Less Than 24hrs Before Extermination

[hermiwormi]

I have less than 24hrs before a pest control company comes in to rid the insects and spiders that have made their home in my home. There are quite a few in the crabitat and I have crabs underground. If we don’t get what’s inside the tat, they’ll just remain here! What should I do??


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[AwesomeHermit]

I’m so sorry that no body responded. What did you do?

[Hermit-Yote]

I must admit, I'm curious too.

[hermiwormi]

I’m so sorry that no body responded. What did you do?

I cancelled the extermination.


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[DragonsFly]

If you are still looking for solutions to this problem, here are some ideas:

For spider infestations in the house, I highly recommend the "sticky traps" that you can find in hardware stores. Buy the NON-toxic kind (they also make them with insecticides in them, but you actually don't need that and it's safer for all your household without that). You fold them into a triangle or rectangular box-like thing with the (VERY!) sticky part inside, then place them around the baseboards (especially under furniture) and in the closets. The spiders (and some other bugs) will explore around at night, and when they try to crawl through these traps, they get stuck. I know, it's kind of awful to think of from their point of view, but it is non-toxic to larger household members and importantly does NOT require spraying your home with poisonous chemicals that can harm your crabs (and any other living thing, including people, in your house). The only downside is that the traps are VERY sticky, so if you have--for example--a dog that wants to mess with it, they could get it stuck to them. Getting creative about the places you put them (behind furniture where the dog can't fit, for example, and in closed closets) is the thing to do about that.

I'm not sure what your other bugs are, but we had great luck with using diatomaceous earth for controlling all kinds of bugs in our rural house in Arkansas (the area was very warm/hot and humid, so VERY prone to bugs of all sorts). Get food-grade diatomaceous earth (you can often get huge containers of it at farmer's markets, or you can buy it online) and a "puffer" (you can get these at hardware stores, or again order it online). Use the "puffer" to puff the DE into all the walls of your house--take off the electrical sockets and light switches, puff the DE in, then put the sockets/switch covers back on. You can treat the outside of your house, as well--we always treated all the shady areas of the yard with DE in the summer to prevent fleas and ticks. DE is nontoxic (food grade DE can be taken as a dietary supplement, and many people do). The only downside to DE is that, like any fine dust, you should not breathe it (it can cause irritation of the lungs). It is NOT poisonous, but it kills insects by microscopically scouring off the wax coating on their exoskeletons. Doesn't hurt mammals (unless you breathe it), but it kills bugs through this mechanical action, which (an additional benefit) they cannot develop resistance to, so it will always work (unlike chemical pesticides).

You do NOT want to use either of these IN your tank, however. The crabs could get stuck to a sticky trap. and DE is likely to damage their gills and exoskeletons, just as it does to bugs. If your tank is infested with spiders, I think the best thing to do is to eliminate them yourself one by one as you see them. Depending upon what the other bugs are, you might just let your crabbies eat them! But if they don't seem to want to do that, and if you are worried that whatever these bugs are will spread to infest the rest of your house, then again, you might want to just get rid of them yourself as you see them, or if there is a huge infestation, you might have to do a deep-clean and start over with new substrate.

Also, depending upon what the bugs are, a bit of additional crabitat hygeine might be in order, too. Taking steps to make sure that food doesn't lay around for long periods of time should minimize how attractive the 'tat is to bugs--and minimizing the attractiveness to bugs will likely cut down on how attractive it is to the spiders!

Best wishes!

[Hermit-Yote]

I would not recommend ever using sticky traps. If a mouse or other animal gets on it, it's very very terrible. I've seen this first hand with a snake, a mouse, and a bird. None of them made it and it was truly horrid.

[DragonsFly]

I would not recommend ever using sticky traps. If a mouse or other animal gets on it, it's very very terrible. I've seen this first hand with a snake, a mouse, and a bird. None of them made it and it was truly horrid.

The ones I am talking about are made for spiders and bugs, and are small enough that it is extremely unlikely that any of these other kinds of animals would try to go through them.

https://www.terro.com/spider-trap

The sticky traps they make FOR mice, I agree, are cruel. On the occasions when we had mice come in to the house (every fall), I used live traps to catch them and took them miles away to release them. Despite the fact that we did have mice try to move in every fall when the fields were harvested, we never had them blunder into one of these spider traps. These kinds of traps are too small, not attractive to mice, and I don't think the glue is strong enough to capture anything as big as a mouse even if for some reason they tried to mess around with it.

In case you ever do find an animal stuck on one of the stronger traps, here are some tips for how to remove the glue:
https://www.colonialpest.com/unstick-ch ... glue-trap/