# Keeping Tortoises and Using an Electronic Pest Repeller



## Team Gomberg (Apr 16, 2013)

We are about to set up 3 electronic pest repellers in our home in hopes that they help us with a bug problem we have been having. 

Home Sentinel by Aspectk are the exact ones we bought.

They make it clear that pet rodents would be affected by its use. It uses an electromagnetic field through the house wiring in addition to emitting ultrasonic waves. 

Would ultrasonic waves be heard/felt by a tortoise? 

Does anyone have information that would suggest these could have a negative effect?

Do any Tort keepers use these and have first hand experience that there has been no harm?

Just some extra details:
My Russian tortoise lives outside full time. My leopard still comes into the house at night and sleeps in an aquarium.


I did find one article that said turtles can produce and hear ultrasonic wavelengths..but I don't know how valid the source is.


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## Yvonne G (Apr 17, 2013)

My house is on a cement slab, out in the country, and I have a mercury vapor light outside that comes on at dusk and stays on all night. This attracts lots of bugs, but besides that, I have a pretty bad bug problem in the house.

I bought several of the type of bug repeller that you are talking about, only a different brand, and have them plugged in all over the house. They don't bother what tortoises I have in the house, but they don't bother the bugs either. I still have just as many bugs coming in as I ever did.

The only thing that has made a difference is that R a i d product that leaves an invisible barrier. I spray that all around the baseboards inside the house AND outside the house. Since I've started using R a i d, I see a definite reduction of bugs in the house.


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## Jd3 (Apr 17, 2013)

Don't waste your money. These will not stop bugs.


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## Team Gomberg (Apr 17, 2013)

Good to know you have used them and seen no reaction, Yvonne. 

JD3, i hope you are wrong! We have been trying everything with no improvement. If these don't help then we move on to a full tent fumigation. 

Part of the problem is in the yard, too.. But i won't chemically treat it because of the tortoises.


"no reaction from the tortoises, that is"


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## Kapidolo Farms (Apr 17, 2013)

On those electronic bug emitters. They don't work of flying insects as when the insect gets 'annoyed' with the ultrasonic vibration or the electric-magnetic wave, they alight and fly and are relived from it. They, IMO, work fine for crawling bugs like roaches and larger things like mice. I used the Black and Decker brand in a three story house that had both mice, and roaches. 

The house's cat would find and kill about one mouse a week. Roaches scrambled when lights were turned on at night time (rentals!). So after the device was installed the mouse kill rate went up to several a day, for about two weeks, then stopped entirely, the roaches left but without so much change in frequency other than they just stopped being around when that light went on in the night. Very anecdotal, I know, for the flying insects I used those yellow hanging sticky things, they work great.

I placed three of them in the house. Two on the first floor - one near the front door, one near the rear door, and the third in the basement. High mouse travel zones, and the kitchen was on the first floor where most of the roach activity was seen.

I had a pet box turtle at the time, kept on the third floor. I noticed no change in the box turtle.

Will


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## Team Gomberg (Apr 17, 2013)

Will said:


> I had a pet box turtle at the time, kept on the third floor. I noticed no change in the box turtle.
> Will



This is good. It's what I have been wanting to know. 

Now about these products. Has anyone had experience using them to help with flea problems?? That is our main "bug" problem. We moved into a home that was infested with them. We have not been able to get rid of them either! We have sprayed, sprayed some more, bombed, bombed some more.. used DE. and still NO reduction in fleas. 
We do have an outdoor cat that we feed (she was a stray who kept having babies so we fixed her and now she comes to us for food) but we have also used Frontline Plus on her since her spay. Other than that we only have the turtles. 
I have used a variety of brands and treated everywhere the tortoises don't use. We are trying these as a last effort before doing a full tent fumigation.

We know we have fleas in the tortoise pens and in the front and back grass yards but obviously I can't treat those areas with poison. We live next door to an empty lot and maybe that lot has them too? 

It's been an awful 8 months living here. My youngest son and I are allergic to the flea bites and break out in hot, burning, itchy, swollen bites. I'm talking dozens to literally hundreds of bites.

If we can't find someway to remedy this and rid ourselves of this infestation then we are actually going to consider moving...

Please someone tell me that these will be magic boxes and help us!


