Came home to ants in my enclosures- talk about a fun evening.

[RebeccaSmith20]

So, I sort of live bordering a state forest and there's a ton of wildlife and I don't treat for pests unless absolutely necessary. Needless to say, my yard is a bit 'buggy'. Spent the whole day at a reptile show, found out that during my absence a bunch of ants found a crack between the seals in a bedroom window and came in by the hundreds to invade the large display cabinet I'm using to keep my spiderlings safe from the felines. Two enclosures had dead cricket remains because I had to give a couple slings prekilled crickets as the shop only had large crickets instead of the smalls I usually buy. So, there were leftovers in there all day because I fed them at 7 am when I woke up. I siliconed the gap in the window, hit the trail of ants outside with diatomaceous earth and now I have the feet of the display cabinet sitting in little plates of diatomaceous earth. I took all my sling enclosures out, spent the evening squishing ants, most enclosures only had a couple, so it wasn't too bad. Except, who wants to squish ants in an H. maculata's enclosure? Oh yeah, nobody. I had to completely rehouse my T. violaceous and M. balfouri cause they had the cricket remains that attracted the ants in the first place.

Anyhow, that was a whole, brand-new issue for me. I've never had ants before. Is it likely the diatomaceous earth will do the trick? So far so good as they'll have to find another route in, but, I guess it still remains to be seen if they find another way in other than the window.

Aww sounds stressful. I had ants recently in my front yard, my nan cut fresh lemon up, sprinkled some everywhere. Not seen any since maybe worth a try to keep them away

 

[DustyD]

Aww sounds stressful. I had ants recently in my front yard, my nan cut fresh lemon up, sprinkled some everywhere. Not seen any since maybe worth a try to keep them away

When can your nan come to my house? Obviously after visiting Jenniferinfl.

 

[RebeccaSmith20]

When can your nan come to my house? Obviously after visiting Jenniferinfl.

Haha she's a gem I laughed at her lemons but they worked

 

[Jenniferinfl]

Aww sounds stressful. I had ants recently in my front yard, my nan cut fresh lemon up, sprinkled some everywhere. Not seen any since maybe worth a try to keep them away

So far they haven't come back in- so far so good.

I have to say, I will definitely be keeping the feet of my shelving in cups of diatomaceous earth from now on. Unfortunately, I have a bunch of fruit fly cultures and I think if I had any fruit around I would end up with cultures around the house that weren't intentional.