Effects of RAID?

Selenops

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But Baking Soda is a known commonly regarded ant killer and an especially potent ant deterrent.

And non-toxic.

I know, I've tried it to absolute success.

CLICK HERE!
 
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Nerri1029

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There is very little real about the notion of the word, "natural" for anything regarding insect control. If your goal is a treatment that works with low mammalian toxicity, no residuals, and little chance of hitting innocent bystanders, a boric acid and sugar solution is by far the best choice. You can either buy some of the prefab concoctions, of which Terro is well reputed choice, or you can make your own by mixing up about a 20% w/v sugar solution with 2% w/v boric acid and either put it out in shallow bowls where the ants are aggregated or in cotton ball stoppered tubes/bottles on their sides.

Most of the so-called natural products do no better than placebo. Ants are by far one of the most difficult pests to control when there actually is an infestation problem.

On the other hand, there are some organic pesticides derived from soil fungi that will do the trick nicely if your goal is to remain "all natural". Of course, they're nastier than just about any synthetic and I would sooner spray DDT around the house than these, but that's what believing that "natural" cures are inherently better gets you.
:clap: :clap:

All Natural- things that are:
- asbestos
- curare
- nicotine
- the list goes on...

B&G placed sticky traps around here.. and you are right.. it provides you with a decent sampling of the fauna heheh

for those lay people the 20% w/v:

w/v means weight per volume and in this case it means 20grams of sugar for every 100ml of solution..
OR
for the metric impaired - 1.67 lbs per gallon
 

Hedorah99

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B&G placed sticky traps around here.. and you are right.. it provides you with a decent sampling of the fauna heheh
We use them to control the mouse population at the zoo. I hate them because them just seem to catch and kill lots of stuff you never intended. We had actually caught milk snake on them which would have done more to decrease the mouse population than the sticky traps would ahve ever. Needless to say we don't use them.


To the OP. Try the boric acid and sweetwater baits, Terro is one brand name. We have a huge ant problem in some of the reptile buildings and this does a great job decreasing their numbers. But each ant sp. has its own preferences so you may have to experiment a little.
 

Rizzolo

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a boric acid and sugar solution is by far the best choice. You can either buy some of the prefab concoctions, of which Terro is well reputed choice, or you can make your own by mixing up about a 20% w/v sugar solution with 2% w/v boric acid a
absolutely correct! this is the "bait" concoction. i have chosen to use the straight boric acid powder because of its long residence and i am using it in an area where i can just leave it. also, in powder form i can make a barrier line entirely surrounding my T enclosure. with the "bait" concoction, you can kill the colony quicker, but in the meantime (which can be weeks with argentine ants), the ants will have their way with your Ts.

in my case, the boric acid barrier serves a dual purpose - my roach colonies (one is B lateralis) are within my T enclosure also, so the occasional escapee cannot make it out of the area without crossing the line. they die in a very short time.

i think that using Code Monkey's bait and a boric acid powder barrier around your precious animals is a good safe bet.

i am interested in the baking soda suggested by Megalon. i had not heard that before. if effective, it could be used just like the boric acid powder and would be even less toxic to humans and animals.

As for Common Spider's comment, "I am just trying to find a natural way to get rid of them. I am no expert but I thought that might be a good try." You prior post actually said "They work." Why present a useless guess as if it is sound advice if you actually have no idea? :mad:
 

Keith Richard

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absolutely correct! this is the "bait" concoction. i have chosen to use the straight boric acid powder because of its long residence and i am using it in an area where i can just leave it. also, in powder form i can make a barrier line entirely surrounding my T enclosure. with the "bait" concoction, you can kill the colony quicker, but in the meantime (which can be weeks with argentine ants), the ants will have their way with your Ts.

in my case, the boric acid barrier serves a dual purpose - my roach colonies (one is B lateralis) are within my T enclosure also, so the occasional escapee cannot make it out of the area without crossing the line. they die in a very short time.

i think that using Code Monkey's bait and a boric acid powder barrier around your precious animals is a good safe bet.

i am interested in the baking soda suggested by Megalon. i had not heard that before. if effective, it could be used just like the boric acid powder and would be even less toxic to humans and animals.

