# Killing ants with dry Ice Ended up Killing All My Plants?!?!



## lilherp25 (Mar 29, 2010)

hello to start off i have a 29 gallon dart frog terrarium which i am in the process of quarentining citronellas to live in. It was about time to actually put them in their main tank when i noticed ants, and alot of them. I then realized i had an ant colony in my tank when i saw them carrying eggs, so i sprayed around the house and bought some dry ice to kill the ants. I placed the dry ice in the tank and sealed it up (bad mistake). a day and a half later i went to open it back up when i noticed my entire great stuff foam background and was warped off the wall!!! i figured this was from the suction and pressure i made when i poorly decided to seal the tank up. i had to cut it out in pieces and will later silicone them back into place . i also noticed that all of my broms are turning brown and are softer allmost droopy!!!!!!!  has anyone ever had this happen to them??? and is there anything i can do???

(but on a positive note, the ants are gone)


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## Mapp (May 1, 2010)

Hmm.... your broms are probably rotting. (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a botanist by any means ) Is there a water feature in the tank? If so, how close are they to it?


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## lilherp25 (Mar 29, 2010)

no water feature but they did have some water sitting in them?
i thought it was from the dry ice making them to cold or something? amybe im wrong not sure?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Yep it probably got too cold which is also what warped the background. 

Ed


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## lilherp25 (Mar 29, 2010)

do you think i could still save the plants?


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## JimO (May 14, 2010)

I agree with the others. Dry ice is like regular ice on steroids in terms of its "latent heat of vaporization", which is the amount of heat transferred when a substance changes state from solid to liquid to gas. Dry ice absorbs about 4x the amount of heat to go from solid to liquid to gas, and it does it quickly, which cools things down really fast. In other words one cubic inch of dry ice would absorb more heat than it would take to melt an equivalent cube of ice and boil it until it turned to steam.

I've not tried dry ice myself, but I'd put in on a piece of styrofoam and monitor the temperature if you do use it.

I'm really sorry to hear about the broms and the viv backing, but I am glad to hear that the ants are gone. If you had springtails, isopods or other microfauna, you'll need to re-seed the substrate.

BTW - how much dry ice did you use?


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## lilherp25 (Mar 29, 2010)

not sure the exact amount but it was just like a cool whip container full? i couldnt find anywhere how much to use... so are the plants hopeless?


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## JimO (May 14, 2010)

lilherp25 said:


> not sure the exact amount but it was just like a cool whip container full? i couldnt find anywhere how much to use... so are the plants hopeless?


Whoa! That's a lot of dry ice for a 29-gallon space. I would have guessed about a half cup. You don't need to displace all the oxygen. If you dropped the overall oxygen content by 25%, that's enough to kill a person. I'm not sure what the threshold oxygen content for ants is, but at least they're gone. 

I'm not much of a plant person, but it might come back from the roots. I'd wait a few weeks before giving up on them.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

A lot of soil invertebrates can tolerate surprisingly high levels of CO2 check out this for example 
European Journal of Entomology

Ed


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## davecalk (Dec 17, 2008)

lilherp25 said:


> I placed the dry ice in the tank and sealed it up (bad mistake). a day and a half later i went to open it back up when i noticed my entire great stuff foam background and was warped off the wall!!!
> 
> has anyone ever had this happen to them??? and is there anything i can do???
> 
> (but on a positive note, the ants are gone)


Yep, as others have said, it was not likely to be the CO2, but the cold. It is best to pour hot water into the dry ice containers to warm and release the CO2 rapidly.


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## lilherp25 (Mar 29, 2010)

alright so i should just leave the plants and hope they come bcak?


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## JimO (May 14, 2010)

lilherp25 said:


> alright so i should just leave the plants and hope they come bcak?


That's what I'd do. Some might and other might not.


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## harrywitmore (Feb 9, 2004)

I suspect the bromeliads are rotted and will most likely not come back.


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## Groundhog (Dec 17, 2006)

If they sustained a "hard freeze" (a few hours of <28F) they are dead--sorry.

Now, could someone please post a "How to use Dry Ice" thread so this does not happen again?


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## davecalk (Dec 17, 2008)

Groundhog said:


> Now, could someone please post a "How to use Dry Ice" thread so this does not happen again?


Um, you mean like these.

Using the search button for dry ice brought these:

CO2 Method

Snails



Using the search button for "killing tank pests" brought these:

*This one is an excellent one. It is the best tutorial I've found on using dry ice / CO2 to kill pests. It has great photos about the process.*

How to treat for pests shared by Mike on DB to someone's question about killing pests safely

CO2 failsafe


These are just a few of the posts out there that I found in 2 minutes using the DB search button. 

