Any magic tricks for keeping ants out of cricket cages?

[adawinters]

Title kind of says it all. They're particularly bad this year. These are large black ants; I fear that they might be carpenter ants, but as I don't own the property, and the floor's not spongey yet, I'm trying not to think about it all too much... except that they've found the 10G that I use to store hundreds of crickets. Of course, this means they've found the cricket's food, so they're not going away, now. I've weighted the lid and bought ant traps, but every time I look, there's at least one ant in the cricket's food bowl (often eating a cricket it's just killed in a territorial dispute if not pillaging its food) and another one on its way in.

So... yeah. Other than my continued ant killing spree, any other tips? If I lined the top of the 10G tank with sealant, let it dry, and then closed the lid, do you think that would make the top ant proof? Or is that a loosing battle? I've been in this apartment for three years, and I see them once in a while during the summer, but it's never been like this. I'm afraid it's getting out of control.

[Buck Rogers]

I lost a lot of cricket and meal worm colonies last December from ants. I find that if you smear Vaseline (I think its called petroleum jelly over seas) around the base of cages and tubs it prevents the ants from climbing up. Also cooking oil can be used - we used this in a restaurant that I worked at in my youth to prevent coke heads from snorting up in the bathrooms.

[adawinters]

Thanks. So far, it seems to be working.