Ants are almost always bad guys; and in citrus if you have ants, you WILL have aphids; and aphids do significant damage to new growth.

All my pots are on a concrete patio. I have ants in mine too. Thank goodness they are not fire ants this time.

I had ant issues with a couple of my container plants last year (not just citrus). I had a cultivar of a native honeysuckle suddenly covered with aphids and after multiple sprayings with insecticidal soap, saw the cause and hunted for a remedy. Also had one of the citrus with an ant trail last year as well.

What I found helped was to try a borax/sugar solution - mix some borax (most common seems to be the "Twenty Mule Team Borax" laundry product) with sugar water and then place soaked cotton balls of that solution along their trail and near any entrance holes in the pot and on the soil surface near where they are seen. Replace the cotton balls with fresh solution as necessary and eventually the workers will take that solution back to their nest to feed the ant larva and the queen, and that will eventually take out the whole colony. It took a couple weeks but was an amazing success last year.

Recipe (for both solution and dry mix) here - https://www.wikihow.com/Kill-Ants-Using-Borax

Ok thanks guys I’ll look into it.