Question about (rolls eyes) cockroaches (ugh!)

[LynneSin]

Seriously, how do you get rid of these things.

I'm an apartment dweller, which means I have an uphill battle with the buggers. A semester of invertebrate zoology keeps me from getting squeamish, but these things are irritating.

I'm trying to convince the landlord he needs to spray the ENTIRE building and not just my apartment. I feel that spraying only one apartment at a time means the cockroachs will just relocated to another apartment until that renter sprays.

I make an effort to be more tedious when it comes to cleaning. Fortunately I've seen them in my kitchen and my computer desk (which I will eat there from time to time). So I wipe everything down after I'm done eating AND before I go to bed. And instead of wiping with water, I'm using Lysol. I've read that pouring some Lysol each day down the garbage disposal also helps. And I'm covering all foods. I noticed they love getting into anything cardboard, so anything in the kitchen in cardboard boxes has been put into ziplock bags.

But I still see em and I want them to go away. Raid will kill them but they still come back in a bit. Any other suggestions of how to get rid of them???!!!!! And what about ultrasonic devices, do they work???

Thanks

[nini]

1. My Mom swears by the ultrasound things.

... She always had one in our kitchen and we didn't have a problem.


Also I heard Borax soap sprinkled around under refrigerators and dark places help.

Good Luck.. they are persistent little critters.

[morningglory]

18. Borax has boric acid in it.

I ran a line of boric acid mixed with a little sugar across the threshold outside the front door and the back door. If you have an infestation inside and no crawling babies, just sprinkle boric acid all over the floor, around the edges and on the edges of all the kitchen counters and just leave it for a few days. We had a baby in arms who was just going to start crawling, so we did this and then after we cleaned the boric acid up, we just put in the little corners of the window sill where we had seen 'signs' of roaches before and that kept them out. Also a DU'er linked to a wonderful lizard article which recommends lizards for pest control (roaches) http://www.zetatalk.com/info/tinfo08h.htm Very interesting. I went to the pet store and they sell various geckos and lizards for pest control. We moved into an old house in January and I want to be sure none walk in here. I am getting a gecko to let loose outside the house. We live in Florida.

[meegbear]

2. Try this ...

from The Straight Dope

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_019.html

[emad]

3. The |Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' advice has always proved

highly commendable when it comes to roach zapping. Fat Freddy's Cat is a reliable source of wisdom on this topic; suggest you consult! (trying to find a suitable web link......)

[kimchi]

4. Carbuerator (sp?) fluid.

Spray it on and watch them die. Of course, it is quite difficult to clean it up afterwards. I'm only half joking-I really used it.

Your landlord has an obligation to keep your apartment roach free. You might want to talk your neighbors into getting on his case, too. If that fails, call someone who has authority over his ass. Maybe not the whole building, but at least the apartments that connect to yours have to be sprayed at the same time.

[LynneSin]

6. They have been helpful

Wednesdays are the days that the exterminators visit and believe me, they've been in my apartment enough times. But I'm just trying to force the issue that they need to consider the whole building and not just an "as-needed" basis with apartment requests

[morningglory]

20. Anything that interferes with the waxy coating kills them,

dish soap, boric acid, etc. Soap is easier to clean up, if you chase one down with a spray bottle of it.

[xJlM]

5. It depends on where you live

When I was 19 I first moved to the south, and I was amazed at all the roaches I saw. Not only your ordinary roaches, but those big palmetto bugs you see in Texas and Florida that grow to three or four inches long. But living in a sub-tropical zone, they're just a natural part of the wildlife. They'll probably run you off before you ever get rid of them. I don't care for spraying poison, either, so one thing I would suggest is those roach motels. Once they're inside them, you know they're gone.

[LynneSin]

8. I hate spraying too

I think I get more of a headache from that crap than it does with killing them (I even have Country Fresh Raid and believe me it is NOT country fresh).

These things are small, but they are definately cockroaches. I just bought a ultrasonic thing from Amazon. We'll see how that works!

[BigMcLargehuge]

7. they key with spraying is...

have the exterminators do the bottom floor apartments first. Then the roaches run upstairs. Do upstairs next. Repeat until reaching the attic. Do the attic last.

This in no way erradicates them, that's virtually impossible, but it keeps them in controllable numbers.

