I moved to Deutschland a couple months ago and this thing are EVERYWHERE. At my home, the offices bathrooms, etc.

by SodeX_OS

23 comments

  1. Paperfish. They feed on paper and are very difficult to get rid of once they have infested your home.

  2. Silberfischchen if it’s moist or Papierfischchen if it’s not. Remove them with traps or spray. If they are visible, you got a lot.

  3. Silverfish (Silberfischchen). Not really considered a pest but some people find them gross. This one is a pretty adult specimen.

  4. A silverfish (Silberfischchen).

    They are harmless and like dark, moist and warm areas like baths. If you encounter them regularly, you might need to vent your air more often.

    They mostly eat dust, hairs and mold. They can survive for multiple months without food intake, but can only reproduce when it’s warm and moist enough for them.

  7. As pointed out. That’s a silverfish. You find them more often in the Winter when it becomes cold outside. By themselves they aren’t an issue but they can be an indicator of high moisture which might become an issue with Mold.

    So make sure to air out especially moist rooms like Bathrooms or kitchen regularly. You can also get traps for them if you want to get rid of them

  8. Paperfish, a Pest, very hard if not impossible to get rid of now. Permetrin spray is great to keep their population at bay. The lucky part. Due to new law in 2025 most sellers stopped selling these products in their Shops and their alternatives are, judging by reviews, bad.

  9. That’s a paperfish (Ctenolepisma longicaudata).

    You can tell because its antennae and tail filaments are about as long as its body and it looks darker and more matte than a regular silverfish. They can be controlled quite well with silverfish gel or spray (which also works against paperfish).

  10. Silberfisch.
    I hate them with passion, but guess what, my cat loves them! She hunts and eat them every night, jumping into the Bathtub and sink looking for them small devils.

  11. These arent Silberfischchen like most people say here,,these are Papierfischchen, an invasive species impossible to get out. They eat paper. Google both to see the difference, and kill them if you see one.

    Basicallzmz Slberfischen are smaller and their sensor things in the back are shortet

  12. they eat dead skin from the floor at night and kill small parasites

  13. Drop lavender or cedar essential oil on a cotton ball and put it in corners in the bathroom (or wherever you’re seeing these) as a natural repellent.

  14. I always laugh my ass off when I see posts like this. Please take a cleaning bucket and clean your apartment then this won’t happen, but unfortunately people can’t do that anymore. They don’t clean, they don’t maintain hygiene and then these critters just crawl around and have fun with it.

  17. I moved out of “paperfish” (long-tailed silverfish)/silverfish infested government housing (I was a homeless teen) in August. It was awful. I woke up with them on me, on and in my food, everything. Still have absolute panic if I think I see one now.

    If you see more than a few, call your landlord. About twenty or so would count as an infestation and if they can’t prove it’s your fault, they have to take care of it for you.

    The ones you are seeing are much harder to get rid of due to their resiliency to lower humidity and their ability to feed on a much larger range of things (paper, cardboard, skin flakes and all kinds of other things)

    You can get some traps at DM or Rossmann that worked decently for me (both sticky traps and the ones you can glue to your wall, which they will then feed to the babies, which will kill them), and stuff like essential oils seems to keep them at bay a bit. If you see them, vacuum them up maybe? I didn’t have a vacuum but I saw people recommend that at the time.

    They are pretty nocturnal, and like small dark spaces, so check your floorboard, vents, drains.

  18. I live in a brand new house in the Netherlands and it’s already infested. I first thought I brought them in with my stuff from the infested place where I lived before – but all neighbors have them. The crawl out of the kitchen and bathroom sinks and they live in the walls. I once heard that the building materials are already infested. And no, there’s nothing you can do other than spraying your kitchen every now and then and setting up traps. I air my place all the time and it has great ventilation and that doesn’t stop them.

  20. Paperfish as many have said. Had them myself in the house. Don’t recommend to try to get rid of them yourself. All those traps and sprays that you can buy yourself won’t have much lasting effect. Get professional help (via landlord if you rent). The pros have access baits that kill the paperfish very effectively. The toxin they are using is so stable that it lasts for years if you don’t remove it. Paperfish won’t die immediately and carry the toxin around into all the hidden cracks and corners. When they die of it they get eaten by other paperfish that then also die. I had one treatment of my house and haven’t seen a single one since. Not very expensive or a big job. In my case just one person going around with a syringe like thing setting small drops into cracks and corners.

    Edit: maybe important to add: House is in Norway not in Germany

  23. When you see many Paperfish, they must have been there for quite a while. These insects are very slow reproducers, a steady, not sudden pest. A female will only lay 100-200 eggs in her 6-7 years long life

    There’s some variety in the Fischchen family, and Paperfish are harder to get rid of than Silverfish. One reason is they can bear a dry environment and wide temperature range (Silverfish love moist, thats why they often come together with mold, damp rooms or wet walls).

    Also paperfish have a special digesting skill or enzyme something, so they can turn cellulose into sugar. That’s why they mostly move in with paper (like books, fotos, packaging, letters, boxes). They eat that and live in it.

    Paperfish don’t have nests, they are always in or near their food ressources. They can also live behind wallpaper and feast on old glue or colours.

    If you want to fight them, you need an insecticide, you won’t suceed with a lavender or garlic kind of strategy.

    As there has been a change in the law lately, you can’t just buy/order these poisons easily online any more. You have to buy directly in a store (Baumarkt, Gartenmarkt, Apotheke) and let the seller tell you about handling, safety and such personally.
    If you want to go that way, catch one of them first. Take it with you and show it to whoever you want to buy poison from.

    Have you located them in books, found traces in archive boxes or such, you can kill the ones inside by freezing the stuff or heating it up for a few hours. Especially if you have a big, old population, you will never get all of them, but then, as they reproduce so slowly, reducing the population can be enough to keep the peace.

    If theres is no paper/cellulose around and you haven’t seen any paper damages, double check the Fischchen sort. If you have other Fischchen, you often don’t have to fight them at all. You just change the environment to make them move out.

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