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Ants! Advice needed

armiyana Aug 04, 2003 06:07 AM

Ants have invaded my gecko's food supply and cages. The food supply was a colony of mealworms I had been raising and the geckos are housed in no frills tupperware homes. While the tupperware was extremely easy to clean and get the ants out of I'm seriously concerned about one of my hatchlings.
My little albino was bit up pretty bad. One of her toes looks like it may be broken and is pretty red looking from the ant bites. I feel pretty bad because in my haste to get the damn bugs off her I may have made things worse. I dunked her under some running water. While she was thrashing around from the bugs/water I'm worried she may have gotten some water up her nose and her little toes are making me nervous. Is there anything I can do besides keep her warm, dry and the cage clean? She's so tiny...

My baby blizzard was lucky. She was smart enough to hide in her water dish/hide where the ants couldn't get her over the little moat that was around her. Her cage was even worse off than the albino's.

Also...are there any tips that someone could reccomend to keep this from happening again? I heard that chalk works. I've also heard of a trick with dishsoap, but they climb along the wall to get to the geckos.
We've cleaned up the area with bleach and insecticide for now.

Any advice is appreciated.

Replies (6)

Lucien Aug 04, 2003 10:23 AM

Try placing ant traps strategically. You don't want airborne insecticides near your geckos or their food supply. They can get very ill... Use ant traps.. If you must use an insecticide, use a cloth, spray the stuff on the cloth and then run the cloth wherever you want the spray.. it cuts down on the airborne chemical a bit.

xelda Aug 04, 2003 10:43 AM

First of all, you want to put something on that foot to prevent any infection. I know neosporin is ok for the adults, but I'm not sure if it's too potent for hatchlings. Maybe even some hydrogen peroxide to clean it up will help.

For the ant dilemma, don't use any insecticides or moth balls (obviously). Just wipe the area down (counter, dresser, whatever you have the terrarium resting on) with lemon juice or even something minty. This should repel the ants, but it might disturb the geckos, so don't actually get it inside their terrarium. Ants work by leaving a trail of hormones, so even though you got rid of the ones that were there first, the signal has already been sent that they found food, which means more ants will come. If more do, make sure they don't find any food, and eventually they will stop coming.

LauraV Aug 04, 2003 12:01 PM

I've discovered that when ants follow their trail and come across murdered kin, the turn around and run as fast as they can.

We have a problem here with those pesky sugar ants (sounds like yours may be fire - but the idea is the same, I discovered that If I squshed them and left their squashed bodies there for a few hours, the ants that came upon the bodies would run back to the hive and let them know it is not ok to got here.

It sounds gross, I know, but I inadvertantly stumbled on this trick by accident. You could actually wtch the ants come up to the body, back up and run like the hounds were on their tails.

The other ideas are better, I'm sure, but this works if you don't have anything else on hand.
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Photos

CiniusShade Aug 04, 2003 12:09 PM

I have had this same problem with my food supply. My ants will destroy a cricket box overnight. I don't have the problem with my geckos tho cause I keep them in the house in an area that hasn't seen ants.

What I do is use Ortho Home Defense in the pull handle bottle/jug. It's a spray but it's not airborne. I have my cricket containers off the ground a ways using a stand of various types. Just spray the legs of the stand and the ground in a 3-4in radius around the legs. Ant free for up to 6 months. The nice thing about this spray is you can track the ants back to their wall trail point. My ants usually come down from my attic(Lots of Trees etc in my area is why). Spray the area where they are coming thru the wall and they can't use that access point for up to 6 months. Respraying is no chore at all either.

Cinman

iluvblackfrancis Aug 04, 2003 03:14 PM

get another sterile shoebox thing for the mealworms, but a bigger one. put the original mealworm box in this one, and fill the bigger one with water. it will create a moat around the mealworms, and ants don't swim. for the geckos cages, just make sure that you don't leave any food over night, and clean the cages daily. ants will eat poop if they have to!
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your head will collapse, but there's nothing in it, and you'll ask yourself, "where is my mind"

if you have AIM, IM me at iluvblackfrancis

armiyana Aug 04, 2003 05:40 PM

The insecticide was poured on a cloth and wiped, not sprayed, so there was as little airborne as possible.
As for ant traps...I was pointed to an ant poison by a local pet shop with a similar problem (seems ants are out in force this year), It's a gel that you put right in the way of where they're going. They love it. They're munching it up right now and walking off instead of back to the food they were attacking. This time my cat's leftovers -_-
It bugs me that I left the food for the cat at noon and came vack at 3 for an army again.

I'll let you guys know how it works out.So far they're ignoring everything else but the gel. My geckos have been moved out and away from the room for now. The little albino is looking better tho. I just feel bad that I panicked so much. I guess being up until 4:30AM will do that tho.

The hormone trail (pheremone?) to the gecko's shelves seems to have been wiped ou. There's no stragglers there. This gel is formulated so that the ants munch it up and bring it back to the queen. I'm crossing my fingers here, but so far it's worked for the pet shop and the exterminator that reccomended it to them.

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