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## Yvonne G (Apr 17, 2013)

I think these would work better than the electronic things:

http://www.safehomeproducts.com/shp...e=GoogleBase&gclid=CMiwjPvH0rYCFYNxQgodRVEA5w


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## jjsull33 (Apr 17, 2013)

When I was younger the family dog used to get fleas from time to time and infest the house, when this happened my mother used to put large saucers of soapy water on the floor in each room and hang a light directly above it fairly close to the floor, the fleas jump up at the light and land in the water, the soap prevents them from swimming and they drown. Its not a full cure but it might help keep some of them from biting you, or at least keep them under control until you are able to wipe them out.


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## Team Gomberg (Apr 17, 2013)

Ya we have done many water flea traps. The fleas still rule the house lol

I'm going to look into that link Yvonne.


Yes the glue traps! Those are on our list to use in addition to these plug ins.


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## BeeBee*BeeLeaves (Apr 17, 2013)

DE ... did you try Diatomaceous Earth? May be not enough was thrown down. Fairly inexpensive at the farm supply but the other day I think I saw a bag at Auto Zone used for oil spills. The label said it was DE. Something crazy cheap like 5 bucks for 25 pounds. Meant to go back and double check and buy, but have not. I have used DE in the past in rentals we have. Sprinkled it everywhere, baseboards, corners and let it sit (the places were admittedly empty at the time) for a week, came back and it had worked like a charm. The product Yvonne sent link to looks good too. Agree about toxic chemicals. Scary.

Also, sharing ... my friend had an old house, in an old neighborhood in Los Angeles and he had rodents getting into his attic somehow (it's a Tudor style and I think somehow that had something to do with it). Anyhow. Tried everything. Paid exterminators thousands, to no avail. I recommended mint essential oil. I get my oils (for soaps) on ebay, bulk, by the gallon. Soaked old rags and towels in it. He threw those mint soak rags into the attic, everywhere. Bucket, soak, throw. Maybe 20 locations? No more mice. Nice.

Oh, I almost forgot, it's best to use FOOD GRADE Diatomaceous Earth. Safer. So maybe the deal at Auto Zone would be best only away from people and tortoises, outside along the perimeters of the house for example. Food grade is actually edible and is used in farming to prevent caking and to keep bugs out of grain ... It is also a good wormer, people and animals, along with bentonite clay. Gets those parasites out of the intestinal tract (it will not work on blood parasites, however). Only FOOD GRADE however, so be careful when you purchase and be sure the package says that.


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## Yvonne G (Apr 17, 2013)

Well, heck...as long as you're just talking about killing them in the house, just buy a spray product that kills fleas and spray the floors, taking care to not get it in the air and in your tortoise habitat. There's one I've used in the past...can't remember the name of it, but it comes in a blue pump spray bottle with a red label. You spray it on the dog and the fleas just jump off and die. You can actually SEE them coming to the top of the dog's coat and jumping ship. You can then spray your carpets and floors and kill the little buggers. You must vacuum frequently to get up all the eggs and larva.


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## ascott (Apr 17, 2013)

> Diatomaceous Earth



Please be absolutely certain that you only purchase food grade diatomaceous earth.....which is sold at feed stores.....

The cheaper earth is likely the non food grade, which is fatal when ingested.....the food grade can be put down right anywhere and do no damage....


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## lynnedit (Apr 17, 2013)

Heather, it is going to be hard to treat just the inside of your house w/o dealing with the yard, because they can be tracked in.
Have you considered spraying beneficial nematodes for fleas in your yard? We had fleas in our yard when our kids were young. One kid was very sensitive, but we didn't want to use pesticides around our kids or the dog.
You could use them in the tortoise enclosure (just remove the torts for a day, I would imagine). They are harmless around pets and people.
A company came and sprayed them everywhere outside, and we made sure the dog was treated too with a flea product. 
This treatment worked amazingly well. 
Our house wasn't too bad, just a couple of rooms we used foggers in. You would need to treat the stray cat for fleas (Advantage drops, or whatever?).


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## Team Gomberg (Apr 17, 2013)

I have a 25lb bag of food grade DE. I used it for 2 weeks DAILY. On my patio, outside and all over the house. What a messy, time consuming job. It did nothing. Well, it did destroy my vacuum cleaner. 

