fruit flies - friend or foe?

[joebrodnik]

Hello orchid forum. It's nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

I have a phaleonopsis that is doing very very well. I've had it for three years and it has grown very large and bloomed several times. Last time the blooms lasted an entire year. I'm convinced its health and robustness is directly related to my warm appreciation of its life. We chat. We talk about past loves, geometric art, Kant's philosophy, that time in the mountains of Arizona when the sun looked back at us, ancient Greek politics, but never contemporary American.

However, recently I have noticed a family of what seem to be fruit flies (or something similar) living in my orchid's medium. At first I was terrified, but after observing, they don't seem to be doing anything - such as eating. There are no obvious marks or cuts or bad spots or whatever anywhere that I can see. In fact, for all I know, they're living symbiotically with my beautiful phal. All the information about bug pests that I can find relates to aphids and other common plant pests - nothing about flies.

Should I be worried? Or should I let them be friends?

muchas gracias

[Maddy]

They're probably actually fungus gnats - in all the years I've been growing plants, I've never had them do any harm to anything. Too many of them can get a little annoying, but they don't seem to be dangerous.

[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

Fungus gnats live on the fungus in a degrading mix. It is probably time to repot. Fungus gnats will eat the roots if they outgrow the available fungus I am told.