Help! ant colony in my Rena xp3 motor!

[cichlidfish]

I went to do a water change about 2 weeks ago and found ants swarmming around the top of the filter. I tried to drown them out by soaking the filter motor in a bucket of water for hours. I thought they were gone until I did a water change again over the weekend. I did the same over and it was amazing how many ants were in there. I have ant food traps near the filter, but nothing seems to work. How can I get rid of them with out poisoning my fish?

 

[rafael707]

shoot a water jet at the rena motor... i dont think ants would harm your fish in any way, your fish might like them

 

[ziggy2]

Soak it in a diluted beach solution.

 

[Carefree_Dude]

add food to the top of the filter. Let the ants colonize. Feed them as a snack to your fish.

 

[cichlidfish]

Thanks for the replies. I have tried flushing the ants out many time. I am afraid of using bleech because I don't want it to kill my bacterial filtration. I can't beleive this has happend and open to any other suggestions.

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

take a tray large enough to contain the filter. Fill it up with bleach water (a shallow layer is enough) and place the filter into it. As for the inlet and outlet pipe, use double-sided adhesive tapes. Now the only possible way to enter the filter is through the strainer.

 

[Jer]

add food to the top of the filter. Let the ants colonize. Feed them as a snack to your fish.

Win!

 

[leeishom]

Boiling hot water should do the trick.

 

[fishghost]

Find out where they are coming from and put boric acid there. Problem solved

 

[tscharf]

try surrounding ur filter in black pepper and putting some where they are going in and out. use the black pepper trick in my house and it works every time