Can ants hurt my beardie?

[Puddles]

After a week and a half of scrubbing, sawing, bleaching and rinsing a piece of log for my beardie I have put it in the enclosure. Problem is it must have had ants in it originally, we washed out heaps and heaps, and I hadnt seen any for a couple of days, but now I have put it in with my beardie I am finding 2 or 3 a day. I remove them if I find them but my questions are - will it hurt if my beardie eats them and are they like crickets that they can bite your beardie when sleeping at night? They are just the normal littlke black ants like you see in your house sometimes.
Thanks!

 

[HeatherSullivan]

I would think that they could bite on them. What you can do with the wood though is put it in your oven at like 200F and cook it for like 10 to 15 mins or so. Not sure about if he is eating them...hopefully someone more experiance with that will come along.

 

[Puddles]

Unfortunately the bit of wood is too big to fit in the oven

 

[diamc]

Ants do indeed bite, I've been bitten by black ants myself. To play it safe, I think I would remove that piece of wood.

 

[Puddles]

Cool thanks, yes, I have taken it out, what a pain! Maybe better just stick with the rock she has, just wanted to get her a bit closer to the UV light, but not worth it if she is going to get bitten!!

 

[Gail]

Do you happen to have a chest freezer you can put the log in? freezing works as well as baking for killing little critters.

 

[Puddles]

No we dont, but we have an upright one, maybe I can take a couple of shelves out and stand it up in there, thanks for that How long do you reckon I would need to leave it in there considering the log is around 12 cms diameter, to make sure it killed them all?

 

[jstouts]

or if that doesn't work, soak it in bleach.

 

[GeckoGarden]

They can. They are one of the insects they should not eat. I would be worried about them biting your beardie, and him eating him.

 

[Puddles]

Thanks everyone,
It had already been soaked for 24hours in bleach, there were apparenly cracks that the bleach didnt get into, as there were still some ants. I ended up sawing off the big chunk where the ants seemed to be coming from and since then havent seen anymore Salamance is pretty happy with his new perch to bask on - ant free!!