Just to reiterate my whole point to begin with, it is the stress of captivity itself which is the biggest factor for making nematodes and other illnesses an issue in the early stages of captivity or a move.



Better than Panacur, is a little prevention, which in the case of HLs will have much to do with either not taking them from the wild at all, or at least not handling them and hawking over them all the time like they are a cat, dog, or other conventional pet. Whatever you can do to reduce stress can help reduce the amount of Panacur you might be using later.



Eating a lot of ants though, I expect my solare to have some occasional nematode issues regardless, and in fact it has been the solare which have really shown the only nematode related issues in the last few years. Since they do not appear outwardly as stressed as other species, and seem to settle in captivity quite well, I more so attribute their issues with nematodes to be related to the staggering numbers of ants I feed them everyday.



In this respect, the reason Mark may not be seeing such problems with nematodes, is that the outdoor enclosure does not make these problems as noticeable, but the outdoor enclosure is beneficial to reduction of high stress and preventing seriously depressed immune response as a result too.



Both statements are facts. The outdoor enclosure is not as easy to study them closely on some issues, but it can keep stress lower than for many indoor setups. Is this low stress factor enough to offset the cleanliness and fecal-oral infection question of the enclosure though?
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Harvester Ants

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