ants! help!

[halfwaynowhere]

I just got home from work, only to find that my room is now swarming with ants. Right now they are only going after the kitten food, but I do need to be able to keep the kitten food in here, as the kittens are confined to my room until they are big enough to not be seen as food by our mastiff. I'm really worried about the ants getting into my cabinet where the Ts are. And I know I can't use poison... How can I safely get rid of the ants? I've tried the chalk and baby powder stuff before, the ants get through it in less than an hour... Any suggestions?

 

[Villosa]

I may be able to help but I need to ask you a few questions first to ID the ants.
When you crush them do they smell?
Are they small black ants?
Slow moving or very fast?

The way I deal with small fast moving ants is to crush a few at different parts of their trails and just let the rest go rampant and run away. Next go to where they're coming out of, usually for me it's at a corner. Do the same there as well. By crushing them the ants give off a defensive smell or other alerting odors that causes others to scatter. Now their concentration is broken and all they want to do is fee. Now just take your time to sweep them up. At the location where they entered I usually spray something non-toxic but will leave a sticky residue and preferable something very smelly, I find vinegar works very well as well. This usually prevents them from wanting to try to come out. If they keep coming back just keep up with it and eventually they will give up all together. Bare in mind that they are in fact in your house now and can reappear or appear at new spots later on. So keep and eye out.

Good luck with that, I know it can be very annoying.

 

[myrmecophile]

Being in La Puente they are almost without a doubt Argentine ants. The chalk products do not work . You can spray the area they are entering with windex or soapy water that will kill those ants already there in fact you can spray the entire lot with windex. If it were me though I would have no qualms about spraying the entrance with a low level of pesticide even Ts and kittens in the room as long as you confine i to the problem spot.

 

[halfwaynowhere]

they are coming in through my window... i thought they were in the kitten food, but when I went to toss it out last night, it was fine. i don't know what they are getting into. Yeah, they are the argenitine ants... horrible mutant things that are immune to almost everything! I'll try the crushing, and aspraying outside the window with windex... i hate using pesticides anyways...

 

[Moltar]

I've had some success with both listerine and/or febreeze. It won't really kill them but if you wipe down the areas where they're coming in it kills their scent trail and for some reason they don't want to touch that area ever again. Just keep the t's out of the way until they dissipate. I dunno 'bout argentine ants but the little black bastards we have here absolutely hate both of those items.

 

[halfwaynowhere]

I windexed their trail outside, and all around my window... I noticed they were getting into my A hentzi's tank, so I put a ky jelly barrier around all my tanks... I'm going to have to set up a moat in the cabinet where the slings are kept...

 

[arachnocat]

I get them every year. They ate my centipede one year, and almost one of my T's
I discovered this works pretty well and it's ok to spray it around the base of your T tanks:
mix together - clove, cinnimon, orange peel, dish soap (pref. citrus scented). Put it in a spray bottle and spray it anywhere you see them coming in. Ants hate it and it smells pretty good, kind of like apple pie