When we go to our bathroom and use our showers, we would not want to see any form of colored worms present there. In the bathroom, we can find some worms and one example is blackworms.
Blackworms live in the bathroom; some live outside the home in places where there is dirty water or muddy swamps. The blackworms discussed in this article are the worms present in the infantry stage of drain flies. So if you see tiny worms in your bathroom, and they have black colors, you should know that they are the larvae of drain flies and you must get rid of them to ensure healthiness.
How to Get Rid of Small Black Worms in Shower?
Most times, black worms are always around the drainage outlets of your bathroom, and they come into your bathroom through the pipes responsible for drainage.
Black worms feed on the organic waste, and soap remains in your pipe, so they breed eggs around the pipe. The eggs take two days to grow from the egg to the larvae stage. If the larvae are not removed, they hatch into adult worms. So it is pertinent for you to get rid of these worms from your shower quickly to prevent any infestations.
Here are some tips on how to get rid of these worms.
1. Clean the drain pipes from both outside and inside
One of the most efficient methods to ensure that black worms are not disturbing you is to clean your drain pipes. Get a brush to clean and scrub the outer part of the pipes and the inlet. When cleaning the outer part of the pipe, pour hot water on the drain and use the brush to scrub the dirt and remove it from the pipe. You can use a cleaning gel to clean the pipe.
After cleaning, let the gel stay for a while and pour hot water into the drain to flush it out. This way, you ensure that the larvae and any egg deposits are removed, and the dirt that brings the black worms is removed.
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2. Use water or any liquid to flush out the worms from the drain
The easiest way of killing blackworms is by flushing them from the bathroom. You must carry out this process weekly to ensure its effectiveness.
You can buy a very strong bleach and pour them into your toilet to remove the worms and then pour hot water on the ground to get rid of them. You can also use baking soda to flush out these drain flies’ black worm and egg deposits from the pipes.
Ensure you have cleaned the pipes so that no dirt or debris hinders these things from going out of the pipes.
Make sure you do this weekly until you can no more cite these worms in your bathroom.
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3. Get rid of the drain cover
The drain cover may be responsible for the blackworms attracted to your drain pipes. One thing you have to do is to clean the drain cover. Make sure you remove any form of dirt from the cover. The dirt may be organic materials or hair decaying, and this is what these black worms feed on, so you have to ensure that you remove the cover.
You can also get a new drain cover to replace the old one to ensure the effectiveness of your cleaning.
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4. Buy Insecticide to spray the drain pipes
You can buy insecticides like pyrid that can kill the drain flies that remain in your pipes after you must have cleaned the larvae. You must do this because they will lay eggs again if the drain flies still exist. These eggs will hatch into the larvae within two days, so you must spray your pipes with the chemicals to kill the remaining drain flies.
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5. Remove debris or dirt that might have stocked inside the pipe and the cover.
It is possible that when you flush wastes down the drain of pipes, some stick to it, and so even if you flush out these black worms from your bathroom with hot water, some of them will get stuck in your pipe; thereby, they remain. So you have to ensure that you clear the stuck dirt in your pipe.
You can get a damp brush to bring out the stuck debris. Ensure you scrub every pipe inlet and then use bleach to clean afterward. By doing this, rest assured that you will be able to get rid of these worms effectively.
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What Are These Black Worms?
Black worms are the larvae stage of the adult drain flies with a life span of roughly 8-24 days.
- They are 4-10mm long.
- They feed on waste materials and organic matter decaying in your pipe.
- They are worms that are slender in shape and have dark stripes on their dorsal areas.
- They do not possess eyes and legs, but they have a tube with which they breathe. This tube helps them obtain air by expanding it out of their dorsal area.
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Why Are There Black Worms in My Shower?
Black worms are in your shower because wastes, hair, and organic matter are decaying in your pipe. If you have muddy water on your bathroom floor, then that is a great place for them to breed.
You may have traveled, and so you have not used water in your place for days; drain worms are surely already existing in areas where they present.
Also, because drain flies lay plenty of eggs, as many as 300, clusters of these eggs hatch into larvae, and then you see them crawling in damping areas of your shower.
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Why Do Drain Flies Keep Coming Back?
Drain flies do come back because some are resistant to whatever cleaning is done to them. If you don’t take your time to use a brush to clean the entire area of your drainpipe, the larvae or egg deposits of the drain fly may still exist, and once this occurs. Then be sure that this larva becomes the drain flies, and the hundreds of eggs present will become the larvae.
Also, apart from taking care of your drains, you should check out your environment to see if there are no dirty swamps or shallow water that might attract these drain flies. These drain flies may survive in another terrain within your environment, and if you don’t clean the said place, you might experience the recurrence of drain flies in your shower.
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How Do I Know I Have Drain Worms?
To know if you have drain worms in your shower drain or not, make sure you detect the presence of a matured drain fly. If you see them flying around then, even if you have not seen the black worms, know that they are present in your environment.
To further clarify your curiosity about the drain worms, you can take some sticky materials and put them on the drain in the place that you saw the drain fly, and leave it there for a while for the flies to get attracted to it and the worms to attach themselves to it.
They come out in the night with light to check them out, and you would see them there because they are nocturnal creatures.
You can also remove the cover of your drain and use the material to scrub part of the sides of your drain pipe to look out for the egg deposits. If they are thin and tube-like in shape, they are present there.
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Are They Harmful?
Drain flies are not harmful to us as humans. But if you do not get rid of them, they can make you spend money to replace your pipes due to their great numbers.
These drain flies survive on sewage materials, and they don’t carry disease, but because of the organic matter and fungi they consume, they have some bacteria.
And so they cannot pose any threat to your health, but because of their ability to reproduce quickly and rapid growth between stages due to the fewer number of days between them, they can exist in your pipes in millions if you do not kill them.
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How to Prevent Drain Worms?
Carry out a routine check on your drain pipes to prevent these worms from living in your bathroom or shower drain. Ensure you clean all the pipes weekly by following the procedures written above and checking your environment to see if any muddy water, dirt, or fungi exist.
Use insecticides to spray these places to kill the worms and ensure there is a total clear out of the worms; make sure there are no egg deposits remaining or larvae. Pour hot water constantly through the drains that you don’t use all the time, check for every loophole in your drain cover through which they can pass through, and follow up weekly on the maintenance of your bathroom and toilet drains.
Here is a detailed guidance on how to keep your bathroom clean to prevent those black worms!
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Conclusion
Blackworms might not be harmful to human beings, but when you look at them, they are very irritating, and if you are not careful, they can disturb you psychologically.
Also, since they are black and in a great mass, they will make your bathroom look very dirty and irritating to enter and use. Getting rid of these worms will do you good and ensure your bathroom is clean and attractive to use.
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