Another necessary step is to locate the source of the infestation. Who has the dirty apartment. Who bought second hand furniture recently... That sort of thing.

Finally, keep everything in perspective. Every roach you see has 10,000 friends you don't see. And roaches don't share friends. So, if you see two, that's 10,000 friends each.

If they are American cockroaches persistence MIGHT eliminate them, if they are german roaches (the smaller brown/red ones) burn all your belongings and move to a new place, preferably naked.

[LynneSin]

9. They're the German ones

I'm so freaking doom!

[BigMcLargehuge]

12. did I recommend shaving off all body hair before the move?

No...

Well I recommend it now.

They get into EVERYTHING, fridge linings, oven walls, bathroom fixtures, lights, TV sets, stereo equipment, and even computers... yeesh. And after a while they laugh off anything the exterminator can throw at them short of napalm.

Start looking for a new place.


on edit: added a Y... Y? Because we like you.

[LynneSin]

21. Please say you're joking, I'm about to cry

I feel like these things will go with me whevever I go and I don't want to get rid of the things I have.

:cry:

[BigMcLargehuge]

22. don't cry... I figured you'd take that tongue in cheek

but, if the infestation is as bad as you say... if they are in your furniture and appliances...

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Try combat baits, try the exterminator, try borax, or a combination of every technique you can think of.

[slappypan]

10. the landlord has to treat the whole building

You are right, the infestation will not go away until the whole building is sprayed. Check what your local ordinances say, he is probably legally obligated to do something about the problem.

[Philostopher]

11. The borax powder stuff works.

I remember sharing a building with others of varying degrees of cleanness myself. The woman who lived upstairs from me worked long hours and used a gravity feeder for her cat. When she asked me what she could do to cut down on the bugs, I told her to stop leaving food out 24/7 for the cat. She said, "oh, I don't think cockroaches will eat cat food, I don't think that's a problem." And then my head exploded.

I mean, they'll eat the glue out of a paper bag, right? I had to get rid of one answering machine I had because they ate all the insulation off the wires and the thing shorted out and caught fire right on my counter. They'll live on anything. But she seemed so hard-headed about it, I knew it wasn't worth getting in an argument over whether cockroaches would eat cat food.

Our management had everybody's apartment treated with the baits for three months in a row. They smeared that junk everywhere -- I kept bumping it with things and knocking it off on the floor -- but because they did all the apartments at once, once a month for three months, it eventually did kill them all. That was a year before I moved out, and I never had a problem with them again (my upstairs neighbor moved out not long after that, too, though, along with her cat food).

If they don't treat all the places at once, though, you're right -- they'll just regenerate an entire colony. If you've got two roaches, you've got a building full in a couple of months, no matter how much junk any one person uses. If you can't get your landlord interested in a mass treatment ... I don't know. Maybe going around and stuffing up all the cracks under your sinks would cut down on the influx some, but they can squeeze themselves down so flat, it's hardly worth the effort if your neighbors aren't fighting them just as hard.

[Aristus]

13. God! I'm so glad I live in the Northwest.

Cockroaches just give me the screaming heebie-jeebies. How frickin' macho is that? It's just one of the several reasons why I'm glad I don't live in Texas anymore.

[amazona]

14. only one way to remove German cockroaches

I live in New Orleans, so I have a lot of experience with many species of roaches -- there are supposedly 10 species here, with the Germans being the most annoying, in my view, as the big Palmetto bugs are just a once-in-a-while thing.

They are now resistant to sprays. So it doesn't really help. I'm surprised that Raid is still working for you. If your population is not yet resistant, by all means, you can try encouraging the landlord to spray or bomb the building, but it should be done monthly or you are just twiddling your thumbs.

Ultrasonic devices are a waste of time and money. Borax powder kills some roaches, and it's cheap, but it doesn't kill all the roaches.


The one product that works -- and it continues to amaze me how it works -- is called Combat. I first learned about this from a dear friend who has one of those old rambling New Orleans homes. You put the Combats around the house, and in an amazingly short period of time, the roaches disappear. You are supposed to replace the Combats every 3 months, but I can go 6 or more months without seeing a roach. This is HUGE in the New Orleans area. Also, when our home was recently destroyed by Tropical Storm Bill, you know how you expect to see all sorts of horrible dead insect bodies under the floorboards and in the walls. There weren't ANY! None! Zero!


