How to repel pest insects without harming chams/feeders?

[Olimpia]

I am sick and tired of the roaches and spiders in my house. I've had a roach every night this week and this morning I killed 4 large spiders and an egg sack. I live in old apartments, so they must be sneaking in throuh somewhere and it's driving me nuts. I have a phobia of wild roaches! And the suckers are probably feasting on my crickets and gutload!

So what do I use? What about those ultrasonic bug repelent things, would they drive the crickets or the dog nuts? I've never had a problem with bugs IN the house like this before.

Thanks!

 

[ataraxia]

haha when i lived in ocala. everynight we would have one or two run across the floor. being originally from indiana we freaked out. those suckers were huge! so big you could hear them running across tile flooring. smash them with your shoes and they would pop like a balloon HAHA! how we got rid of them was.....we moved from florida!

o'btw i also saw the biggest wild spider in my life there. the leg span was bigger than a butter container (i tried to catch it). looked like a huge wolf spider.

good luck getting rid of florida's jewels.

 

[Olimpia]

Uugh I know! Damn you warm tropical weather! It spawns roachzillas! I've had two in my car recently and it is not good to have me see one while i'm driving. It was night on a lonely road and I slammed on the brakes and started beating it with a coke bottle. They give me the creeps like nothing else.

You must have seen a water spider, I think they're called. They get huuuge. It's like seeing a thin tarantula crossing your livingroom. And banana spiders get pretty big as well.

I might have to move too! Lol

 

[ataraxia]

lol i know what you mean, we did!

i use to flip out like i was on fire when i would walk into a spider web. still dont particularly like it but i am a little past the fear of not knowing where the spider is on the web i just walked into!

 

[JackP308]

If you live in apartment complex more than likely you will never be able to fully exterminate them unless everyone does something. They just keep coming back.

 

[chameleongirl2]

lol

 

[Olimpia]

If I use one of these 2-3 hour foggers and then I open the cham room windows, will it be safe for the feeders and chams to return to their cages after, say, a full day? I have cages too large to move so I can't get them out. What about the plants? I could throw sheets over the cages to keep the poisons from landing anywhere on the plants.

Yay or nay?
At the very least I am certainly fogging my car. Having them in there is horrific

 

[Seeco]

Fogging is not worth it -- they will just come back. Baits are probably the best bet but really it is part of the env where you live.

 

[SonTigerPantherCham]

Olimpia,
I would be worried about residue on the cages if you fog.
You and I have the exact same problem, if I figure something out I will certainly pm you!
Anne

 

[ChameleonRave]

Your best bet would be to move. When my mom was living in Texas and in California she seen massive roaches and other critters that are vile and disgusting that we don't have up in South Dakota.

That is her reasoning for me not getting to have a Dubia colony.. That she knows of in the house. LOL.

Good Luck with getting rid of the roaches!

Try putting out tape on the floor before you go to sleep and see where they might be coming from. Around the edges of the wall might work the best and the bottom part of cabinets.

 

[Olimpia]

I bought and set down all sorts of traps, but the tape thing is an excellent idea, thanks Chamrave. And my car is being fogged as we speak, I hope everything that thinks it has made a home in my vehicle dies quickly.

I think perhaps if I cover the cages in sheets/plastic there should be no problem with the chams getting in contact with the poison, but it doesn't seem like a horrible idea. After checking the room well I see that I have spiders and spiderlings everywhere, big roaches/palmetto bugs, and who knows what else. Fogging at least would killl what's there and make it easier to keep up with new waves of intruders? This might be true if what's in there now made its way into the room on the new cham plants.

Don't know. I got a new baby cham yesterday so I really can't start moving them around for a few days anyway. Hopefully I can hear a few more opinions on doing it or not (or what to do instead.)

 

[ChameleonRave]

Try calling a pest control and speak with the landlord of your apartment buildings. See what they both can do about it. Good Luck! I hope the tape works! Try double sided tape so it won't slip around?

 

[ataraxia]

as said before unless everyone in your complex agrees to join in on a pest control, im afraid your efforts will be frustrating. what pest you kill today another will be replaced tomorrow with another.

honestly, move to a single dwelling house or move from the south if you have a bad phobia of bugs. move to southern nevada! i stayed in pahrump for a while. i never saw the first bug flying or crawling.

 

[Syn]

I like to keep spiders so they catch any stray feeders. Don't know about Florida species, though.

 

[Olimpia]

We have the brown recluse spiders down here, so I see a fuzzy brown spider and that sucker is out of my house for sure! lol

 

[Syn]

That's understandable. I always try to catch and release versus the bottom of the shoe method. Unless they touch me. Then I might forget I like spiders for a second.

