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 Example, from elsewhere in SA. Plastic test tubes can be bought online for dirt cheap, and cotton wool can be bought anywhere. A test tube nest can happily do a colony for over a year, and even then when they're ready to move on you usually want to just pull the cotton wool top off and put the whole thing into their new house. This example has some seeds in it for a seed eater species. In general you want to give them nothing until after they overwinter and have their first few workers. It is, by far, the set-up that gives the highest rate of success that I'm aware of.
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Jul 9, 2023 17:11
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Then I feel less bad about probably missing the nuptials now, because the plan is definitely not getting a test tube, on account of my wife being very adamant about ants being strictly outside the house, and having a random test tube in the garden with two small kids is a recipe for extremely stressed ants and maybe parents. My backup plan is basically to leave the nests somewhere and wait for someone to move in, possibly with the aid of some honey or something. But thanks for liking my little project, they're 100% inspired by this very thread. And also ants not seeing red is a great piece of trivia that I've now told friends, family and dudes at hardware stores where I attempted to buy red acrylic glass for not insane prices. The trick to that is apparently product samples, for the record.
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Jul 9, 2023 19:47
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Just buy red acetate sheets and put them over regular glass. Often found in hobby or art stores, or buy online. Should get more than you'll ever need for 
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Jul 10, 2023 07:53
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That works just as well! You won't see a newly founding colony moving in that nest, but you can just as well see established colony, probably about a year and older, trying it out. Depends on if it's the best suited nest for their needs, ants are very picky about that. Even if it's only option in an enclosed area like the setup I had before, they rather stay in a test tube with rotting cotton wool and empty water than even bother looking at the new nest beyond single scouts checking it for, like, two thirds of a year. No idea what was so bad about it, but ants are just ants ans they barely ever so what you might wish for. 
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Jul 12, 2023 09:13
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Once one of my students called me at 11pm because there were ants in her room. When i begrudgingly went to look i learned in fact it was all the ants in the world, just billions of them in a continuous river down her wall.
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Jul 29, 2023 18:53
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I was wondering where my ants had gone that day
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Jul 31, 2023 02:15
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This year soon after I pull my ants out hibernation I wanna setup a terrarium setup, I was thinking of getting like a tarheel i.e "plaster" based formicarium to place inside up against the glass and then basically bury it (with drainage layer of clay, then coco husk, soil, etc) with clear access to it from the surface so my ants should migrate to it and have their nest be visible from the side. But I have questions. Should I seal up against the glass with like silicone? Does this formicarium still need water, like the little water towers in the bottom and the little tubes for moisture?
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Feb 8, 2024 15:51
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Sorry, I totally forgot to post a reply to your question! I was in the ICU for a long while due to multiple surgeries and poo poo, so I read and then forgot about your post, sorry! I assume you already decided by now, what did you come up with? I for one would have gone with some silicone myself, I believe, but I can also see a version without it work! In terms of water, every formicarium needs moisture and a source of water to some degree, but it really depends on the ventilation and air that can flow in and out. I assume this one should have a rather good ventilation and therefore should lose water quicker than other setups, right? Based on the description the water towers exist for that reason and I would assume that you need to regularly refill them, too, at least in my experience setups like this tend to turn dry rather quick - which is good! - and thus you need water to keep a good amount of moisture in the nest at all times. I never should get too moist, of course, because that will lead to mold, but ideally you have a constant flow of air in and out, that will carry out moisture and allow it to dry off constantly, which constantly requires water. Getting the moisture right is really one of the toughest challenges in keeping ants, so a solid setup, good airflow and fresh water intake is vital.
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Mar 15, 2024 19:05
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Goons Are Gifts posted:Sorry, I totally forgot to post a reply to your question! I was in the ICU for a long while due to multiple surgeries and poo poo, so I read and then forgot about your post, sorry! Well, I contacted Tar Heel ants and we had some back and forth to discuss the details and then I asked for a quote so we could forward once I felt like we nailed down all details but he's so far sadly not gotten back to me in about a month.  #CurseOfTheSmallIndieBusinessOwnerHere's the outworld so far, as I've taken my ants out of hibernation as it was about time, here you see I tossed in 10 crickets because I'm lazy and Ants can fend for themselves.  ALL OF THE DIRT you see in there, and piled in the corner, THEY DID THAT. They started excavating out their nest for whatever reason and burying stuff in the outworld.  And yeah there's more than enough workers that they basically completely subdue all the crickets in under like an hour. Tag yourselves, I'm the ant doing crane style kungfu vs the cricket in the bottom left.
