Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, not quite. I mostly killed them due to the pump not running for 8 hours, though I did wonder why my AC/DC backup air pump did not save my stuff up.

After cleaning the air stones I was still not getting much air through them, and on further inspection discovered a whole colony of tiny ants had setup shop inside the air pump. A few of them had got through the filter material and into the air pump bellows itself and had gummed up the 1 way valves stopping it working.



I stripped it down, gave it a good clean and put it back together again and it works a treat. Lessons learnt:

1. Locate airstones where they can be easily inspected and cleaned regularly
2. Check plenty of air is coming out of the airstones daily
3. Take steps to avoid pests moving into your air pump. I smeared peppermint oil on the insides of the air pump, so hopefully that will put them off. Long term I'm not sure what to do.

Has anyone else had this problem?

I also noticed that the ID of the two air line connections pipes was not equal - Wondering if this is deliberate or the pump had been made up of mixed parts? It was noticebaly easier to blow through one side than the other even after cleaning.

Sorry to hear about the fish Matt. Unusual chain of events that one.

Thanks Charlie. I've gotten over it now. Happened about 5 weeks ago with my trout. Good to know why through.

Yea Ive had ants set up shop in my battery operated drill a few years back. Bloody bugger caused it to burn out.

Ants did $1000 worth of damage to one of my 24>240V inverters a few years ago, and I have found them trying to set up shop in inverters and charge controllers a few times since then.

How do you evict them?

Send them a bill

A very stern talking to, followed by squashing as many of them as possible, and placing lots of blobs of Borax + icing suger mixed with water all around where they are moving usually stops them... until the next time.

Does the borax repel them or poison them? Just wondering if there is any chance they might transport it to either grow beds or Fish tank and poison the Fish.

Borax is poisonous to ants, but I don't know about for fish. It would be safer to put it near wherever they are coming from, rather than on a GB.

Inverters don't work again if they get a cockroach in either.