As for Common Spider's comment, "I am just trying to find a natural way to get rid of them. I am no expert but I thought that might be a good try." You prior post actually said "They work." Why present a useless guess as if it is sound advice if you actually have no idea? :mad:
The ants are actually nowhere near my collection, nor will they be. They just persist in showing up on the kitchen counter top. How much of a health hazard is having this Boric acid based "bait" in the kitchen? How long would it take to eliminate the colony? Thanks again for the input.
 

Code Monkey

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The ants are actually nowhere near my collection, nor will they be. They just persist in showing up on the kitchen counter top. How much of a health hazard is having this Boric acid based "bait" in the kitchen? How long would it take to eliminate the colony? Thanks again for the input.
How much is a question of the size/health of the home colony. Basically, you bait until you don't have any more ant foraging in your kitchen. Depending on your aesthetic sense you can use anything from a couple of small vials to 16 oz soda bottles stoppered with cotton filled with the sugar/boric acid solution where the ants aggregate are what you need; just refill as needed. If you notice that ants are still around but not attracted to the solution, replace it with fresh: as water evaporates the sugar and boric acid concentrations increase and both can become repellent. 20% w/v for sucrose is the optimal concentration for attracting most ants. Above 4% boric acid, many ants won't feed.

As for toxicity, a brand name for boric acid is Borax, i.e. a laundry aid, i.e. pretty much as harmless as you're going to get.
 

Rizzolo

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boric acid health threat?

Wildheart - I see you are in San Francisco. I am right across the bay from you, in El Cerrito. i think it is a good chance that you have argentine ants. argentine ants are a little more of a problem than many other types of ants. i won't go into it here, but i suggest googling them. in essence, the don't form separate colonies in our area, but are one giant supercolony, and can have multiple queens in a nest. usually, if you kill the queen (just one), you kill the nest. not so with these creatures.

boric acid is pretty harmless but not completely. make sure cats and such don't get into it. as Code Monkey says though, it is about as harmless as you can get.

it can take a while to kill the nest, and it is difficult to know whether you killed the nest, or they just stopped coming inside. often, they start coming in when it rains, or gets too dry, or something else stresses them.

also, when baiting fo ants, you have to first determine where they are swarming and put your bait exactly on their path. otherwise, they won't come for it and you will never kill them. you are best off if you can find all of their incursion points and bait at multiple locations.
 

Selenops

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Baking Soda is FANTASTIC because sodium bicabonate is highly toxic to ants and is a deterrent. Last year we had ant trails in the kitchen from the planter to the window box into the kitchen. I haven't seen them since -- ANYWHERE!

Great thing despite being TOXIC to ants, baking soda isn't going to harm your pets such as dogs and cats, neither your plants in the garden which you can sprinkle in the soda amongst.

And if the infestation is on your carpet well sprinkle this on and it plays a dual role -- DEORDORIZES your rooms rather than leave behind toxic fumes. Line the floorboards, sprinkle the carpet and closet spaces, the plants all safely.

I put in a link with many positive links concerning using baking soda as formidable ant killer and invasive ant colony removal. And I encourage others to research the toxicity of sodium bicarbonate towards ants.
 

Scorpiove

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I have had an ant invasion kill 6 of my ts in one go, came home from work and man I was depressed. Don't let any ants you see go. They are monsters and they killed my babies :(.
 

Selenops

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I have had an ant invasion kill 6 of my ts in one go, came home from work and man I was depressed. Don't let any ants you see go. They are monsters and they killed my babies :(.
My condolences, that is a hard bitter pill to swallow especially especially from a common home invading pest.
 

Rizzolo

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So far, i have had several incursions, but always caught them before the Ts succcumbed. It is usually at about 6 in the morning that i find the ant invasion, as i am leaving for work, when i take a quick look to see who is still up hunting. i usually get to see both lividums at this time, as well as most of the other burrowers off and on.

i have the ant emergency routine down now, but it always pisses me off! it is nice having something that i know will work (boric acid, and possibly baking soda now) to keep them out once i clean them out, so that i can go off to work and not worry about what i will find when i come home.

they got into one of my roach colonies that is separate from the Ts. i put in up on a pedestal that was sitting in water so that they couldn't get in our out and left it. didn't seem to bother the roaches at all. i figured i would wait and see how long it took for them to just die off. there were more and more every day, so i thought the little f---ers had brought in a queen and started a nest. i cleaned them all out, new substrate (i use substrate for my burrowing roaches) and everything. next morning - full of ants again. so i investigated some more (my eyesight is not as good as it used to be) and found that they were coming down the electrical cord to the heat lamp. A-holes!