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Mar 21, 2024 18:02
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are ant gel formicariums really bad for the ants or anything? will it give them a slow and painful death from ant cancer? i've been thinking i should get an ant farm but a lot of my interest in doing so is in seeing the tunnels they carve and being able to directly observe their nest activities, and it seems pretty hard to achieve both without the gel option
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Mar 21, 2024 19:01
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ninjewtsu posted:are ant gel formicariums really bad for the ants or anything? will it give them a slow and painful death from ant cancer? i've been thinking i should get an ant farm but a lot of my interest in doing so is in seeing the tunnels they carve and being able to directly observe their nest activities, and it seems pretty hard to achieve both without the gel option So the gel will get moldy basically and will be harmful long term. As for seeing their tunnels though there's plenty of other options. As an example: https://canada-ant-colony.com/products/antcube-starter-set-20x20-digfix As you can see you can probably get a verically oriented nest which the ants will dig into, and the tunnels will be generally pretty visible. They often tend to dig up against the glass in my experience because its semi-sturdy. The thing I'd watch out for is the tunnels potentially collapsing in this setup, so I'd layer in rocks/twigs for additional support.
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Mar 21, 2024 19:06
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As mentioned above, the gel is very bad for ants, yes, it exists as a way to temporarily show ants work in that substrate, it was never meant as a way to actually keep ants for any longer than a few hours, a day or two at absolute most! The gel neither has any value for them as a building substance, no nutritional value despite what some companies claim, it allows no ventilation, is unstable in various ways and will always lead to a whole ant colony's death if they ate forced to live in there. Let alone the fact that your ability to see them, equals their inability to feel safe at home. Ants need darkness, they have a total of three eyes, two oculi compositi and one ocellus. The former two are red-blind and they cannot perceive red light, which some gel producers claim would be sufficient to offer red gel instead. However, the ocellus on top of their head is able to determine the basic absence or existence of brightness, so it's not like ants behind a red foil are sitting in utter darkness, only two out of three eyes perceive darkness. Let alone any paths they bury that you can look into clear as day. As mentioned above, there are plenty of lovely and amazing, safe and natural ways to see them bury and build! Ants are natural builder and they will happily build in any substrate, so really, there is never a lack of watching them do stuff, believe me! You don't need some dangerous and unhealthy gel for them to see exciting things! Plus, in a natural substrate, you can see their natural behavior, too, instead for whatever they desperately try to make work in a weird artificial environment they are not used to. In general, in my experience, the more natural your habitat gets, the more exciting things your ants will do with it! You cannot and will not control them, all you can do is expand or limit their environment and the more artificial stuff you use, the more limits you set. In nature they build the craziest things for 250 million years now, because they learned how to work with those limits nature gives them and whatever we try will never be as big and great as nature, so we should at least do our best to try!
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Mar 21, 2024 23:10
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Raenir Salazar posted:Well, I contacted Tar Heel ants and we had some back and forth to discuss the details and then I asked for a quote so we could forward once I felt like we nailed down all details but he's so far sadly not gotten back to me in about a month. Uh, oh, apparently they decided that your out world equals their junkyard now, haha, I know that feel all too well! I tried to build a beautiful setup in their outworld once and they completely trashed it and used it to bury their junk and poop, clearly, ants have a very different understanding of aesthetics than we do!
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Mar 21, 2024 23:13
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Well, it was meant to be a temporary outworld until I setup a natural nest for them in a fishtank. The egg carton was something I had to toss in while tossing in the crickets out of laziness. And now they won't let me take it out. As for light I think ants can get used to it, so the best thing is to probably have a setup where they have their covered nest, which splits between the outworld and the horizontal nest via tubbing; so they'll tunnel and dig into the dirt as they grow in size.
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Mar 22, 2024 00:30
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