Trying out new DynaTrap attractant..

So I noticed that MM is now selling their ATRAKTA attractant that is used in their DynaTrap division traps for use with their Mosquito Magnets:



This attractant is normally mounted on the top of their DynaTrap unit, but they are selling it with an adapter that allows it to mount as the attractant cap on the Mosquito Magnet exhaust tube.

This attractant has 3 compartments containing the following:

Lactic Acid Component - 1.495 grams
Octenol Component – 1.145 grams
Ammonium Bicarbonate Component – 5 grams

You can see the separate compartments in the picture above. You puncture the foil through the holes on the cap in order to activate it. Notice it has about 1/2 the amount of Octenol as the regular MM pack, which has 2 grams of Octenol. But it has lactic acid, which apparently our skins produce, and is a draw for mosquitoes as well. It also has a large chunk of Ammonium Bicarbonate, which is supposed to attract Fruit flies. When heated above 36C, it also decomposes into ammonia and carbon dioxide. I have to believe MM wouldn't go to the trouble of adding an additional attractant pack unless it is more effective or different, so I went ahead and purchased some to try out.

I purchased the packs for the DynaTrap, which are less expensive than the ones packaged for the MM, presumably because of the added cost of the adapter. I got 6 packs for $24, compared to the $29 they want for 3 packs above. I did have to design and 3D print an adapter, but that wasn't a problem:



And this is how it looks mounted in place:



I don't really have a quantitative way of verifying whether it's more effective, but I put it out there and lets see if I see any difference. I don't have a lot of mosquitoes in the first place and only catch about 5-10 overnight right now, with our current cool nights. I'm currently running an Independence near my Liberty, and they are catching similar amounts. The new attractant is mounted on the Independence, so perhaps I'll be able to see some difference over the next few days, when it should warm up a bit.

I normally buy Octenol bottles on ebay and refill my cartridges. If this attractant is more effective, I should be able to buy bulk lactic acid and ammonium bicarbonate as well, so refilling these containers should be viable as well. They recommend changing them out every 16 days compared to the 21 days for the old cartridges, so it's a little bit more work. We'll have to see if it's worth the trouble for any increased catch.

Well, with the crazy weather we've been having in New England, I haven't been able to come to any conclusion over the new attractant yet. To be able to do a fair comparison, I needed a couple of somewhat identical days and nights. However, the weather has been wildly different over the last few weeks, with some cold, wet weather, interspersed with short heat waves, and I haven't had two or three consecutive conducive days/nights in which to test the catch. We've had some nights that were as cold as 55F, so mosquitoes are not even out.

The one day where I did try out the attractant, it DID catch a lot of pests, but so did plain octenol, so no conclusion there. I will continue to wait for a couple of good days to compare it further. At the minimum, it doesn't seem to be any worse than plain octenol...

It would appear that MM might be positioning the ATRAKTA attractant for the Southern states. This gentleman designed his own Lurex3 replacement mount, along with a similar attractant formulation:

Mosquito Magnet Lurex3 attractant holder

It turns out some of the active ingredients in Lurex3 is Lactic acid and Ammonium Bicarbonate, in rather large quantities. The Lurex3 container contains over 74 grams of ingredients.



What is not known is what proportion of that is Lactic Acid vs Ammoniun Bicarbonate. Also, under the Lurex component, the OTHER INGREDIENTS comprise almost 65% of the ACTIVE makeup, vs just 35% of Lactic Acid! How they are able to list that proportion without breaking it down is surprising. Usually, OTHER INGREDIENTS are listed under non-active or inert components, but unless MM made a mistake in the labelling, these ingredients are listed under the ACTIVE section, despite not being identified. Could it be that this 65% of ingredient is what caused Lurex3 to be withdrawn from the market? In the ATRAKTA product, this OTHER INGREDIENTS is still present, but only listed at 36%.

Anyway, it would seem that ATRAKTA is close enough to Lurex3 that it could be used in areas that used to depend on Lurex3.

... these ingredients are listed under the ACTIVE section, despite not being identified....

I read this as the product has two distinct components, each with its own active and inactive ingredients. So the Lurex component has lactic acid as the active ingredient, and something else (corn starch) as the inactive ingredient to absorb and hold the lactic acid. According to the maker's project page you cited:

Based on what I could find, it looks like the original Lurex3 canisters had a mixture of 35.4% lactic acid and 64.6% corn starch on the smaller, crescent-shaped side of the canister that has lots of holes, and it had nearly-pure ammonium bicarbonate in the round cylindrical side.

It seems odd and confusing that the large bold "Active Ingredient" labels are placed where they are. The typography may be "checking the box" on required labeling, without consideration of how the layout may be confusing. However, it does read "Active Ingredient Lactic Acid ... 35.40% OTHER INGREDIENTS ... 64.60% TOTAL ... 100.00%," so that is correct. The active ingredient section has only one entry. Perhaps the size and weight of the "Active Ingredient" label meets a regulatory requirement of some sort, and it was just placed where it would fit and "look good." BTW, legal documents generally do not rely on typography and layout, just the left-to-right, top-to-bottom linear plain text as would be transmitted by a telegraph.

Anyway, this concoction is definitely not octenol! And the maker's suggestion of using "Nonyl Alcohol (Alcohol C-9)" or cutting strips from old worn socks really takes the cake. I wonder if this would also enhance octenol.