finally got them out for good, but i am tired of sifting through substrate for discoids! (they didn't like it either)

there haven't been many recently - i don't think it has anything to do with my eradication efforts - so i think they are just not coming in. probably the cold snap. my heart bleeds for them :D

i am excited about the baking soda possibility - Thanks Megalon! it is much cheaper and accessible, and even less toxic.

of course, you just can't beat those sticky traps!!!:razz:
 

Code Monkey

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Hold on the baking soda, so far, I haven't found one credible source for it's alleged ant toxicity. So far, all it sounds like to me is another variant of the baby powder or cinnamon myths. Sodium bicarbonate is just a mild buffer, there is no reason to believe that ants will ingest it except in small quantities when grooming after coming in contact with it, and unless there's something I never learned doing my thesis on ant control, should be about as harmful as air.

These products, in so much as they work, work by interrupting their pheremone trails. Foragers follow the trails like a trail of bread crumbs. Just about anything sprinkled over their trail (cinnamon, Raid, vinegar, baking soda, baby powder) can act as the equivalent of a "Road Closed" sign and stop them. Of course, they often merely act as a "Road Closed, take the Detour" sign and the ants go around your barrier if possible. They don't do anything to actually control the ants by killing the home colony or preventing future foragers from finding a new way in.

OTOH, since I've never heard of the baking soda claim, I'm going to wait until I've exhausted my attempts to find anything credible on it before declaring it no more effective than all the other non-toxic ant control balogne that's out there.
 

Rizzolo

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Thanks CodeMonkey! i will keep an eye on this thread to see what you come up with re the baking soda and "remedy." Did you really do a thesis on ant control? i meant to do some searches on the Baking Soda to see what is reported, but haven't gotten around to it. i will also let you know, if i find anything. meanwhile, i have a testing ground at my house. the ants seem to be in "remission" right now, probably due to the cold.

i actually find ants fascinating i general and only "hate" the argentine ants because they are such a pest. my whole yard seems like one giant nest. in fact, all of my neighbors report the same thing. practically anywhere you dig, the ground crawls with them.
 

Code Monkey

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Did you really do a thesis on ant control?
Yep, I studied the effects of Termidor (active: Fipronil) on three pest species of ants (pavement, black carpenter, odorous house) with a secondary element examining intercolony variation in fipronil response with black carpenter ants. The first part was basically testing the marketing claims that had no published data supporting them when I started. The second part was the interesting part because I documented some significant variation in efficacy from different black carpenter ant colonies, which isn't supposed to happen according to conventional wisdom. The paper is forthcoming, hopefully before the end of this year.
 

common spider

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Yep, I studied the effects of Termidor (active: Fipronil) on three pest species of ants (pavement, black carpenter, odorous house) with a secondary element examining intercolony variation in fipronil response with black carpenter ants. The first part was basically testing the marketing claims that had no published data supporting them when I started. The second part was the interesting part because I documented some significant variation in efficacy from different black carpenter ant colonies, which isn't supposed to happen according to conventional wisdom. The paper is forthcoming, hopefully before the end of this year.

So what you are saying is that the people that have the problem in a nutshell have to use things that are poison?

I am so not into things that are bad to the envorment.

But what are you going to do?

I am glad that we do not have that problem.

But what about the walk in traps?

You know they go in but don't come out do they work?
 

Rizzolo

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The paper is forthcoming, hopefully before the end of this year.
that sounds like fun research. I would love to read your paper.

Fipronil is the active ingredient in one of the types of bait i had used for the argentine ants. i forget what the other is - will check tonight. i had generally used two types at once, to assure that something works. since i started using Boric Acid, i have pretty much given up with the conventional insecticides, unless i have a serious incursion in an area where i can safely bait.
 

Code Monkey

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So what you are saying is that the people that have the problem in a nutshell have to use things that are poison?

