do ants damage cacti roots?????

[SirLSD]

i have a major ant infestation in my cacti garden. tey have infese most pot and are all through the ground. do they damage the cacti roots aal or the cacti in anywy?do the cause any probs atall? is there a safeway of gettiing rid of them?

[smogs]

not sure about the roots... but they CAN definately asue problems sometimes... they farm things like aphids and scale elaf insects and cover your poor plants in them sometimes

i recently had to kill an ant nest (really didnt want to) because they kept attacking a plant with MILLIONS of aphids. Any ant rid or ant sand is pretty safe. if you want to be safer buy some borax and mix it with honey and leave that around... takes longer but still works well.

[genki]

i realise this is an old thread but its the only one that came up from my search, thought id post here instead of starting an entirely new thread.

i have had ants around a lot lately and was wondering where they were coming from. i finally discovered the source: an ants nest in the soil of a pachanoi i was trying to repot. i want to get rid of them asap but dont want to do anything that might result in the cactus absorbing something nasty. will submerging the roots system in a bucket of water for a little while drown them or am i going to have to try something else?

Edited February 27, 2006 by genki

[planthelper]

the ant is one of my totem animals...

they hardly cause any problems even if you have to deal with a big nest of them in one of your pots, all they do is to cause the potting mix to dry out a bit faster. the damage done to the plant and roots are minimal, they just take over a bit of space inside your pots as eggchambers, obviously your cacti pot gives them ideal conditions for hatching ther eggs, lol.

but this is only one side of the medal allthoug they pose no direct harm to the roots they proly do (as mentioned above) place amphids and scales onto your other plants, which is an outrage (roy's voice), a bloody outrage it is (hq,s voice)!!

in my own experience i found ant rid and as such pretty useless, if i discover an ants nest whilst repotting, than i spray with pyretrum after removing the eggs mechanicly...

we discussed this nuisance before at times and a good idea brought forward was to bloody drown the ants...

to do this you emerge the pot into a bucket with water, making sure the whole pot is covered by water.

i have never done this to a pot with a cacti, but in case of a pedro it should be ok, just drain off the water soon after by placing the pot under a 45% angle or so.

but you can never win against ants, so i gave up fighting them a long time ago...

Edited February 27, 2006 by planthelper

[indigo264nm]

Ants aren't a problem but if you find ants attracted to parts of your plants it can be an indication of another pest outbreak. Pests such as aphids or soft scales produce honeydew which attract ants - and in many cases a symbiotic relationship between ants and pests can be seen.

Edited February 27, 2006 by -=neurotichaosis=-

[Guest Mexicali]

Ants aren't a problem but if you find ants attracted to parts of your plants it can be an indication of another pest outbreak. Pests such as aphids or soft scales produce honeydew which attract ants - and in many cases a symbiotic relationship between ants and pests can be seen.

Correct my friend...ants aren't a problem

Ants indicate COMPOST WITH GOOD DRAINAGE, other wise there would be no room for the ants to move in the soil ;) They don't make the euphorbias look as nice when they crawl up and down, but you can spray them and they go away, only to come back for more respraying (those little masochists)

[genki]

thanks for the replies

[SaBReT00tH]

Every day I seem to find 2 new ants on my Calea for some reason, climbing over the leaves. I'm guessing they enjoy eating the leaves of this plant?? Can they damage it? Is that what may be causing redness on the leaves?

[Benzito]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again;

The best way to deal with ants, is to put your plants on a table. Submerge the table legs in buckets, and keep the buckets filled with water.

You now have 'moats' to keep the ants away.

[wandjina]

don't have too many problems with ants...except the weeny ones that have suddenly appeared in my daughters bedroom (feasting on the trails of cracker debris)...anyhoo, I was repotting some zygocactus cuttings the other day, choosing the biggest and happiest ones ...and was surprised to find huge caverns excavated in the potting mix totally chockers with slaters . In one pot there was literally more slaters than soil...but the zygo looked great.

Has anyone else noticed slater-cactus relationships...they like damp environs, so my guess is they'd be limited to plants that like moist soil.

The only crustacean-cactus interaction I know of!