Silverfish make anything starchy into a meal, which means there are plenty of interesting tidbits to eat in your home. If you start seeing tiny holes in your wallpaper, find more holes in older books, or even find them in your favorite cashmere pullover, you may be dealing with silverfish.
These insects are highly adaptable as they have been around for hundreds of millions of years, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. They are also very resilient and, although they do not bite humans or pets or transmit diseases, they can still contaminate your home and cupboards.
A timely response is your best solution to any pest infestation, and At Home Pros can help you get from step one to a pest-free home in no time at all. We can help connect you to a pre-screened home service provider more quickly than if you were searching on your own.
Also known as “bristletails,” due to their bristly antennae and appendages, silverfish usually avoid humans, so the damage that they’re causing might also be going unnoticed. Here are some more details about the ancient silverfish, what they eat, how they live and what you can do to your home environment to make it less attractive to them.
What Are Silverfish?
Since these insects date back millennia, it’s hardly surprising that they are highly adaptable and resilient critters. Their name silverfish is due to their fish-like scales, and the way they move in darting motions, much like fish.
These insects are nocturnal and measure half an inch to one inch fully grown. Young bugs that are newly hatched are whitish-gray, and they gain their silvery, bluish hue with age. With expressive long antennas that can regenerate and a life span of three years, silverfish avoid light and move quickly.
Silverfish also require a lot of humidity — 75 to 95 percent — and prefer damp areas like bathtubs, sinks or murky basements with poor drainage. That being said, in the right conditions, they can live in almost any room of your home, including the roof!
An odd fact about silverfish is that they cannot climb slick surfaces, so they won’t be scaling your windows anytime soon. They can survive for weeks without food or water, but they do need ambient humidity, which is why humidity control is critical to controlling silverfish populations on your property.
Silverfish Habitat
As well as residential structures, silverfish also like to live in commercial buildings, like offices, warehouses or libraries. Often, silverfish infestations start when a contaminated shipment is brought inside.
Active at night, silverfish like to find a tight spot and rest easy during the day. They can be found almost anywhere in the home — bathrooms, basement, attics, and everything in-between. They especially like to set up in roofs, especially shake shingle roofs, during warmer months as there is an abundance of things there that they like: moisture, starch, dead insects and cellulose.
If your house is topped with a shake shingle roof, it’s important to get it cleaned and sealed every few years. Silverfish have a tendency to breed in the warm confines of your shake roof, then move down into the rest of your house through the insulation.
Silverfish have been known to travel far and wide to find their desired food, but once they have located a reliable food source, they tend to stick close to it. Females lay between one and three eggs every day, depositing them in cracks or leaving them exposed.
These eggs need particular conditions in order to hatch. If the temperature hovers between 72˚ and 90˚F, and humidity — an essential ingredient — stays between 50% to 75%, then the eggs will hatch within a couple of months. If these conditions are not met, eggs may take years to hatch.
What Do Silverfish Eat?
Along with their extreme tenacity, they can survive in the hottest or coldest climes imaginable; silverfish aren’t picky eaters and mostly dine on starch. While that may have meant a lot of potatoes and other starchy tubers in the past, these days silverfish prefer any kind of paper they can find, like old books, wallpaper (if it’s made from real paper) and other paper products.
An array of foodstuffs like flour, oats and even glue are all fair game for silverfish. These insects would pick protein over carbohydrates, however, and will even resort to cannibalism to meet their dietary needs; their preferred proteins are dried beef, as well as the dead or injured of their own kind.
As wilder areas dry out in the warmer drier months of summer, many of these insects will try to invade your home, depending on how rural the area is. New construction also attracts silverfish much of the time, as green wood and freshly laid concrete provide moisture for them, and wallpaper paste provides the meals.
Silverfish are more nuisances than outright active threats as they do not transmit diseases or bite humans or their pets. But they can damage your property as they’ve been known to dine on types of clothing as well as paper and pantry products. Here are some ways to keep silverfish at bay and, if you do have them in your home, get rid of them for good.
Ways to Deal with Silverfish
The main methods of dealing with silverfish are to reduce the habitat in which they want to live, which means decreasing humidity and getting rid of old paper. One of the most effective homegrown remedies is to use cinnamon or ground cloves around your property.
Many believe that silverfish will flee from areas that have been sprinkled with either ground cloves or cinnamon. But these spices won’t kill any existing silverfish or the eggs they’re laying, so you need to drastically reduce the prime silverfish real estate or enlist the help of a professional. To fully clear your house of a silverfish infestation, you have to get rid of all the eggs and the adults that are active on your property.
Other ways to repel silverfish is to reduce the amount of humidity in your home. Silverfish require moisture almost as much as they need food to survive. In fact, they can survive for many months without food or water, but do not do well if there isn’t a lot of moisture in the air. Invest in a dehumidifier and place it in the moistest areas of your home, and repair any leaking pipes or faucets to reduce the humidity. You can also use fans to dry out areas until they are uninhabitable to silverfish.
You can trap these nocturnal pests with sticky traps or a homemade one using a glass and some tape. Attach the double-sided tape on the outside of the glass. Silverfish will crawl up the sides in their nocturnal preambles and fall into the glass. Since they are unable to scale slick walls, they will be unable to get out again. This isn’t a useful method of eradicating large quantities of silverfish, but can help you correctly identify the pests in your home.
As with any other pest, you need to control the access pests have to your home. Seal up any cracks around windows and doors to prevent new silverfish from entering. Air conditioning units and your plumbing infrastructure are particular points of interest to the insects as they may provide both access and moisture.
Professionals Methods
You should only turn to chemical methods if you are working with a professional or have a severe infestation. For light infestations or only the occasional insect, it’s fine to try a gentler method first. To successfully eradicate a severe silverfish infestation, you can use chemical means as well as the reduction of humidity, water and their food sources.
Look for pesticides with synergized pyrethrin and pyrethroids with ingredients like bifenthrin, tetramethrin, cyfluthrin and phenothrin, which should kill these pesky insects on contact. These types of chemical treatments usually come in aerosol or liquid form, and during application, you should spray it directly into some of these areas:
- Door and window casing
- Intersections or baseboards
- Closets
- Bookcases
- Exposed pipes
Some of these treatments may be oil-based, which makes them flammable and dangerous around gas motors or electrical fires. And you never want these types of treatments near your drains, or near food and water sources.
You can also get bait or chemical dust to treat your silverfish or their close cousins, firebrats. Most of the time, silverfish do not want to feed on the bait, and some inorganic dusts containing boric acids are ineffective against them.
There are some dust treatments that contain synergized pyrethrin, which may end up being highly successful against silverfish, but shouldn’t be used in open areas. As with any chemical treatment that you are using without a professional’s help, read the label thoroughly and carefully.
At Home Pros can help you find service local providers who can get rid of the silverfish problem in your home. If you have seen these scaly pests on your premises more than once, and have decided that it’s time to take action, don’t wait. Contact At Home Pros today.
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