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Ants in tanks question

bekers71

bekers71

What addiction?!
Not sure if this is supposed to be listed here or in Misc corn disscussion. :shrugs:Could a Mod move it if it needs to be placed else where. Thanks.

I saw an ant today on one of my rack units so seeing I opened a few tubs and sure enough there were ants in them. There was water in the bowls. But none spilled in the bedding. None of the snakes are fed in the rack and all the tubs were fairly clean with the exception of a pile of poo in a few. Where I live ants are a pretty comman thing every spring and summer. Typically we have to put out a very toxic ant poision to get rid of most of them. But I can't put that in or near the snake tanks, it would kill my snakes. So what do I do? I cleaned the entire rack out and washed all the tubs and put fresh bedding in. Is there some thing else that can be done to keep them away from the snakes?
 
I keep ant "hotels" on the floor under the cages. If I still notice one, I spray the legs of the racks with "Provent-A-Mite." I don't KNOW it does any good, but it certainly doesn't HURT anything. Freak HEAVY rains pushed ants into obne of my 2 snake buildings a while back. I just put poisoned ant GRANULES (not fine particles) on the floor of the room and then swept it all out when the ants were gone. No problems. Just don't make it a habit to drop a mouse on the floor and then feed it to your snake!
KJ
 
I had some ants a few months ago and I went and got a box of those terro liquid bait stations and put them all along the floors and windowsills of snake room. They worked pretty good. It's poison, but you don't spray it, the ants take it back to the nest and it poisons their whole colony. My only concern was keeping my cat out of there since she is so nosy!
 
Not sure if this will help but, we had two huge ant nests spring up last year, one outside the front door in the step and another just off the side of the back door, a couple of weeks later. Thankfully they never managed to get inside.

I had run out of all the usual ant powders etc so decided to try mite spray. The little devils just upped and died and we had no further problems with ants last year. So if you could find where they are coming from, it could be worth trying some mite spray on the nest itself. If not then what KJ said about spraying the legs of the racks may be a very good idea, as I believe mite spray works by dissolving the chittinus (sp?) outer shell of insects and it may even act as a deterrent. :shrugs:

Hope that's helpful, good luck and best wishes,
 
There is a gel put out by raid I believe that is about the viscosity of maple syrup that you could put on the legs of the rack as well.

I would just make sure none of the ant nests are in the snake cages.

Seems like they are easily dealt with.
 
Jcapicy said:
There is a gel put out by raid I believe that is about the viscosity of maple syrup that you could put on the legs of the rack as well.
Click to expand...

Like Tangle foot? If so, that stuff is a MESS. It gets on anything that ever touches it. Yuck. :( I hope it is better than tanglefoot. We used it a lot back when i worked in a "cricket lab" and on poles holding up wood duck nests boxes. Man, that stuff is a MESS.

KJ
 
No where near as bad!

Its not all stringy and not too, too sticky. It comes in a syringe too so its easy to apply. I've never used it on a vertical surface though. I make little cardboard squares and put a drop or two on it and place them around the room. Fortunately I haven't had any ants at home, just at my old job due to people eating/leaving sweet (un-sealed) in their cubicles. Sugar ants are so annoying!
 
diamondlil said:
How about diatomaceous earth? It's supposed to be great stuff, it makes micro cuts in the insects' chitin and they dessicate and die!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth
Click to expand...

Very useful stuff, I agree. I have used the stuff all over the place and it works realy well. The best part about it is the fact that it's effect is 100% physical, so it doesn't contain any poisons. Quick tip: Use a mask when putting it down, or read the bag to see if you should do anything else. I imagine that the stuff would look like tiny asbestos (asbesti? :shrugs:)on a microscopic level.

Of course, I wouldn't put in the tanks, but it may work in other places.
 
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