Sounds like you should water less and make sure you have a good draining soil.

Mothballs dont harm the plant?

Check your fertilizer label. See how much of the nitrogen is urea (pretty much peepee). I've noticed that plants coming from the store have an overwhelming chemical smell to them until I change their potting medium, then it just smells like fresh, earthy earth.

Mothballs are really toxic. I wouldn't have them in the house.

http://www.epa.gov/ttnatw01/hlthef/naphthal.html

http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/naphgen.html

I agree that you need to change your potting medium and learn to water appropriately. There is NO reason to have that problem in your home.

Waki....you can go to the posts where you recommended the moth balls and delete them. You'll see the little flags when you open the thread. If I were you, I'd delete or edit both of those threads. Suggesting mothballs is terrible advice, my friend.

I prefer using Pure Citrus air freshener spray to kill fungus gnats and fruit flies instead of chemical sprays. The little pests drop dead in mid-flight, and the citrus scent is so nice. My fav is lemon. Check this out :

bluemagicusa.com/index.php/blue_magic/products .

I agree with changing the medium and suggest rinsing off as much of the old soil as possible to lessen chances of any remaining egg transfer. Good luck.

I know how to water properly and i watered the plants less since it was winter and i still have problems. my house is only 875sf. So i have a lot of plants together in one room or another.

Fungus gnats love damp and organic environment. Changing to less organic mix will help a lot, as would getting rid of any standing water (leftovers in saucers and similar) and/or watering appropriately...I have same size house, but keep plants only in 2 rooms, more than 300 pots (during winter only - they spend whole summer outdoors). I do see little gnat flies sometimes, but very, very few. I use mostly gritty mix, some 511.

Rina

Laticauda. Yes LOL

For me fungus gnats come only for a week or two and some odd time during the winter. Then as if it was magic they dissapear one day. Sometimes it's in December, sometimes January, Febuary, March or April. But they never last long. There's always a big explosion and poof.

I know for a fact that I've in one way or another consumed fungus gnats. So annoying when they buzz in your ear........ Though a quarter of a mosquito dunk added to your watering kills the gnat larvae in the soil. Also, yellow sticky traps work wonders, especially if you put them beside windows where they seem to congregate.

I've never had an issue with the smell. I've never even smelt a smell.

I got so busy looking for info about mothballs I forgot the question about odor. There's what I've always thought of as an oxygen odor if one waters a really thirsty plant, but I've always thought it was pleasant. OTOH, unglazed clay pots seem to have an odor that's not necessarily pleasant or unpleasant (to me,) just noticeable.

I've noticed if I don't soak my terra cotta pots really well, they start to stink and get slime (mold or salts?) On them.

When that happens, I use a potato scrub brush and a bit of watered down vinegar and scrub the outside of the pot then rinse it off. As long as I don't tip the plant over, it works really well, just in case anyone made the mistake (like I did) of not soaking and resoaking terra cotta! Add a little bit of vinegar to the hot bath and this will flush even more salts out of the stone.

Is that that weird white fuzz like stuff? One of my pots has that. Never knew what it was or why it was.

I rarely get to see fungus gnats any more ... my Drosera and Pinguicula have pretty well wiped them all out.

I bought a plant that had the white fuzzy fungus growing on top of the substrate. I took some expired uh-not sure what it's called but it's supposed to help nitrogen fixing plants (you put your peas in it before you plant them) and I just sprinkled the black powder over where the white stuff was occurring. The white stuff isn't back.