I think you are right. Formatting it this way:

ACTIVE INGREDIENT:
   Lactic Acid...........................35.40%
   OTHER INGREDIENTS.....................64.60%
   TOTAL ...............................100.00%

is very different from:

ACTIVE INGREDIENT
   Lactic Acid............................35.40%
OTHER INGREDIENTS.........................64.60%
TOTAL ...................................100.00%

and they probably meant it to be the latter...

Dev wrote:

cutting strips from old worn socks really takes the cake

Yeah, it's one thing to mimic human breath, but I draw the line at sweat and bodily fluids! :)

Not sure if this is the right place to post this data point, but it's as good as any, I guess.

I finally ran out of propane on my first tank and have my monitored run time numbers. On the Independence, with a 1.75 GPM nozzle, and a full tank, it ran out at a total runtime of 17 days 22 hrs 10 mins. A bit more than 3 days short of the supposed 21 days. I won't have a number for the Liberty because I used that tank for a lot of experimentation, as well as BBQing. I just started another full tank on the Independence and will see what number I get for this next one.

Edit: Interesting, but the 1.75 GPM nozzle is exactly 16.7% more flow than the 1.5 GPM nozzle. And 21 days is exactly 16.7% more than the 18 days I got. However, ,MM is still using 21 days for propane tank life for ALL their units. Given the different nozzle sizes and my Independence test, I call foul.....

As a side note, I ran out of propane yesterday, but decided to run it in fan mode all last night/this morning. It STILL caught a fair amount of mosquitoes, so it appears that octenol alone, without any warm CO2, is still pretty effective.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2021 06:33PM by Independence.

Independence Wrote:

Interesting, but the 1.75 GPM nozzle is exactly 16.7% more flow than the 1.5 GPM nozzle. And 21 days is exactly 16.7% more than the 18 days I got. However, ,MM is still using 21 days for propane tank life for ALL their units. Given the different nozzle sizes and my Independence test, I call foul.....

Well, I just got another data point to compare. I have been running my remote cordless Independence unit continuously and it just ran out of gas. It ran for a total of 20 days 12 hours and 38 min, catching thousands of mosquitoes, and requiring a net emptying during the process. That's pretty close to their stated run time, so I'm not sure why I only got about 18 days on the other unit. Could be how they filled the tank but on this tankful, I had weighed it full and empty and it used a calculated 16.06 lbs of propane to run the 20 days 12 hours. The other Independence is half way through it's 2nd tank and I will see what I end up with on that one.

Independence wrote:

On the Independence, with a 1.75 GPM nozzle, and a full tank, it ran out at a total runtime of 17 days 22 hrs 10 mins

I guess the fill at these propane places vary a bit, or the OPD valve shut off varies as well. On my next tank on the same unit, I got an accumulated run time of 23 days 7 hours, using a total of 19.84 lbs of propane. I believe the above tank was 1 lb less, so that partly accounts for the difference. But at least it shows that the 1.75 GPH nozzle machines can still run 21 days easily. I never ran my Liberty through a full tank, so I don't have a comparison with it.

Mosquito season is pretty much done where I live, so the units will go into storage soon. I never had the time to investigate the howling unit more, so that will have to be next years' project....

...The one day where I did try out the attractant, it DID catch a lot of pests, but so did plain octenol, so no conclusion there. I will continue to wait for a couple of good days to compare it further. ...

Regarding your Atrakta testing, do you have any conclusions? Might northern users achieve some benefit to run a trap for, say, a week using the Atrakta to "clean up" any bugs that were not attracted by the Octenol?

I guess the fill at these propane places vary a bit, or the OPD valve shut off varies as well.

Tractor Supply does not weigh the tank when filling, but instead relies on the tank's shut off, and charges (August $3.95) by the gallon. Fill-ups from empty are between 4.3 and 4.7 gallons. I weigh the tanks prior to deployment, from time to time during operation (with the regulator and hose dangling), and upon removal. Typical full (different) tank weights before regulator and hose connection: 36.84, 36.64, 35.89, etc. "Empty": 18.32, 18.43, 18.30. It seems the fill-up OPD shutoff is occurring well before 20# of propane is added.

Come to think of it, though, the filled tank weight at the previous supplier included the very heavy looking connector and hose, so I was probably not getting a full 20# there, either. The tank shut off valve never actuated during a "20#" fill-up, so I must have been getting even less propane than I am now using the OPD technique. Caveat emptor.

Dev wrote:

Regarding your Atrakta testing, do you have any conclusions?

Not really. Both seem to work well enough and I wasn't able to really see any difference in the catch. I didn't refill any of the Atrakta canisters as I had bought a 6 pack and didn't use them all this year. I saved them and will probably try refilling them next year. If I do, I think I will only refill them with Octenol and won't bother with the other ingredients. The rectangular cartridges seem to work well enough up here, so at the end of the day, I will probably stick with the original method.

It seems the fill-up OPD shutoff is occurring well before 20# of propane is added.

This may well depend on the individual tank. I purchase from U-Haul ($3.75/gallon this summer) and they also fill till the OPD valve shuts off. I definitely remember seeing their gallon counter go over 4, but not always. My empty tanks weigh about 16.35 lbs, and my records indicated full tank weights of 36.0, 32.8, and 36.13 on one tank, and 35.30 and 36.30 on the other. So, other than that one low fill, I have been getting about 19 lbs on most fills.