Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i was cleanin the tank yesterday and found several little bugs in it. i found i few worms, a slug, potato bugs, and a one or two ants run by. i know that the potato bugs are alright, but what about the rest?
-Jeremy

Everything you mentioned is fine... As long as the ants aren't traveling in and out of the cage to and from their nest... To cut back on the amount of crawlies in your cage you can heat your oven to the lowest settting (probably 250) and put any substrates and cage decorations in it for about 5 mins... This should kill everything... I too have encountered several different things in my Uroplatus cages, but unless there's an infestation, I don't worry too much about it...
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Ben

Heh, I've had some seriously crazy stuff in my cage.

I've literally had an ant farm in my cage!
And I'm not quite convinced 5 minutes at 2xx degrees is going to do the trick.

I had ants, and some sort of strange, almost microscopic bugs on a piece of wood in my cage. The oven didn't kill them. So I put the wood in the microwave for TEN MINUTES on high, and the ants were still crawling around!!!! And those damn microscropic bugs were still moving around too! I dunno, maybe I just have strange ants around here.

The WORST thing I've found in my enclosure was a BLACK WIDDOW which I came about a half-inch from grabbing as I pulled out a piece of cork bark.

Fortunately it did not bite either of my geckos, and it did not bite me.

-Matt
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The microwave will work great too, but for those branches that are too big obviously it will not work...

I don't know of any bug that can survive 250 deg. for an extended period of time... Obviously a period of longer than 5 mins would be better, you can try 10, maybe even 15, but this goes without saying keep a close eye on the oven!... I doubt it will start a fire, but you may have a house smelling like burnt wood for awhile...

You do make a good point though, if the bugs are burrowed into the wood a ways, this extreme temperature might not reach them... So you can still have a few bugs here and there, but the majority of them will be erradicated...
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Ben

yea, i ended up finding some lil bugs called collembolans in my tank with my u. phantasticus. over time, they became very numberous, but they were a lil bit smaller than a small ant, so i did nothing about them. i am taking an invertebrate zoology class right now, luckily, so i got some really good resources on them and had to study them a little for the lab. from what i have found out, there is nothing wrong with them, but there is always the possibility that they could be the intermediate host of some parasite. i might try to culture some, i think they could be useful possibly in feeding newborn phantasticus. ill have to wait and see, and of course do a lil more research.

n/p