How to deal with small insects in the bathroom and toilet

Insects that can settle and feel good in the bathroom or toilet are quite few. In most cases, here you can meet the following unexpected "guests":

• Silverfish are small light gray creatures with an elongated body and three long hairs at the end of the body. Below in the photo - these insects in the bathroom:
  
• Butterflies are small black flies with a wing length of about 2 mm.
• Ordinary mosquitoes that prefer to rest in damp areas.
• Cockroaches that often appear here when migrating from neighbors - it is from the ventilation ducts in the bathroom or toilet that they usually enter the apartment.

Often, creatures that, strictly speaking, are not insects, settle in bathrooms and toilets - these are wood lice, centipedes-flycatchers and nods. Woodlice are, oddly enough, crustaceans, centipedes also have nothing to do with insects, but most of the townspeople do not know this and, seeing them, believe that it was insects that got into the bathroom. However, when it comes to wrestling, this is not so important.

Let's take a closer look at all these unwanted cohabitants and figure out how to deal with them properly.

 

How to remove silverfish?

Silverfish have a rather unpleasant appearance, in no way corresponding to their harmlessness. These small insects settle in bathtubs with the same frequency as in any other room. They have an elongated body without wings, three antennae at the end of the body and reach a size of about 1 cm.

In the photo - silverfish, a very harmless insect that can be found in the bathroom:

Silverfish feed on a wide variety of organic matter: from leftover food on the table to wet paper. In bathrooms and toilets, molds, pieces of toilet paper, rags, and debris under bedding serve as their food.

It is interesting

Scientists consider silverfish to be the most ancient living insects. The structure of their body has primitive features that the ancestors of most modern insects supposedly possessed.

Silverfish do not cause any harm to a person, they do not spread dirt and microbes.

Recently molted silverfish are very light in color, and if white insects are wound up in the bathroom, it is most likely they.

Review

“Tell me, what insects live in the bathroom? We have some insects in the bathroom, there are not many of them, but we constantly see them. Small ones, grayish, some almost white, with a long body and three tails. It's easy to kill them, but you don't want them to get in here at all. Maybe there are some means that they are afraid of?

Andrey, Petropavlovsk

Usually, silverfish do not breed in large numbers, and a slipper or rolled-up newspaper is enough to deal with them.If these insects in the toilet or bathroom have become especially numerous, you can treat the room with any household aerosol such as Raptor or Combat. It will kill the silverfish for sure.

 

Woodlice and how to deal with them

Woodlice are, strictly speaking, small terrestrial crustaceans that prefer to live in humid places, feeding on various plant debris. They are not insects, but are often called so by the people. Many people know wood lice due to their habit of curling up when threatened.

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Woodlice appear in the bathroom or toilet from dampness and hide where there are constantly water leaks. In apartments and houses, they are indicators of malfunctions in the water supply or sewerage system: if nothing leaks anywhere, woodlice will not appear in the house. Therefore, before destroying them, you need to figure out where and what flows, and fix the problem. Sometimes these insects come from neighbors or from the attic through the ventilation system.

Woodlice have a characteristic gray body color, but those individuals that have just molted appear milky white due to the soft, fragile shell. That is why white insects in the bathroom may well be wood lice.

In the photo - white insects in the bathroom, which are actually not insects at all, but a type of crustacean:

Woodlice are quite harmless and only occasionally can damage stocks of vegetables and fruits, for example, in closets. They do not bite and do not attack humans.They should be removed by treating the premises they inhabited with household insecticides - you can use Get, Lambda Zone, Hangman, Karbofos, Raptor preparations.

If leaks and smudges are eliminated in the apartment, wood lice can be collected by hand - their new counterparts will not appear here.

 

Butterflies

These small flies are very easy to recognize: they have a dark body and well-defined fringed wings that seem to be velvet. Butterflies often sit on mirrors and bathroom or toilet walls.

