Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, my turtles have been inside during the winter and today i went to put them in there cage for the first time this year but there is an ant pile in the cage by their log, in the center of there cage, its their favorite hide spot, so is there any way to get rid of ants in the pen, i heard your not suposed to use any antkiller/pesticides neer the cage.
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0.0.6 Common Mud Turtles
1.1 Russian Tortoises
0.3 Eastern Box Turtles
1.0 Hamsters
3.0 Dogs
2.3 Family

If you dig in and remove/kill the queen and remove most of the colony; then replace the dirt with new stuff the ant problem should be gone. This is only based on what I know of ant colonies, and I suppose that you may be unlucky and a young new queen will take over and start again. It's worth a try though.

A more redneck approach is to tear up the area with a shovel, drench it in gasoline and light the place up. It's fun to watch as a kid, but I can't recall if it ever worked

If you locate the main colony you may have success. I am sometimes successful by digging up a spadefull, pouring on boiling hot water with a few spoonfulls of common household bleach in it. For the foraging ants where the colony is elsewhere, I have had greater difficulty. I put a low toxicity (i.e. Terro or boric acid/sugar syrup)into a baby food jar with a hole or two drilled into the lid. Ants go in, feed on syrup and theorettically take it back to colony and hopefully give the queen(s) a fatal dose. It seems to diminish the problem but takes awhile. Putting it into the jar keeps non-target animals from ingesting it i.e. tortoises. I hope someone posts something better. Oh yes, I sprinkle coffee grounds around perimeter of pen, and that may discourage them for awhile. Let us know if you find a better cure!

Try vinegar on the nest. It's none-toxic and very unpleasant to the ants. It won't kill them, but if you do it regularly they'll quickly move off and find another home. As far as removing them permanently...I'd go with the digging them out with a large spade. Perhaps a combination of the two would do the trick. Dig then mix in vinegar.

Good luck.

Boil them. Brooks

We had an ant problem at work, and with animals around we had to be really carefull what we used. Their method for getting rid of them was putting yellow corn meal on the ant hill... i have no idea what that does, but they swear by it! Good luck!

I tried yellow corn meal, and also Grits, a cereal. The story was it swells up inside the ants when ingested and kills them with "indigestion". It did not work here, and the harvester ants seem to like it. Let us know if it works for you, and as the entymologists will say, ants are pretty variable and specific, so perhaps some of these remedies work on a species but not on others. I regard ants a real nuisance here in Northern California, and I am grateful we do not endure the fire ants of the South lands.

...when all else failed...dis could be yer last ticket...

if only it worked eco i did it at ur suggestion to one of my russian pens this year and still have the exact same amount of ants not to mention its a pain in the bum for not effect

...if only it worked if yer foundation a clean slate...

...it's da same situ as human living in abesto quarters...and yer' a builder/engineer or whatsover...think about it...