Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Good morning, we seem to have found ourselves with a huge colony of ants who have taken up home in our aquaponic garden. We have tried a vinegar and water mix and a lemon and water mix spray to get rd of them, but to no avail. Any suggestions on an aggressive, fish friendly remedy we can use. they are now into teh grow beds on the plants and starting to move into the sealed food bins. Your help is much appreciated

I'm not sure where Anguilla is so I'm not certain what you have available. A couple of things you could try depending on your system layout. Peppermint essential oil spray works for some types of ants (this may drive them off temporarily the Tanglefoot might keep them away after this). I think the peppermint spray messes with their ability to find chemical trails. Another thing is a physical barrier - There's a product used for fruit trees called Tree Tanglefoot that is sticky and impassible for the ants (it does need to be refreshed periodically). On trees you wrap it with elastic tape and then apply the Tanglefoot onto this tape. You can probably do something similar with the grow beds, especially if they are on legs but put it somewhere that you won't come in contact with it as you care for the bed .

Hope this helps

edit: sprinkling cinnamon around an area can also work temporarily.

Try DE ( diamentous earth ) probably misspelled but is a good way. You also need to find were they came from and treat that area.

Sounds like Fire Ants?

By the way, DE dust is great for the food bins also, keeps the feed clean of all bugs and insects.

Diatomaceous earth - like Old Prospector said, it's completely safe even if you or the fish eat it, so you can sprinkle it heavily all over the ground around your system. If you can't find a source for that, you can mix flour and borax and leave it out as a bait - the safest way is to put it in small containers with holes in them, and leave the containers on the ground where the ants have trails, that way animals and children can't reach it. (That one isn't safe if you or the fish eat it, so it's best to number all your bait containers and make sure they all get picked up after you don't need them any more.)

If you can't find tanglefoot, you can smear petroleum jelly on surfaces they're climbing up; it's messy but effective. Also, if they seem to be actually living in the dry sections of your growbeds, temporarily put in a taller standpipe to bring the water level up over the media and flood them out.

Just be careful when spreading the DE around, whilst it is safe to eat, it is an irritant if inhaled. I know this as I have inhaled (unlike Bill Clinton, who claims not to have inhaled )

>>Long-term inhalation of the crystalline form is associated with silicosis, chronic bronchitis, and other respiratory problems. The bulk of diatomaceous earth is amorphous, not crystalline. The amorphous form is only associated with mild, reversible lung inflammation.

if nests are in the beds then flood the beds. Put an extension on your standpipe and let the water go up and over.

need to have a water resupply ready to top back up with.

ants will come pouring out so you need to be able to deal with them after that.
Kill those you can and the sprinkle something appropriates around the base/legs of the bed stands.

Follow the ant trail to the back to the nest. Then put ant rid, or the equivalent ant bait (that kills the nest) around the nest, and they'll take out the nest.

It's the best way I know of.

Thank you all for your replies. Wlll let you know how it works out!

also you mentioned using vinegar not sure how much you used and whether it went into your grow beds but vinegar will effect ph but worse still will kill your good bacteria in your grow beds

Ants are a problem that many people have. There is nothing more disturbing, annoying or embarrassing than having ants in your home. First of all examines the type of ant if it carpenter ant then it should be removed as soon as possible because carpenter ants can do as much damage to your house as termites can. My friend Robert faced a due to carpenter ant, later he had to call Pest Control Braircliff Manor NY professionals to get rid of ants.

We have faced an ant infestation on our property in plague proportions and Ive tried every store bought product I could find. I ended up stepping things up to a commercial product called Amdro. It was about $120 for 500g so not cheap. Its pretty crazy stuff, a friend of ours lost all her chooks from them eating it from around their yard.

We've got a gazillion different types of ants in Costa Rica and to effectively battle them you really need to know what kind of ants you face. I imagine many of the types you'd have in the Caribe are what we have here. The only ones I regularly try to get rid of are Zompopas (Leaf Cutters, e.g. Atta colombica and others) which can strip an adult tree of leaves overnight -- faster than any caterpillars I've ever seen.





It is estimated that they clear about 15% of the jungle growth each year. They don't eat the leaves, they use them to cultivate underground fungus gardens which they harvest for their food. We keep them at bay by not killing them directly, but by killing their fungus gardens. No food means they move on and/or die. At the first sign of zompopa trails I track them back to their nest and try to kill their fungus gardens. That's probably not what you have or you would have mentioned the plant damage... It is spectacular!

Army ants are too mobile and too many to kill. When they come through a house, people just grab pets and leave for a few hours. When they return their house is clean, clean, without even a single dead cockroach carcass to be found and the army ants have moved on.

World's Deadliest: Army Ants Eat Everything

I think vinegar mostly just wipes out the ants' scent trails. A Borax/sugar mixture will kill most types that like sweets AND carry the bait back to their nests. Carpenter ants don't carry bait back to their nests so Borax/sugar bait doesn't do much for them, but food grade Diatomaceous Earth (DE) in their nests will shred them -- I assume DE doesn't harm fish, but I don't know for sure. It is sometimes used in aquarium filters. It also is used as a dewormer in animals, but I don't know how that would affect beneficial worms that might be in a grow-bed. There could be other beneficial insects affected by DE.

A while back BYAP had a pretty good discussion about DE and aquaponics:

DIATOMACEOUS EARTH for pest control

Some folks have luck with pouring an orange peel puree on ant nests. Once you get rid of them, physical barriers like sticky tape, thick grease or petroleum jelly as mentioned earlier can keep ants away.

Good luck!

--
Sam