Here are Liz's comments:
Please tell him to try "Terro", avail at hardware stores, is a bait that's
mostly sugar water and boric acid, thin it with a little water and put on a
china plate or someplace ants will find, make sure it stays liquid so they
will eat it, should see groups of them coming to eat it. If you can get
ants to eat poisoned bait, this will kill most species *much* more
effectively than spraying.
The exceptions are species of ant that won't eat bait or that don't share
food among themselves. I don't *think* pharoah ants are this kind, but if
he's in doubt, have him call the closest land grant college entomology dept
(here it's Purdue, in KY I don't know what it is) and ask for their
extension service or whoever works on ants, those people will have the best
info and won't steer him wrong. Terro is only like $1 a bottle so I'd
sure try it first.
I would tend to suspect that nothing the ants themselves do would harm his
fish as much as would spraying any kind of pesticide in the area. I have
heard stories of people whose tanks were wiped out when their spouse
sprayed Raid around the room. Also, he could feed the ant pupae to the
fish, I remember some kinds of fish being very fond of them, in fact I once
kept an ant colony in my bedroom for a while in a shoebox while I fed all
their larvae and pupae to my fish.... I would have kept it longer but it
was not practical to keep them alive without their queen....
Liz
In a message dated 5/10/03 5:57:38 PM US Central Standard Time,
gkimber2_at_alltel.net writes:
<< have several tanks in my garage. unfortunately, a colony of ants (pharaoh
ants, I believe) moved in over the last few weeks. I had been noticing ants
in the garage of late and I'd been trying to eradicate them. Then, last
night I found the colony. I was at my sink when I lifted a box - and found
ANTS!!! . I spent the next half hour smashing ants and larvae. Today,
there are just a few wandering aimlessly, but I want to be sure that I got
them all.
Any ideas on a pesticide that will kill ants and not my fish? I have set
out baits but I am thinking about putting down something more ...
aggressive. But I don't want to take out my fish too. I know that
pyrethrins are not to toxic to mammals, but I don't know about fish.
Now, I'm not planning on spraying the tanks, I just want something
relatively safe that I can spray on the ground and walls and not kill all my
fish
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