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today i noticed lots tiny little specks crawling and hopping around my leos cage. I finally got some into a little dish so i could look with my magnifying glass. At first i thought they might have been baby crickets that had somehow hatched, but now i am pretty sure they are tiny sugar ants. so my questions are...

Has anyone else ever had this problem?

Is this harmful for geckos? (I am dumping out all the sand and starting fresh tomorrow anyway but i don't have time to buy reptile sand today)

thanks

ive had regualr ants, not sure what sugar ants are. the worst my ants did was annoy the geckos, and they were after the geckos food, mealworms and crickets. if thats the case with you, you need to keep the food somewhere where the ants cant get it, and take out all uneaten food quickly.
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your head will collapse, but there's nothing in it, and you'll ask yourself, "where is my mind"

>>today i noticed lots tiny little specks crawling and hopping around my leos cage. I finally got some into a little dish so i could look with my magnifying glass. At first i thought they might have been baby crickets that had somehow hatched, but now i am pretty sure they are tiny sugar ants. so my questions are...
>>
>>Has anyone else ever had this problem?
>>
>>Is this harmful for geckos? (I am dumping out all the sand and starting fresh tomorrow anyway but i don't have time to buy reptile sand today)
>>
>>thanks
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Josh
My Email

I never had ants but they sure looked like tiny ants....they were baby crickets. I can't imagine where you would get ants from. Are you sure you looked close enough? Mine took about a week before I could really tell they were crickets. I tried to raise them to feed them to my leos but they all got loose...I keep finding crickets in my house...what happened to "they can't survive in the house w/o water"? That is what I was told. Grrrr...Well, at least none of them have started chirping...too small yet. Hopefully they all die off before that happens until then I have been doing major spring cleaning. LOL
Just do like you said..dump out the sand and start over. Maybe keep a small container to see what they grow into so you know for sure.
For a second thought I wonder if there could have been ant eggs in the sand? I know nothing about ants.

try a thin layer of vasoline(sp?) along the outside bottom part of the tank. Ants won't walk thru it.
Good Luck

Throw it in the oven 350 degrees for like 20 minutes or so should take care of them. If they are ants they probally came from somewhere else though. I had some ants wipe out my entire batch of crickets in like 2 days killled them cut them up and carried them out of the slots in the critter keeper. They are not the best for the gecko either they will be pest. It is possible too that a whole bunch of them could even kill a leo depending on the breed of ant.

Yes, ants are potentially dangerous, and you should eliminate them from your cage. They did NOT come from inside the cage. Just clean it out, and take the advice of the person who suggested a line of vaseline on the outside of the cage to prevent them from returning.

Ants are colony creatures, and only the queen lays eggs, which are cared for by specialized workers. These tend the larvae until they pupate, and the pupae hatch into new specialized types, depending on the chemicals the queen produces, which tell the colony what they need. An ant colony is better considered a single creature with the queen as its brain and reproductive system, and the rest of the workers and soldiers performing various other duties, including supplying her with chemical information.

The ants in your cage will be scouts--special workers sent out to search for food. The main part of the colony is probably somewhere within your walls or beneath your house.