be careful of argentine ants! thank god i was awake.

[crashergs]

wow, thank you jesus for making me buy a solifugid, it was about 1 am, which is an hour ago, i went to go check on her and see what shes doing since i was awake. and i noticed she was moving erratically, finally i get to see what the solifugids do at night and watch them tunnel and do whatever they do, so i turned on the light and saw little lines moving, and i look closer, HOLY <poop> argentine ants, by the thousands, all over her, she was trying to dig but they would come off, i looked at my african giant millipedes, same thing! infested with argentine ants, I look at my bearded dragon, and a line was barely forming up to the draongs cage, immediatley i rushed the pede tank and the solifugids tank, put them in temp containers and threw out all the substrate outside, washed the tanks and put them back in, and im thinkin OH crap i forgot about my centipedes!!!! (this is where I realize i need to cut down on some bugs) so i ran into my bed room, and there was alottttttttt of argentine ants in my s. gigantea cage, i had to dump that out, and almost lost her, as she scurried beneath a wooden plank in the garage, then i put her in a tube and then into a ice box finally I can clean this tank infested with argentine ants, then I look over to my subspinipes cage, and a line was bareeeeeellyy forming up the power cord to the heat mat, i sprayed everything, I left the tanks in the garage and sprayed ant killer about 5 ft radius from the tanks i left outside, hopeeefullyyy they will be there by tomorrow. Had i not bought that solifugid, i wouldnt have been awake to save my s.gigantea, bearded dragon, texas millis, african giant millis, some madagascar roaches, solifugid, subspinipes, my whole collection would of been wiped out.


be careful of argentine ants... i was completely oblivious to this matter, i should thought about ants willing to attack almost anything if they dont get what they want from the fridge

 

[Ganoderma]

damn man that must of been one stresful night!!! i woul;d of hated to be you and work the next day! were these wild ants? or your escaped captives? where abouts do you live?

 

[CustomNature]

be careful of argentine ants... i was completely oblivious to this matter, i should thought about ants willing to attack almost anything if they dont get what they want from the fridge

Yes, where do you live?? If you live in America and it was an infestation from a captive ant colony or something that might have come in with your other insects, that might be a pretty serious problem. I mean for everyone. It seems obvious that they are prolific breeders and that they thrive well in our environment, it probably wouldn't take them long to produce another potential queen and spread the colony. Seems they spread quick the way it is! Yikes, that's some scary stuff. Did you just "throw out the substrate" or did you do anything to sterilize it?

 

[cacoseraph]

Yes, where do you live?? If you live in America and it was an infestation from a captive ant colony or something that might have come in with your other insects, that might be a pretty serious problem. I mean for everyone. It seems obvious that they are prolific breeders and that they thrive well in our environment, it probably wouldn't take them long to produce another potential queen and spread the colony. Seems they spread quick the way it is! Yikes, that's some scary stuff. Did you just "throw out the substrate" or did you do anything to sterilize it?

the argentine ants are all over southern CA, been there for quite some time

very annoying. apparently in Argentina there are different colonies of the same species that fight each other and do a lot to keep the numbers down... but in CA there is only one super colony all over the state, so they never fight with each other

 

[crashergs]

no no no, these are wild ants that just swarmed everything in a matter of hours, fortunately i dont work mondays-tuesdays so i caught some sleep from last night dilemma.

 

[jarrell]

damn that was <messed> up. you had to do all that at 1am that had to suck. glad all you animals are allright.

 

[arachnocat]

I had an ant problem recently too. They got to my giant centipede which was just awful. They ate a hole in the poor guy while he was still alive. I couldn't use ant spray in the bug room of course so i quickly went online and got some herbal recipes, mixed stuff together in a spray bottle and sprayed the walls and outside of the tanks.
I used a bit of citrus dish soap, water, cinnimon, mint, cloves, nutmeg, allspice and orange peel. My room smelled a bit like apple pie after and the ants haven't been back since

 

[crashergs]

its happaned to you xeno bug? man thats horrible, were they argentine ants or some other species?

 

[arachnocat]

No, I think they were another kind. I have some strange ants outside my house. They're kind of large and have pointed abdomens. They don't seem to be interested in anything sweet but come inside for water and my bugs!

 

[beetleman]

i had a similar experience years ago(i'm in fla.) had lot's of lizards in a community tanks(anoles,skinks,glass lizards etc.) saw 1 ant in their tank didn't think much,well......in the middle of the night i heard alot of shifting,banking,loud russling,woke up(this was in my room) and there were hundreds of!@#$%^&*() fireants attacking these poor critters they were everywhere! the bottom of the tank was covered with them,ofcourse i acted really fast,got all the lizards out safely,and sprayed the crap out of everything! the lizards in the other room,had no inverts at the time,got rid of them?hell yeah! never saw a fire ant in my apartment since,now with all of my inverts,i keep everything clean,and no problem,but as a rule when you see 1 ant you know he has alot of friends right behind him and these fire ants are all over down here,and these things can kill you. and they are here to stay.

 

[8ball]

Yea i had a fire ant problem about a month ago with my black widow, went into her jar, killed the black widow, and ate the eggsack she left

 

[KennyGee]

man im lucky all we have are carpenter ants and some carnivoruse ant but there a low number colony plus i live in a rural part of port orchard so they have all the bugs they need to sastifiy themselves

 

[Arietans]

Wow!!

Yea i had a fire ant problem about a month ago with my black widow, went into her jar, killed the black widow, and ate the eggsack she left

 

[Arlius]

Im glad it's too cold in Canada for any serious species of ants (fire ants, argentina, whatever). It would suck if ant species here raided, but not that much!

 

[236260]

SOLUTION:

 

[Dean]

AHHAHA! Nice solution.

Sounds horrible to have a collection attacked by ants. JEEZ!

 

[syndicate]

yeah ive heard these argentine ants can get into anything!seen people post online about there ant colonys being takin down by them sometimes

 

[crashergs]

im sorry, but argentine ants would eat that ant eater lol, man these guys look sooo innocent walking in their cute lil line, they dont bite you, or sting, but they are overwhelming in numbers its crazy!!!!


the reason why you cannot get rid of those ant species is because each ant can goto any ant colony, unlike others that will probably kill another ant even if from same species, these ants are immune to those ant baits, because ant baits are meant for one colony, which is mainly for all those popular species of ants we have here in U.S.A, that kills a colony off, ive tried using those but its no purpose since that ant doesnt belong to any one colony, and those colonies are up to 12 colonies in a given area?

 

[BigToach]

argentine ants ate my friends A. metallica only fangs left in the enclosure, that was just overnight.