Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was reading the posts about the ant problems.....and I just wanted to tell PHRatz and anyone else who feed hummingbirds, that if you put a little vegetable oil on the hanger (ie. red plastic coated wire) that the ants will not climb down it to get to the sugar water.

Also, a question here also concerning ants. What would one do if the ants decided to live in the outdoor enclosure? I mean.....how would you get rid of them without harming the turtles if one day the ants decided to set up house inside the pen? I have always used those granules that the ants carry down into their tunnels......but haven't used that since I have the turtles out in the yard. So......what would one do if this happens? I would like to be prepared in case my turtles have "guests" this summer. Thanks for any input you all may have.

>>I was reading the posts about the ant problems.....and I just wanted to tell PHRatz and anyone else who feed hummingbirds, that if you put a little vegetable oil on the hanger (ie. red plastic coated wire) that the ants will not climb down it to get to the sugar water.

Thank you for that tip. I've never heard that before, I'll try it this year when the hummingbirds come back.

I hadn't thought about what would happen if ants move into my outdoor enclosure. It never happened when we had the pen that had to be torn down.
I did have a problem once with some particularly aggressive ants that were not fire ants. I needed them out of the lawn because the tortoise was walking over them. I took one of those arsenic stakes I had & hammered it into the ground near their burrow but then I covered the stake and their burrow with a piece of metal that I found in the husband's workshop, I don't even know what it was but it was doughnut shaped. The ants were all over that metal thing but the tortoise couldn't get to the bait that was staked in the middle of the metal thing. It only took about 24 maybe 48 hours for the ants to vanish then I pulled up the stake. That was the end of them.
So a bait that the ants can get to but the turtles can't is what I'm getting at.
-----
PHRatz

i asked the guy i am buying agent oranges girlfriend from about how to prevent ants from getting in.. he said that if you put vasaline around the outside of the enclosure the ants cant get in.. that might work with the hummingbird thing too.. worth a try anyway..
-----
my pets: clown treefrogs, reed frogs, big eyed treefrogs, tiger leg monkey frogs, gray treefrogs, milk frogs, cuban treefrogs, whites tree frog, green treefrogs, squirrel treefrogs, blue webbed gliding treefrog, red eye treefrogs, chameleon treefrogs?, mossy treefrogs, dusky salamanders, tiger salamander, veiled chameleon, box turtles, mud turtle, map turtle, yellowbelly slider, florida softshell, two saltwater tanks, four cats, two chinchillas, and a boyfriend.