Is Vinyl tubing Toxic?

[colo3000]

I have an interesting problem, not sure if it's minor, major, or nonexistent. I bought 20ft of clear vinyl tubing at Lowes, they don't sell it on the big spools, which means the only way to get it is pre cut to 10ft or 20ft.

After buying the 20ft one 1/2in. O/D I got home cut it in half and ran warm/hot water through both 10ft sections, just to clean out any dust.

I have my Ant nest on one part of my room and the outworld is far enough away for one 10ft section, so the outworld is 10ft away. Now the nest I have hooked up only has maybe 10-12 nanantics.

My problem is a worker ant will get about 4ft down the tube (from the nest side) and turn around and high tail it back to the nest. It's been about 4 days and the workers don't go any further then about 4-5ft down tube before running back to nest.

I took the vinyl tube off and put it up to my nose and the inside of the tube has an EXTREMELY strong vinyl smell. I'm wondering if the inside is too "toxic" and that's why they run back. Or does that not really matter to ants. If it does matter does anyone have a good solution to cleaning out the tube or fixing the problem in some other way?

I just recently used the same tubing from Lowe’s and have had no problems. My colony is fairly large, and when I added this tubing my ants had the same reaction at the beginning, they’d run a couple inches down the new tubing and then turn around. I think this was because the new tubing was unknown and had no pheromone trails laid by previous ants. My ants had the same reaction to some old AC tubing that I washed out and readded. After a while they got used to it and now run all the way through.

[Dragonlord47]

Ok cool to know, thanks Colo3000. I feel a lot better knowing that.

I'll still wash it out just because I didn't really do that yet. But if it still smells strong I won't worry about it so much.

[MorbidBugg]

Simple dish soap is preferred simply fill sink with hot water and soap mix. Rub the outside with any sort of cloth or sponge. The inside is the trick part. Depending on length simply 'capping' one end and 'swishing' the soap water in it for about 2 to 5 minutes is the no tool way if you have pipe cleaners simply wet the pipe cleaner and thouroghly rub the inside of the tube. Rinse with plain tap water. Repeat repeat rinse three times smell. The vinyl smell will always be present but it should dull.