 

[azgnoinc]

I bought and set down all sorts of traps, but the tape thing is an excellent idea, thanks Chamrave. And my car is being fogged as we speak, I hope everything that thinks it has made a home in my vehicle dies quickly.

I think perhaps if I cover the cages in sheets/plastic there should be no problem with the chams getting in contact with the poison, but it doesn't seem like a horrible idea. After checking the room well I see that I have spiders and spiderlings everywhere, big roaches/palmetto bugs, and who knows what else. Fogging at least would killl what's there and make it easier to keep up with new waves of intruders? This might be true if what's in there now made its way into the room on the new cham plants.

Don't know. I got a new baby cham yesterday so I really can't start moving them around for a few days anyway. Hopefully I can hear a few more opinions on doing it or not (or what to do instead.)

I do believe that if you fog the apartment/house that you will most likely kill your chams, regardless of what you use to seal their cages, unless you were 100% sure that they were airtight. Safest bet is to remove the chams and any/all plants & feeders you intend to use or keep with them. Foggers do just that- they completely fog any room you are in when they are set off- which is why they tell you to leave the room and close the doors when you set one off, if they can make you sick by breathing in the fumes, that would almost certainly spell instant death for a chameleon - think about how small their lungs are in comparison to ours - and the concentrated percentages they would inhale versus the size of the organs they breath with.
IMHO - it would be a TERRIBLE idea to use foggers in my house, let alone the room I keep my chams in with them in it. I would web search some natural insecticides and try to start with those first- while I was looking for a places to temporarily move my chams to so I could fog if that didn't work.

 

[Elizadolots]

See, I had the impression she was going to pull the chameleons and take them off site. The question was would there still be too much poison to put the chameleons back in the cages.

Honestly, I wouldn't do it. I'd be working on more mundane ways like double sticky tape around critical areas and packing openings with salt. Poisons should, I think be used in very focused ways, like "here's the way they are getting in the room, zap it".

I think Chameleon Rave is on the right track. I'd speak to the landlord/super. Minimally, get that complaint lodged. Encourage all your neighbors to contact the same person to complain about the bugs. Maybe then you can get the whole building tented. Yes, this would mean you have to move for 48 hours, but that's do-able. I would seriously recommend removing the cages for that time frame, however, if that's not possible, the exterminators will provide you with plastic bags that the gas cannot get through. It is possible to bag food in them, leave them in the house during the tenting, then eat the food. If you get some extras and do a very good job of overlapping and taping, you should be able to create a safe environment for the cage (without the chameleons).

If it does get to the point of an exterminator, you should talk to them personally. Don't just listen to the general announcement. It's in their best interest to make things right for you so they will give you good advice.

 

[fluxlizard]

My sister in law who lives in DC has had a struggle with roaches in her building also. I used to do volunteer work with kids in public housing in inner cities in central illinois and that was the first I even knew roaches lived here in America when I was just a young man. I was pretty naive LOL. Anyway- they do live in the north as well.

Because of my sister in law's problem, I did some reading up about this to try and help her. One very successful strategy- borax (a detergent- you might have to look in a locally owned grocery store) is the poison, you can add a little sugar for bait. Borax I think dries them out- so they just have to walk through it. You can put this powder anywhere the roaches go, and it's soap so pretty safe. The successful strategy I found online pulled off all the baseboards from the walls next to the floor and all the light switch and electrical outlet covers and sprinkled the borax liberally into those locations. Also behind cupboards, beneath and behind the stove and refridgerator, etc. Then covers and baseboards were replaced and then the important part- everything was sealed with caulking. Everything- top and bottom of baseboards (which actually looks pretty nice) and around the light switch plates and electrical outlet plates, around the backs of the cupboards, around the doors- anywhere there is a crack between the inner wall and the inside of the apartment. Basically seals the apartment off from the rest of the building after leaving borax to kill anything that lingers around trying to find a way in or eat a way in.

A few people online did this and they said it was still working months and months later...

Another thing to try- go to chinatown and get some roach paste. I don't know what to call the stuff, but I knew a vietnamese family that had a roach problem in their kitchen and they used a paste from chinatown (showed me- it was a chinese product- probably not available elsewhere). One application made their roach problem go away forever... But they weren't in an apartment where they could be re-infested...

 

[Olimpia]

No, obviously ALL animals would be gone from the house for a while, I don't want to risk anyone getting sick and dying.

If I were living in a place I owned I guarantee you that I would seal up all the nooks and crannies and absolutely insect proof everything as much as I could! lol But in a rented apartment I don't really want to put in too much effort, since they'll just charge me lots of money when I leave for "damages" anyway. I'm not investing in this apartment.

I haven't seen anything else running around since I put the traps down, so for now I don't think I'm going to do anything else. Hopefully they stay out dying for a while.