticky pads weekly because they are normally covered flies! However, these pads are one of the downsides to these units. You can buy the Katchy brand replacement pads on Amazon as well at roughly $12 per 8 pack. There are also other off brand replacement pads that I have yet to try out but in reading reviews it sounds like the size of those pads in comparison to the ones that come with the unit may be either too big or too small. In addition, these units are not totally silent but the noise is minimal in my opinion.
Overall, the Katchy is very much a tool that should be a staple in any herp room! If not for the simple fact that it gets the annoying fruit flies out of your cages or racks and onto a sticky pad in the trash, it can be a major help in stopping the spread of potential total collection loss pathogens. Click the link below to order yours!
