Spraying for carpenter ants

[ReneX]

That's pretty much the sum of it. I just found out the house in which I have my two stomatopods is getting sprayed this weekend. According to the company that will be doing it, the spray is airborn for two hours after which is will dry and no longer be in the air.

I know spraying insecticides kills stomatopods. Here's what I plan to do. Let me know what you think.

Before spraying:

*catch both mantis and put them in large seperate tupperwear containters with some water and a lot of air space. Seal lids air-tight.
*Place containers in car with air conditioning on to maintain safe temperature. They'll be in there along with other pets, but will have to rely on the air supply in the tupperwear for the duration.
*Cover both aquariums totally with saran wrap for the duration, then wipe down with distilled water after spraying.
*Place light hoods and all aquarium supplies in a large tote in the car with the shrimp, to keep residue off them.

After spraying:
*wipe down aquarium, re-introduce stomatopods
*reassemble lights etc. when I get home from work.

Both of these mantis are wennera and should be fairly hardy. I'm expecting the entire thing to take about six hours since I have to leave for work that morning and someone else will be responsible for moving the shrimp to the car and putting them back in the tank. Both tanks will go without light for a day but the corals have coped well with this sort of thing before.

Do you see any holes in this? Will it give my stomatopods a good chance of survival? I'm thinking of double-bagging the tote in a large plastic garbage bag to keep spray off, since the car will be near the house.

 

[Gonodactylus]

Removing the animals from the house is the easy part. Completely sealing the tank and keeping insecticide from entering the system will be tricky - and while the chemical may be mostly dry by 2 hours, this is not a step function. The longer you can go before uncovering the tank and reentroducing the animals the better. Also, plastic film will allow some organic materials to penetrate. You might cover the plastic rap with a layer of aluminum foil and/or a large heavy drop cloth. If possible, after the treatment leave the windows open and perhaps put a fan in the room. Good luck and let us know what ultimately happens.

Roy

 

[ReneX]

Thank you for your kind advice and I will certainly keep y'all updated on how this works out.

Going on what you advised, I'll probably have the animals in an area seperate from the house from approx. 8am to 8pm, and the spraying will take place early in the morning. I'll simply re-introduce them after I get home from work. I will also keep the tanks covered until then...the stress on the animals left over in the tanks should be no worse than overnight shipping, and likely better due to the lack of temperature flux.

One mantis should be easy to remove as it is in a rubble tank...the other is living in a bolt-hole in a nine-pound rock and I have doubts about my abilities to remove her. If worst comes to worst, I'll simply have to seal the tank up as best I can and hope for the best, while the other mantis weathers things in the car.

Both tanks have very minimal plumbing...one powerhead each, to be exact, so the only thing hanging in the tank that I won't be removing is the powerhead for circulation. I'll be taking both light hoods outside in the tote to sit in the car. With this in mind, I'm now planning to seal both tanks as best I can with several layers of plastic, aluminum foil, and possibly some blankets/tarps if I can find something sturdy and large enough. These are small tanks, 2.5 and 5.5 gallons in size, so with a combination of layers and duct tape I'm hoping for the best.

In the larger tank, I have a baggie of activated carbon I can and will sit in the water prior to re-adding the stomatopod. It will only be sitting on the bottom with no water forced through it, as I have no place to put it, but hopefully it will make some difference.

This is likely going to be a real gamble, but which is the lesser of two evils? Catching the more difficult shrimp way in advance and keeping it in a small, unheated container for several days (house temperature 70s and above) and doing small daily water changes, or leaving the shrimp in the house during spraying and attempting to seal the tank?

Or would it be a good idea to keep both shrimp in their tupperwear habitats for a few days, changing water daily with water kept in the car during the duration? The house they would be in is temperature controlled between 72 and 77 degrees F. They would lack lighting and current but this might be preferable to introducing them to a potentially toxic environment. Is this advisable?

 

[Gonodactylus]

I don't want to be an alarmist or cause you more stress than necessary, but stomatopods are very sensitive to insecticides and as you, you are taking a risk. Given the minute concentrations that can be lethal, I think I would keep the animals is small containers for a few days. A 2 inch N. wennerae can stay in a one liter container of water with no circulation and the water changed every three days for weeks. (We keep dozens of animals this way all the time.)

The real problem here is the aquarium. Trace amounts of insecticide can cause problems over weeks or even months. You aren't going to know if you have a problems unless something drops ove dead immediately and that could be due to poision, low oxygen, or other changes in water parameters brought about by sealing up the system.

Stomatopods are great canaries for organic solvents and poisions. I guess if it were me, I would take all possible precautions sealing up the system and then put one animal into the aquarium the next day. If it survives a few days, then I would add the other. A sign that there is poisioning is the permanent extension of the raptorial propodi. If that happens, tear down the system an

d start over. Good luck.

 

[npirate]

Hmmm. This stinks. i wanted spray my basement as a preventitive measure but now I'm re-thinking. I have had 2 carpenter ants crawl on me in the last week. I keep my basement and my garage spotless (even vaccum the garage with my shop vac once a month) because I HATE bugs. I even have a slight adversion to shrimp at time when I see the crawling around, like to watch them but won't touch them. i aslso have a probelem min my utility room where I keep my quaranteen tank. It's not air conditioned and I had a leak in the pump last week. Now I have little knats/fruit flies in there. I've been vaccuming up the dead ones every day to get a count on how many are in there and every day there are more there to replace the ones I clean up. Any idea on how to get rid of the fruit flies?

Nick

 

[ReneX]

Both shrimp turned out to be okay through all this, though I sealed up both tanks. I found out later that afternoon that they put down pest granules, not an airborn spray. So there wasn't really much point in my sealing up the tanks, and I'll never know how effective that would have been.