I do want to be sensitive to lilherp25 's loss, but a bit more searching / reading might have prevented this. The information is already here on DB and other sites. It happens when folks don't research enough or asked questions.

I am sorry lilherp25 for your loss of plants, you may have searched and not found the info about adding hot water to raise the temp of the CO2 and release it quickly. I don't know. I hope some of them pull through.


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## davecalk (Dec 17, 2008)

There are other sources of CO2 than dry ice. Paintball guns use small CO2 tanks which would probably be ideal for this kind of use. They are small, cheap, and easy to refill. 

Newbies Guide to CO2 / CO2 Tanks.

A google search of "Paintball CO2 tanks" will give a lot more info.

Sizes of tanks run from 9 oz, 12 oz, 16 oz and 20 oz.

Welders also use CO2, but their tanks are a bit bigger, thus they cost more.

Also, if you wanted to go ultra cheap, you could build a CO2 generator. The aquarium hobby uses them quite regularly. The problem with these is they are designed to produce a steady but low volume of CO2. They might not produce enough co2 to displace all of the air in the tank. Also they take a while for the co2 to ramp up because they use bakers yeast and sugar to generate the CO2.

Do-It-Yourself Carbon Dioxide Injection


One of the benefits of the dry ice method is that you can see the air / CO2 displacement with the cold fog, but there are some inherent dangers involved with working with dry ice.


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## lilherp25 (Mar 29, 2010)

it didnt get below 28 bcause there was still water droplets over their leaves and no frost and the very middle leave didnt really get damaged too much so im hoping for the best!  and the new pups comming off the sides werent damaged i dont think! the ferns on the other hand dont look too good lol


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

dave, the welder comment makes me wonder if other gasses would work. ive got a whole tank of argon just sitting around for my MIG.

james


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## davecalk (Dec 17, 2008)

james67 said:


> dave, the welder comment makes me wonder if other gasses would work. ive got a whole tank of argon just sitting around for my MIG.
> 
> james


I'm completely ignorant about the characteristics of argon. The advantages of CO2 are that it is heavier than air so that it will displace the Oxygen, and that it is metabolized by the plants so that it will be dissipated over time (no dead zone pockets that could harm frogs, springtails, what-ever other tank critters you place in the viv.)


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## JimO (May 14, 2010)

That article shared by Mike from geckosunlimited is outstanding. I imagine that one advantage of dry ice is that it condenses the water in the air around it and causes a fog, so you can see it, so to speak. It might be more difficult to see CO2 gas; however, you wouldn't have nearly the cooling effect with gas as compared with dry ice.

You do need to be careful because although, as someone pointed out, CO2 doesn't have the toxic effects of carbon monoxide, it can displace oxygen. Normal air has ~21% oxygen. Adverse effects can be seen at levels below 19.5%. Below 14% and judgement/physical functions are impaired. Below 10% and death can occur in a very short time. So, if you start breathing air that is half CO2 and half normal air, you could be in real trouble very quickly. The gas accumulates on the floor, so if you're using it, the room should be ventilated along the floor, as well as at window level. If air is flowing through at eye level only, the CO2 can still build up on the floor and if you squat down to look at a tank on the bottom shelf, you might feel the effects (headaches are common) in a matter of minutes. Think about how long you can hold your breath, at low oxygen levels you might be ok for twice that amount of time at best.

CO2 is odorless and tasteless, so you don't may not even realize that it is affecting you. The body doesn't exhibit a panic response with low oxygen like it does with lack of air or with an irritant, like ammonia or acid vapors. Sorry to go on. Just be careful, especially if you're using a relatively large tank of CO2 gas.


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## markbudde (Jan 4, 2008)

This was recently discussed on frognet.

Yahoo! Groups


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## davecalk (Dec 17, 2008)

james67 said:


> dave, the welder comment makes me wonder if other gasses would work. ive got a whole tank of argon just sitting around for my MIG.
> 
> james


Hi James,

I was just doing some research and found that the American Veterinary Medical Association's Guidelines on Euthanasia discuss that CO2, Nitrogen and Argon are all discussed as viable options for euthanizing small animals. 

I did some additional checking and found that while both CO2 and Argon are heavier than air, Nitrogen is slightly lighter than air, so if you use Nitrogen you could possibly leave an O2 pockets in the leaf litter which might not lead to the killing of the tank critters.

I'm putting together a tutorial like Groundhog asked for.


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## markbudde (Jan 4, 2008)

Dave,
pure nitrogen and pure argon will not kill most soil invertebrates. Definitely not snails.
-Mark


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