House geckos and spiders

[theperfectlestat]

I have an infestation of spiders in my apartment. I also have a LOT of animals, including around 100 amphibians. So it is impossible to fumigate. If I get House Geckos, will they eat the spiders? Is there another type of lizard? Anoles? Some other way to kill a massive number of spiders without harming my animals?

Usually I hate the idea of letting a reptile loose in the house, but I don't know what else to do. This is getting ridiculous. I have a bunch of house plants in my living room. Every pot has at LEAST 6 spiders living under the edge of the pot. I found no less than 30 of them behind my computer when I cleaned it out last week. I kill as many as I can find, but more keep hatching. They're under every little ledge and behind every piece of furniture and it's driving me CRAZY. :shock:

 

[Sarra]

Yuck, that's pretty bad. I don't know that a house gecko would survive against spiders like that, but if you can find a big, healthy one, I would give it a shot. Once your spiders are gone, you could set up a live trap for it, take it to a vet to get rid of the parasites it will pick up, and keep it as a fat pet.

I know that Fischer's chams eat spiders as a staple IN THE WILD, but I seriously doubt you would want ot let one of them loose. I also doubt you would want it to get bitten by a spider and die, they're beautiful chams.

 

[theperfectlestat]

Yah, no chameleons. I don't think they'd fair well. I'm trying out a couple anoles to see how that goes. Most of the spiders aren't very big, so hopefully that'll do the trick.

 

[Sarra]

Good luck.

 

[jpmarcel]

Spiders

Hello.
I've experienced exactly what you're going through.
I have a large herp room were I breed my geckos and dart frogs and a few spiders started popping up here and there. I had a veilded chameleon that had free range of the room and a group of Chondrodactylus turneri (medium sized geckos) that also ran loose in the room so assumed they would take care of the spiders. I had about three different species of spiders and one species looked identical to your pic that lived in the room. The population soon exploded and wasn't even fazed by the free ranging lizards. Every corner and hide space had spiders plus their webs. I found an easy solution when I realized my regular vacuum hose sucked up the cob webs, eggs and spiders with ease. I spent a day sucking them very thoroughly and now I suck up the occasional straggler that I find.
It takes some time but if you keep up on it you should be able to handle it.
Hope this helps and good luck.
P.S. empty your vacuum soon after you finish or they will crawl back out.

 

[gbhil]

To get rid of the spiders you must get rid of their food source. There is a reason for their population explosion. Likely you have enough feeder insect escapees to keep them going. Re-evaluate the handling of your feeder insects, find where and how they are getting loose, and adjust as needed.

To get rid of the current population of spiders, I agree a shop vac is the ticket. Remember, destroying the web and any egg sacs is more important than getting the adult spiders.

 

[theperfectlestat]

Good advice, gbhil. I now have a couple anoles loose. I figure they'll probably go after the escaped crickets more than the spiders, which should help. I guess I need to be more careful about the crickets and make sure the cages are a little more secure. I have one frog cage that I've noticed that smaller crickets can escape from, which has been a big problem a couple times when I forgot to only feed large crickets.

 

[gbhil]

Anoles will make a fine cricket control crew. Occasionally spray your houseplants, or you may find them drinking out of the faucets. And trust me when I tell you, your significant other might not like seeing anoles in the kitchen sink :biggrin:

I don't advise it, but I use anoles myself to keep down the fruit fly escapees. Your spider problems should start to disappear soon.

 

[theperfectlestat]

If my girlfriend found an anole drinking in the sink, she'd probably yell something like "omg! Come look! It's so cute!" lol She doesn't live with my though. My roommate, on the other hand....

 

[Sarra]

lol Awesome!