Flea bombing!

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zenkatydid

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Jul 30, 2005
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I need to flea bomb my house :/ How do I ensure the fish are safe?
Will covering the tops with towels be enough, or do I need to make the tanks air-tight? What about air pumps (and filters run by air pumps)?

Thanks.
 
You'll want to seal the tank so that the flea bomb can't get into the aquarium or you could end up with a tank of dead fish. This includes turning off the air pump.

We had fleas over a year ago and I chose to go with more natural remedies over the flea bomb. Of course our infestation wasn't too bad when we caught it. Pretty bad on the pets but not spotted elsewhere. We gave our cats medicated shampoo baths (they loved that... really... heh) and put flea collars on them. In addition we did several thorough vacuumings of the house, immediately bagging the vacuum bag in a garbage bag and taking it outside. This took more time to resolve the issue, but it worked without any risk to my aquariums. There are other natural methods that you can try as well if you do some research.
 
Dropping the F bomb! You'd definitely have to seal tanks completely. No external filters that means too. I'd suggest looking into a way with less chemicals.
 
Other non-pesticide remedies:

Shine a desklamp over a large cookie sheet filled with dish detergent+water. The fleas are attracted to the lamp's heat and jump into the water and drown.
Fleas, HYG-2081-97

Consider flea birth control...
Program tablets for dogs - Novartis.com
This may be too expensive if you have several dogs or cats.

If you do bomb, cover the tanks with PLASTIC sheeting taped securely around the bottom so the fumes don't get in. Also, turn off the air pumps and put fish food and equipment in a safe place away from the area being bombed.
Good luck and :uzi:KILL THOSE FLEAS!:uzi:
 
Skip the bomb.

Another option is Frontline plus:
*kills up to 100% of adult fleas within 24 hours
*kills flea eggs and larvae to keep ALL stages of fleas from developing
*completely breaks the flea life cycle by effectively stopping the development of new fleas
*kills all stages of 4 major ticks, including the one that may carry Lyme disease.
 
Yes, I use Frontline on the cats already - I've just noticed some fleas hopping around the carpet onto our feet. I'll look into other methods, thanks guys.
 
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How long has it been since you put the Frontline on them? You may see fleas for a few days after the application. Did you use the Top Spot or the Plus? The Plus has insect growth regulator (IGR) but the Top Spot doesn't.
 
About 2 weeks. I only started noticing fleas in the carpet a few days to a week ago. I figure that the cats became a hostile environment and they've jumped ship.

I asked at work (I work in an aquarium shop) and my boss recommended spraying the carpet with an insect/flea spray. She uses a low-irritant cockroach spray in the shop and has had no ill effects in her fish. Plus, this way I can be more specific in where I've seen the fleas and keep it low so the spray doesn't go anywhere near the tanks.
 
Could be know ones coming in from outside. We lived in a real sandy spot at one time and decided to take in a cat that had been abandoned at the apt complex where we lived. It was a process of letting her inside for longer and longer periods of time to make sure she'd adjust, took about 3 weeks. Talk about Fleas! I'd kneel down to pray and they'd cover my legs. It was back in the days of powders and scary pestisides for pets so we took 7 mule team borax and sevin dust and mixed them about 50/50 (maybe a less of the sevin dust) and sprinked it on the carpet. We left the house for several hours and vacuumed when we returned. It did the trick, repeated it a month later with a less of the mixture. We also vacumed a LOT for about 4 months.afterwards.

I don't spray much of anything in the house especially in the room with the aquariums. Any antibacterial spray such as Lysol can kill all the bacteria in an aquarium and distroy the system and everything in the tank can die.
 
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