After using 6 flea bombs in the house and still having fleas (we found a dozen live ones when we got home after the treatment) I started spraying poison in the house every time we leave. It's the Hot Shot Flea and Bed Bug Killer. I spray the rooms and perimeter. Come home and vacuum. We still get live fleas in the vacuum.

I'm exhausted. I have noticed that if I wear rainboots when I go outside they don't come in on me. If I wear anything else, forget it. A check at the door finds quite a few fleas on my feet/legs.

Lynne, nematodes are now on my husband's research list! Thanks for that reminder! It's giving me a glimmer of hope.

I have 2 little boys and for all these months have been trying all the "natural" methods. I didn't want to do poisons. But after 8 months and STILL battling fleas we caved and the last month have resorted to using poisons. Imagine my frustration when even that stuff isn't working. My 2 year old has over 100 bites on his back right now. He got them over the course of 2 nights. After I counted to 100 I stopped, and was crying. It's awful.

We had our electronic things delivered yesterday, but to the wrong house. My husband and the delivery guy went to the wrong address where it was delivered and he REFUSED to give us our package. He said "tough luck its your fault for messing up" and KEPT OUR PACKAGE! Luckily, Amazon refunded our $ and now we have to re order and wait for them to come. Once they do we will set that up and hopefully get some nematodes. 

We have treated the stray cat since day 1 with Frontline Plus. We just recently treated her for tapeworms too. Poor thing. She looks pretty beat up and we feel bad for her. But she is a true outdoors stray cat. At least she is fed well


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## BeeBee*BeeLeaves (Apr 17, 2013)

For parasitic nematodes, and other possibilities, Peace Valley website at groworganic.com


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## Tom (Apr 17, 2013)

The trick with fleas is to treat the indoors, outdoors, pets, neighbors pets, everything all at once. Super hard to do. Sounds like you are in a real bad area for it. You need to find the source. Stray cats maybe? Trap them and treat them. I have seen some success stories with the nematodes. Can't hurt anything to try.

I'm lucky. They won't live up here. They sometimes ride back on my dogs from areas like yours but die within days. They can't handle the dryness or temperature extremes. We don't ever have to treat or do anything for them. Its a nice area. Wanna move up here? We can talk torts. 

BTW, I think the thieving neighbor should be punished. Hard.


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## Team Gomberg (Apr 17, 2013)

Well after reading up on nematodes and many reviews on them, it is definitely something we will try!! Lynne I'm so happy you suggested that. Thank you 

We think the source might be the next door neighbor. She feeds raccoons and opossums. A few times we have chased them off our property with water guns. The only stray cat that comes around our area (that we notice) is the one we feed.
Other than that, the previous tenant had 4 dogs and another neighbor told me he had big flea issues. BUT it was empty for 1 year before we moved in. Could an infestation last that long? I guess so, because we have had the issues pretty much from day 1.

And it's a good thing my husband was the one there when the other neighbor wouldn't give up the package. If it had been me, I may have acted like an angry momma bear protecting her flea bitten cub. Wouldn't have been good.


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## Madkins007 (Apr 20, 2013)

Just as another source of info- have you tried your local county extension service? They are usually great sources of info on things like this and maybe able to help in ways you that have not thought of, including things like ID'ing things to be sure you are doing the right stuff.


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## Jd3 (Apr 20, 2013)

It really seems you'd be better containing your pets and bombing the ever loving Jesus out of everything and the yard. Being nice has just cost you money and screwed with your kids health. I can't imagine the chemicals are worse for you than that. 

Call extension. They really can help. 

Then consider a professional exterminator. Use animal repellents around your house. And if you have to, your neighbors..... 

Reactions to these buggers tends to get worse and worse... So finding a way to stop is a must. 

Are you renting? Make your landlord deal with this.


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## Team Gomberg (Apr 20, 2013)

Yes we are renters. 

We spoke to our landlords and I have contacted both Corky's Pest Control and Flea Busters for written quotes. Our plan is to have them treat everything BUT the pens with poison and then use the Flea Buster's beneficial nematodes for the tortoise pens.

On topic, the electronic things (round 2) came. We have had them in and no tortoise issues. We are also using the glue traps until we can get everything squared away for pest control


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## Team Gomberg (Apr 20, 2013)

Team Gomberg said:


> We are also using the glue traps until we can get everything squared away for pest control



..well the electronic plug ins, glue traps AND spray poison myself... gotta try and keep them in line until the professionals come


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