Eradicate Silverfish: When to Get Rid of the Animals Completely

You can fight silverfish with home remedies and products from specialist shops. But can you get rid of them forever?

Silverfish (Lepisma saccharina, meaning “sugar guest”) are small, silver-grey, wingless insects. They are between one and two centimeters in size and feed mainly on foods such as sugar and flour, as well as organic substances such as dander, dust mites, mold and algae. The pests can therefore also appear in your own home. Then what to do? And do they stay away in the long run?

Silverfish have a life expectancy of up to three years. In some test laboratories they even lived up to eight years. For this, however, the humidity must always be above 70 percent, the room temperature higher than 21 degrees Celsius and the food supply must be plentiful. This can usually be ruled out in apartments.

This question cannot be answered unequivocally. Silverfish are everywhere – but not always visible, as the light-shy animals hide well. Only in environments where they cannot survive silverfish do not exist. This means that the temperature must be below 10 or above 35 degrees Celsius and the humidity below 30 percent. In addition, there should be no organic matter anywhere that the insects can feed on.

So, to get rid of silverfish forever, you would have to create an environment that humans aren’t comfortable with either.

The number of silverfish depends, among other things, on the size of the apartment or house and the time of year. In autumn, the animals, which are also known as material pests (more on this here), look for a suitable place to overwinter. Heated interiors are particularly popular.

In addition, the larger the household, the more opportunities the insects have to spread out, hide and find food. Thus, there are certainly more silverfish in houses than in a small one-room apartment.

If there is an excessive infestation of silverfish, you should hire a specialist pest control company. The article explains when it is a silverfish plague. The experts check the situation and fight the silverfish in an appropriate way. This applies to both the scope and the means that they use for it. The insecticides are harmless to humans.

The pest controllers mainly lay out bait in the places where the silverfish like to hide. These are among others

• Bathroom including furniture
• baseboards
• kitchen cabinets
• fridge back
• cracks and joints
• Dishwasher back/bottom
• The wallpaper
• Dryer back/bottom
• Washing machine back/bottom

If pest control is used, silverfish will be gone within a few days. It is not possible to fight the animals with household remedies or common products from the trade. That doesn’t make much sense either. Because the animals eat house dust mites, for example, which trigger allergies in many people.