In the photo, a butterfly on a tile:

In the toilet, these insects are as common as in the bathroom.

Butterflies also start from dampness. Their larvae develop in sewer pipes, on walls constantly damp from condensation, and in places where dirt accumulates. They feed on various organic residues. And if other domestic insects can suffer from high humidity, then butterfly bugs, on the contrary, just appear from dampness.

Butterflies are never particularly numerous. These flying insects in the bathroom usually appear one or two at a time, and most of them are kept in basements. They are not specially taken out, but simply slapped at a meeting - this is usually quite enough. If necessary, you can treat the room with any aerosol insecticidal preparation (Raptor, Reid, Combat, Dichlorvos).

 

Centipedes: nods and flycatchers

These guests are also not insects, but in general this is how they are called "in the society of housewives." Despite family ties, the appearance of different centipedes in an apartment can vary greatly.

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For example, in the photo below - Crimean kivsyak:

This harmless invertebrate is turned on by dampness and keeps in secluded, warm and humid places. In case of danger, the nodule coils up into a spiral and emits a foul-smelling liquid, the smell of which is easily recognizable.

And this is what a centipede flycatcher looks like:

Flycatchers can live in the bathroom and toilet, as well as in any other rooms. They are not attached to humidity, but settle where mosquitoes, flies, butterflies and silverfish are constantly present - their main food.

You can remove centipedes from the apartment with any insecticidal agents. However, these insects rarely settle indoors in large numbers, and therefore, to destroy them, it is enough to simply catch and destroy the noticed individuals.

 

Mosquitoes and their love for bathrooms

Mosquitoes do not live in the bathroom all the time. Only in the dirtiest apartments, where basins or jars of old water can stand under the baths for months, mosquitoes can breed.

Usually, they appear indoors to bite people, and stay in the bathroom to relax. Under natural conditions, mosquitoes are attached to the water in which their larvae breed, and therefore they are looking for an appropriate damp room in a person’s dwelling.

 

We eliminate the causes of the appearance of insects in the bathroom

The main reason for the appearance of any domestic insects in the bathroom or toilet is dampness and leaking pipes. Accordingly, the only reliable way to avoid the appearance of unwanted guests here is to fix the plumbing and ensure proper ventilation.

Sometimes in private houses or apartments located on the first floors of apartment buildings, insects crawl here from basements in search of warmer places to hide.In this case, it is important to eliminate any cracks and grooves in the places where the pipes enter the walls and floors, so that even the smallest insects cannot penetrate.

Also, for prevention, you can sprinkle boric acid under the bathtub. Woodlice, silverfish, cockroaches and other small insects will die after the first use of this substance, and even single pioneers will not linger here. Additionally, in the bathroom and toilet, you can lay out bundles of wormwood and tansy or hang sections from moths, the smell of which repels various arthropods quite well.

Sometimes in the bathroom and toilet you can find bedbugs and cockroaches crawling here through the ventilation ducts from neighboring apartments. These insects do not live permanently in the bathroom, but if their neighbors have them, they can often be found here. Moreover, cockroach larvae, which have just molted, are almost white in color, and it is not always easy to recognize them for an unprepared person.

In the photo - a white insect, which can also be found in the bathroom, is a nymph of an ordinary red cockroach:

To protect against these guests, the ventilation ducts should be tightened with a thick mesh, and insect repellent sections should be hung in them. This will be a reliable guarantee that insects will not start in the bathroom or toilet.

Review

“We have small white insects in our toilet that constantly sit on the walls or ceiling. Ugly, they look like worms. Looked on the Internet, it turned out that these are silverfish. Maybe for a week we just slapped them with a slipper, and that's how they all got out. I don’t think anything more serious should be used against them.”

Vyacheslav, Gorky

 

A resident of the apartment collects from the walls fifty wood lice per day

 

An interesting video: how to effectively deal with wood lice in bathrooms and toilets

 

And this is what a flycatcher looks like - a rather unpleasant insect