Sugar ants in my tank hoods

So a bout 3-4 weeks ago we had terminex come out and spray inside and outside our house for sugar ants. A week later we still seen ants on countertops. I went to do my weekly maintenance on all 4 aquariums and I noticed the sugar ants was in the hood of my 40 tall and 10 gallon. I took it apart and took it outside ( just the hoods) and cleaned all ants off. We called terminex a second time and told them we still had sugar ants and that they were going to my tanks. ( I'm thinking for water due to poison) They came out last Thursday and sprayed inside my house again but at the time there was no ants in the hoods because I cleaned them. They sprayed behind the tanks. Yesterday I went to feed the fish and there was ants all in the hood. I'm talking about a whole bunch with there eggs and everything. We called terminex again and they are coming back out again tomorrow. Does anyone know what I can do to prevent them from going to my tanks? I had one fish to die the other day. I don't know if it's from an ant that might of fell in the tank and maybe the fish died from eating it. Just found it strange that it died and was fine the night before.

 

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They need to follow their trails inside and outside to see how they are getting in. I had put the traps for another kind of ant that the ants take back to the nest and it is supposed to kill the nest, on my kitchen counters. DON"T DO IT . Every ant in a hundred mile radius were coming in for dinner. What I did find is that glass plus stops them dead in their tracks so you can at least wipe them off the counters without them scattering in 50 directions at once. It doesn't prevent them unfortunately. I think ours were called white footed ants. They were coming in from shrubs and trees near the house. It took a few times for pest control to get rid of them. but I am sure they will be back at some point. The stuff of nightmares. Alison

 

I wouldn't have any exterminator spray anything around my tanks personally. I would try this:

 

Not familiar with sugar ants, but we use borax to kill them here:
https://www.practicallyfunctional.com/get-rid-of-ants-with-borax/

 

I will give that a try when the next invasion occurs. Thanks for the link. Alison

 

I didn't want them to spray around my tanks either but my husband was home at the time and he didn't think it would hurt since all my tanks are on stands. We had tried borax before calling terminex and before the ants got too bad. Seems the ants are immuned to borax. In the past years it worked but not this time. Terminex said it was going to be a very bad year due to no freeze and all the flooding.

 

Oh dear. Another thing I have heard works as a repellent is the plant called Tansy. Latin name Tanacetum vulgare. It's often found growing wild along roads in dry areas

 

Well I doubt that I will find any of that around here due to it has rained all winter up til now. At least once a week it has flooded. We are due more storms tonight. I'm in Texas and we are not use to seeing all the flooding. A normal year is dry and everyone is normally on a water restrictions. Ha not any more.

 

Just thought I would give a update. The guy that came out this time has been with terminex for 20+ years. He said his manager called and they rerouted him to come to our house to take care of the problem (since it was the third time for them to have to come out). He also said that this was not uncommon. So all he did was put out some sort of gel drops that is pet and kid friendly. He said for us not to kill any ants that we see so that they can take it back to the others. It was very hard for me not to kill any that I seen around the hood. Anyways I did what he said and two days latter no ants. Yea!!