They but we have pets. Can’t use poison and I have no idea what carbolic acid is either, gonna have to look that one up.
How about one of those anteaters as pets? you know that fluffy mammal with long tounge that sticks into anthills and the ant just follows up the path like an idiot…
I always liked the Aardvark from the Pink Panther ‘Ant & the Aardvark’ cartoons. I thought he got a bit of a raw deal though, all that abuse and never any paydirt.
Sorry, a little off-topic.
Sure I’d love to have an Aardvark, but, firstly not sure how dangerous or legal that would be. ahem! And I’d be afraid it would misktake our cat as a big ant and suck her up too! ha ha ha I don’t know anyone who has owned an ant eater… But yeah it would sure be interesting!
This works.
Mix equal parts boric acid with bait. Mash into a paste (add water if the bait is dry). Fill straws with the paste. Cut straws into 1cm long segments. Chuck the segments around the house. Put them in hard to access places if you have kids or pets, or tape them down (the segments that it).
Replace segments every few days to keep them fresh.
The bait is important. Some ants eat sugar, some fats and others love blood (pharaoh ants). Try things like peanut butter, jam, or liver if you think you have pharaoh ants (I hope you don’t have these bastards). If you choose your bait well, you will be ant free in a few weeks.
Boric acid is not a really nasty substance to us.
Here’s a link:http:
www.ghorganics.com/page11.html
Yeah, I know about boric acid, I am just concerned if the cats eats the ants later, how much of it she will get… But the idea is interesting. I will check the website, thanks.
Now that the wasps problem is (hopefully) solved, I have a ant problem to solve. It’s the tiny little ants, we always had a few, but now they built a road (it’s more a highway) from the kitchen ceiling down to the floor to another room, where they disappear in the wall.
I tried that stuff you can buy everywhere (what they are supposed to take into their nest and die), but it’s to big for them or it just doesn’t work.
I’ve heard rubbing the wall with salt water will prevent them building the road, but since they are in the ceiling, they probably just their raod somewhere else.
Anyone has an idea?
They’re attracted by sugar. One way of keeping them away is by not feeding them. Personally I don’t like poisons. What kills ants can kill you too, only much slower.
I like to use that “take away” poison stuff, but yes, the smaller ants just don’t take it.
If they’re super tiny, I’ve had luck with slightly diluted white vinegar. It will kill and maim on contact, and deter the rest of the little s.o.b’s for a short while. After a few rounds of this I try to track them back to their nests.
Ants prefer to nest where they can communicate with the outside, so window frames, door frames are favorite areas. When I find the hole to the nest (by probing first with vinegar) That’s when I resort to the nasty stuff, and as sparingly as possible.
Man, I was waiting for thread like this. these little bastards are my sworn enemy on this island. My wife always laugh at how I stalk every little ant I see in our place. When I lived in Kaohsiung, I had the worlst infestation imaginable. A piece of food would hit the floor and in under 2 minutes there would be ants on it from out of nowhere. anyway, in our new place here in Taipei we have some (like everyplace I assume.) I got on them early. I bought the ant traps and I sprayed outside (never spray inside unless you can help it.) Of course you never can get them all, by my traps are working (that stuff they are supposed to take ot the nest.) I have noticed fewer, and their carcasses can be seen scattered throughout my apartment, a good sign it is working and that even the little ones can get in there and eat (remember they can climb walls, they can get in the traps.)
You will never get them all. So, as my mother-in-law says, keep a clean kitchen and they will stay away. No one is that clean though, so you may never be able to get them all, but you can control them pretty well. Good luck, I fight those little buggers everyday.
I use Raid roach & ant spray, but after shaking the can, spray it with the attached tube right up against the wall, so it’s applied in a stream, minimizing overspray. I apply it in a continuous line around the OUTSIDE of the apartment, especially near doors and windows. This seems to keep the ants from coming in from external nests, and minimizes my use of pesticide inside my own apartment. I only apply a very small amount under the frig and stove, where my cats can’t get near it, but where roaches are likely to go. This seems to be enough to keep the pests away. [/i]
once in a while I bait them by rinsing my bathroom sink with coca-cola. I come back in an hour and finse the little suckers by the thousand down the drain. Works very well to control them. I killed a large cockroach on my living room floor the other night and didn’t clean it up. I came back the next morning and there were a million of the suckers all over it. I have a can of bug spray for this purpose. I haven’t seen an ant for 2 days. Are cockroaches sweet? Ants really like them. I’ll have to eat one sometime and find out. I bought a bunch of traps at costco. Hopefully this will control them.
Buy an aardvark.
Someone should put that into the “Where can I find…” forum 
Wow. It’s late and my sense of humor is sleeping. 
That works quite well! They also like tuna fish very much and you can throw bits of it down on the neighbors balcony awning below you and they will often move there.
Here in my room two days ago, there was a line of ants across the floor – a few hundred of them, and all dead. Mystified, I swept them up and disposed of them. Yesterday, same thing. I hadn’t put down any new chemicals or anything, so I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was killing them. The missus tells me that upstairs two days ago she plugged in one of those things that’s supposed to kill mosquitoes – one floor up and one room over. She unplugged it last night, no ants this morning. Hmm. I sense a connection.
Ants that die for no reason? 
I would move to a place with better Fengshui … 
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Gotta tip from my mom (sure, that’s what you do with this kind of questions - ask your mom), she recommended baking powder on the floor - they will eat it and then die on flatulence!
Anybody ever tried it?
Grave-dig/bump, but it’s an evergreen topic. We’ve got way too many small ants scurrying around, and I’m wondering what are good ways to get rid of them.
We’re on the seventh floor of a 13-floor building, and it seems like the ants are fairly deep in the building - they’re emerging from cracks on opposite sides of the apartment. We had a similar problem three or four years ago, but they disappeared for a while - and now they’re re-emerging.
We’ve got cats, one of whom in particular has a bad habit of dealing with new and unidentified small objects by eating them (the ants alas are too small for him to dispose of), so for obvious reasons I want to be careful with poisons.
Sub-point: anyone have any tips for keeping a toaster crumb-free?! I’ve got almost everything in the kitchen sealed away so ants can’t get it (although I’m still mystified how they got through the bottle top on the molasses), but the toaster’s a magnet for them every few days.
What are some particular brands and products here that people have found useful? Or other possible options?
In Texas, I understand that it is possible to rent an ant-eater. In all seriousness, this could be a good business opportunity for some enterprising person in Taiwan, which has a growing fire ant problem. (Ant-eaters apparently think of fire ants the way we think of Mexican food.) That is, if customs can be persuaded to allow the importation of exotic animals…