I am so not into things that are bad to the envorment.
This forum is not the place to get into this, but suffice it to say that your viewpoint is unsupported. Any form of insect control not based on exclusion involves poisons. Whether those poisons are so-called natural or synthetic means exactly nothing. Each compound has its own specific toxicities to invertebrates, mammals, birds, etc. (and it's the synthetics that are the most specific to inverts versus vertebrates). Each compound has it's own potential to leech into water supplies (and the ones that do this the least are soil binding synthetics). Each compound has it's particular longevity, potential to runoff into unintended areas, etc. Whether it's natural or synthetic doesn't matter, their effects on the environment are well studied and most complaints are unsupported by any sort of peer reviewed data.

For instance, although propronents of the so-called organic farming methods rail against the effects of the tons of pesticides used every year, they fail to admit a basic fact: the overwhelming majority of pesticides used today break down completely within 2 years (and most within months). Those that persist longer are only used under very specific conditions. For example, fipronil binds to soil particles and lasts for 5+ years. This means it cannot runoff or get into the water table and is ideal for termite control if used in a saturation application because it won't be exposed to sunlight underground. On the other hands, as a perimeter spray twice a year around a building, it will only kill those inverts who come within 5 feet of a building, and after a season or two will be gone. In other words, for the most part, pesticides are not building up in the environment and if a given agricultural plot is allowed to go fallow it will be completely safe in a year or two.

There are exceptions, of course, and if people want to campaign against something with cause, that's fine. But this blanket condemnation is ignorant.
 

Keith Richard

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How much is a question of the size/health of the home colony. Basically, you bait until you don't have any more ant foraging in your kitchen. Depending on your aesthetic sense you can use anything from a couple of small vials to 16 oz soda bottles stoppered with cotton filled with the sugar/boric acid solution where the ants aggregate are what you need; just refill as needed. If you notice that ants are still around but not attracted to the solution, replace it with fresh: as water evaporates the sugar and boric acid concentrations increase and both can become repellent. 20% w/v for sucrose is the optimal concentration for attracting most ants. Above 4% boric acid, many ants won't feed.

As for toxicity, a brand name for boric acid is Borax, i.e. a laundry aid, i.e. pretty much as harmless as you're going to get.
Thank you sir.
 

Keith Richard

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Wildheart - I see you are in San Francisco. I am right across the bay from you, in El Cerrito. i think it is a good chance that you have argentine ants. argentine ants are a little more of a problem than many other types of ants. i won't go into it here, but i suggest googling them. in essence, the don't form separate colonies in our area, but are one giant supercolony, and can have multiple queens in a nest. usually, if you kill the queen (just one), you kill the nest. not so with these creatures.

boric acid is pretty harmless but not completely. make sure cats and such don't get into it. as Code Monkey says though, it is about as harmless as you can get.

it can take a while to kill the nest, and it is difficult to know whether you killed the nest, or they just stopped coming inside. often, they start coming in when it rains, or gets too dry, or something else stresses them.

also, when baiting fo ants, you have to first determine where they are swarming and put your bait exactly on their path. otherwise, they won't come for it and you will never kill them. you are best off if you can find all of their incursion points and bait at multiple locations.
Thanks for the info. I have no idea what species they are but they're quite small. They have a very powerful odour when crushed under a finger tip....I used to work in a chemicals laboratory and I can't for the life me remember what the smell is.....kind of like "pear drops"...very sweet and pungent....Nerri will no doubt know the solvent I'm talking of. I am hoping to return home on Saturday and am just a little nervous as to what I'll find when I do get back. There is nothing edible that accessable to the ants, so my finger are crossed. How long does Raid stay active for?
 

Code Monkey

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Thanks for the info. I have no idea what species they are but they're quite small. They have a very powerful odour when crushed under a finger tip....I used to work in a chemicals laboratory and I can't for the life me remember what the smell is.....kind of like "pear drops"...very sweet and pungent....Nerri will no doubt know the solvent I'm talking of. I am hoping to return home on Saturday and am just a little nervous as to what I'll find when I do get back. There is nothing edible that accessable to the ants, so my finger are crossed. How long does Raid stay active for?
Odorous house ants, or Tapinoma sessile. A really great pest ant because they have polygynous colonies that can break apart and reform like some B-movie monster, and live in just about any gap or crevice where the humidity is suitable. Fortunately, they're also ideal targets for feeding a borax-sugar solution. However, expect a long, protracted battle.

Raid, being a basic pyrethroid, will break down in about 2 weeks if it's exposed to any sort of sunlight, a bit longer if it's not.
 
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