Help!!

[Leahryan]

I just found out that I have ants in my house, and worse, there are a few in the chameleon cage! I took everything out and cleaned it, and just as I was letting my guy back into his cage, i noticed two or three still crawling around one of his branches. Is this a huge problem, should I relocate him to another house while this problem persists?

 

[RPCV]

I just went through the same thing. I tracked down where they were getting into the house and put bait poison there (away from the cham cage). They took the bait - stopped looking for food in the enclosure and after about 5 days stopped seeing them all together.

 

[VeiledOwner87]

i dont know if its harmfull. probably no more harmfull than a nasty feeder nibble to your animal. im not sure at all. but if it makes you feel better, put some ant trap discs in or around your cage. it wouldnt only harm your chameleon if it licked inside. so i dont know, give it a try.

 

[Leahryan]

are you sure an ant trap in the bottom of the cage can't be harmful? I can't really do much about the ants in the house because i live in crappy college housing for another two weeks ....

 

[draetish]

Place the traps "outside" the cage around the bottom and find where they are coming in from and treat that area. I'm sure chams in the wild come across ants but being locked up gives them no chance to escape them. If they are fire ants I would be very concerned.

 

[Leahryan]

they're definitely not fire ants they're very tiny tiny black ants.

 

[pssh]

Place the legs of the table the cage is on in tubs of water

 

[draetish]

Oh, piss ants. Yeah, just get some ant bait traps and set them outside around the cage and find where they are coming in at.

 

[PardalisGirl]

Non-toxic solution......

I'm always looking for non-toxic solutions to problems because of all the cats we have. They sniff everything. For food eating ants you can use a mixture of sugar and Borax (old time laundry powder available at Target, etc.) Put just a little of the mixture on something like a shallow jar lid. They eat it and die. They take it back to the "nest" and give it to other ants which also die. I tried it out earlier this year and it worked in two days. No more ants.

Borax is handy for all sorts of cleaning purposes. I got a parrot last year and found out that most household cleaners produce fumes that are toxic to birds. Birds have a lung system which is much more sensitive to chemicals than ours are. I've made a lot of changes in the way I clean. Interestingly, chameleon and other lizard lungs are more like bird lungs than people lungs. I've decided that if something isn't good for my parrot, it's not good for my chams, cats or me either.

 

[tananda]

another non-toxic solution is to put petroleum jelly (a thin line) around the base. For some reason they won't go over it. This is how I keep them out of all my vivariums. Once that stuff is on (as long as the cats don't lick it off) you'll never have ants in the tank again. I have also used this along the baseboard where they were coming in at & it works great.

 

[sarroca808]

i have the load of those black ants they made a nest in the pot in my chams cage but they dont bother, ive found no reason to kill them they eat his poop lol