Attack of the ANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[alienfx]

Well,dont worry about the ants.Neps love ants.The nep will slowly kill the ant's whole colony.Hope u dont have few neps only.Get more nep to fight the ants.

My house is in front of a jungle and they are many types of ants.Now i barely seen any ants in my garden.The neps wiped all those ants which stayed in my garden.

If the ants go into ur house that means ur house not so clean.Dont leave food here and there.Any dropping of food must be picked and cleaned.The garbage's lid must be closed at all time.Once ur house clean ants wont come into ur house cause they dont need to.Usually they will be few scout ants searching for food.Once they find food they will call the working ant(thousands if not millions of ants) to collect the food.

[edwardyeeks]

try pouring some water then drain it out slowly. DO NOT USE SHEILTOX! My friend lost his VFT last year tryin to stop an irritating ant from escaping. Keeping your house clean is vital but you can get more neps if you want to combat ants. sarracenia works best on them. Oh, yeah watch out of aphids cuz ants like to breed them for their nectar. aphids can suck your CPs dry (although it is very rare for neps to get attacked by these pest). goood luuuuuuuck!!!!!

Cheers

[plantlover]

My S. purpurea got lots of mealy bug but instead of causing harm, 95 % all of them drown in the pitcher. The ones that don't drown will drown too when I pour water on it.

[kentosaurs]

Hi Aaron

No prob with the attack of the ants by 13 years olds lol...jk.....Same here also i don't hate them since well we intrude their habitat and destroying it you can't really blame them much for it..all they want is the sweet sweet nectar of the pitchers.

Hi Alienfx

Yeah the ants are slowly but gradually decreasing....even though just a little.My house not much ants just like you said some scouters looking for some food around...today i killed 2 "scouters" or should i say "pervert scouters"...they were around the bathroom when i was bathing lol both when down in flames...urrgmmm...io mean the opposite of fire/water...

Hi Edward

I didn't spray the CPs just the floor maybe it might have some temporary effects on the neps but i don't think there will be some long term effects.

Ken

[David]

It is not a good idea to flush water on the ants unless you are careful enough not to pour water into the pitcher. I am guessing the dead ants are around the peristome area. If you pour water into the pitcher the digestive fluid in the pitcher will be diluted. This would upset the chemical balance in the digestive fluids.

It is also normal for a lot of ants to be attracted to your pitchers. It is a symbiosis between Nepenthes and ants. The traps of the pither plant is such that not all ant that visits it's pitchers get caught. This is logical because if the first ant that found the nectar is caught, it will not be able to go back to its nest and bring a whole army to harvest the nectar.

So it's kind off a give-and-take situation between plant and ant. The pitcher plants offer food (nectar) to the ants. In return the ants sacrifice some of their worker ants for food to the pitcher plant.

Sometimes when the pitcher produces alot of nectar around the peristom ants do get caught in the sticky nectar. When the sticky nectar covers the ants body it suffocates the ants. Pitcher plant nectar is also known to have a slight effects similar to alchohol on insects. Perhaps the ants were drunk on pitcher nectar and fall on the nectar instead of inside the pitcher. But no worries as this does not have any ill effects on your neps.

If you want to use a mosquito/cocroach spray/arosol to kill the ants and you want to spray on the plant itself, use waterbase arrosol. Normal sprays is about 80-90% percent petroleum base. Not good for your Neps.

[kentosaurs]

Hi David

I know if i spray water in the pitchers it might dilute the fluid but well they look ugly anyway the ants like i said is starting to decrease because hundreds of them are already inside pitchers maybe it could even reach thousands.

The ants get trap mostlly in the fluid but some are caught in the inner wallls of the pitcher and some on the peristrone.They mostly go for my N miranda and N truncata.

I only sprayed the floor once now i don't do it anymore and i do use waterbase aerosol

Ken

[David]

Good for you then, Ken.