Try it! It's expensive but you will be flabbergasted at how well it works. And it's so easy. No horrible sprays to get in your lungs.

Go Combat!!!!

If someone in your apartment complex is using drugs and keeping a filthy house, it is a problem. Because the roaches could still come from their place to your place. The people who are not complaining about the bugs are the people who have a reason not to want anyone coming into their apartment, unfortunately. I don't know what to do about it; what I did when a lot of crackheads moved in was I moved out. Ultimately, I think it's the only solution. If landlords rent to slobs, they'll get their own reward, as slobs don't pay the rent on time either.

[HereSince1628]

17. Filthy house may be habitat but me thinks drug use is phantom correlation

Does the DEA use cockroaches as "probable cause" in your region?

[Susang]

15. I had good luck with Combat discs

They have poison on the inside that is disguised to attract the roaches, who then eat it and die. I put them all over the place and in a couple of months...no more roaches!

BTW, having a couple of cats doesn't hurt either. My cats terrorized the poor things. They wouldn't kill them right away, they had to play with them for awhile first. :evilgrin:

[Blue_Chill]

16. People Still Spray? That is sooooo yesterday.

I had the SAME exact problem as you did. I live in a apartment and the little bastards showed up when someone upstairs spayed their place. I tried everything, roach motels, Raid, I even set off those poison bombs only to watch the little bastards creep out of the walls after I let the poison cloud out.

I have found the the cleanest most effective method in a white gell that the pro's put on every corner of the place. Every angle in the apartment gets it and you can barely see it. It has no smell and and isn't a spray so it stays put and out of your food. My landlord has them come by regularly to do this and it worked wonders for me.

[catmandu57]

19. As a veteran of the cockroach wars

I wish you luck, the best thing I ever used was SUPER COMBAT they come in packages of six discs, but if you get a couple of packages and if you're really heavily infested change them before the expiration date they work better. It doesn't matter if the building has been sprayed, they live in the area. Your building may have been sprayed while the one next door hasn't and after a while they'll migrate over to your place. Especially after they've built an immunity to the poison.
On the subsonic machines, a story:
An old drunk I know whose house was filthy, bought one of those, when we were moving him out I unplugged it to box it up, and there were a gazillion cockroaches covering the back of the thing. I dropped it immediatly and kicked it out the door, my guess is they were sacrafising themselves to kill the noise.
Short of moving to a new apartment that isn't infested, the best thing I can tell you is super combat, it works there's no messy spray, no smell, or residue.

[Xithras]

23. Reproductive inhibitors

My home backs up to an open air shopping center with several restaraunts inside, and until we finally sued and forced them to move it, they had their dumpsters parked right on the other side of my back fence. As you might imagine, we developed quite the cockroach problem...German roaches were EVERYWHERE. We sprayed, bombed, sprayed again, and really had no luck getting rid of them. The Combat disks were the most effective, as other people here have already mentioned, but nothing really STOPPED them.

Finally, we called a professional exterminator, and he began applying a "reproductive regulator" on a weekly basis. It's not really a poison because it doesn't kill the bugs, but it sterilizes them and keeps them from making new baby roaches. Over a period of a month, our cockroach sightings dropped from a dozen a day to one or two. After we forced the shopping center to relocate their dumpsters, the German roach population in my home vanished over a period of weeks. At this point, I haven't seen roach or "roach sign" in six months, and we're down to spraying monthly.

In order to work, your entire complex would have to be sprayed regularly, so this is something you'd need to discuss with your landlord.

[LanternWaste]

24. Small piles of Boric acid powder, 2-3 mounds per room

Small piles (about 1/2" to 1" in height, twice as wide at the base) of Boric acid powder, about 2-3 mounds per room.

I'm not kidding. North Central Texas somehow importated those big, flying, ugly bastards with the attitudes about 15 years ago and they really infested a lot of homes.

Cannot for the life of me remember who suggested it to me, but it worked! Worked so well, I thought I had the problem licked and stopped doing it for about a month. The lil' bastards returned, so I've just kept up the regimen of sweeping the old piles up every two weeks or so and replacing them with fresh powder.

House is completely roach free and the people who use this method report the same thing. If you have pets, I would place the piles behind a baseboard or in a non-food (or food container) cabinet where the pets cannot get access to. Actually, I don't know if the acid will make pets sick, but I try to stay on the careful side of erring...