I´ve been a bad caudatophile.

[Azhael]

I´ve recently been coerced into adding a new hobby to my hobby. I feel shame and disgust at myself for having occupied space in my house with something that doesn´t have vertebrae or permeable skin, but at least the new inhabitants of my wee zoo are cool. ANTS!
I´m now the proud owner of three queens (1 Camponotus cruentatus, 1 Messor barbarus and 1 Messor sp.). They are still starting as colonies but i´m already hyperobsessed.
One of the best things is i get to make the formicariums myself. Argh...the pleasures of scratched hands and badly crafted things.
I´ve been working on a plexiglass formicarium which i can´t wait to see full of ants

Are there any other mirmecoaddicts out there, and if so, what do you keep ?

 

[froggy]

Nice! How long do they live in the small chambers for and what do you feed them on?

C

 

[Azhael]

It depends on how fast the queen produces eggs and the first nurses. From what i gather this is usually a few months. The tubes can handle more ants than you´d think.
I´m feeding them on tiny droplets of sugar water, seeds (for the Messor with nurses) and i tried a small fruitfly the other day, which they quickly destroyed.

If all goes well, i plan to create a chamber with plants and aphids for the Camponotus and let them farm their own food

 

[gfsward]

As an entomology student, this post makes me really happy I've never gotten the time to start up a colony myself. You should get some leaf cutter ants too because they do intense farming

 

[FX1C]

That's really cool

I have so many wild ants where I live - but they're fascinating creatures - I look forward to updates in how they all settle in & colonise the tunnels.

Will you set up one enclosure for each species or can you mix them together?
(Sorry I have no idea about ant keeping )



<3 >o_o< <3

 

[Azhael]

Leaf-cutter ants are amazing, but they also make huge colonies and require lots of effort xD
Maybe some day! What i´m definitely getting at some point is a colony of termites. You still get to see some farming but they are ridiculously easy to keep.

Nikki, each species will be in their own formicarium because otherwise they´d kill each other.

Argh, i can´t wait to see them scurrying about!

 

[Slimy2]

This is really neat! As a lover of entomology since I was a wee lad, I raised all sorts of insects and arachnids in containers in my garage and I still do. I remember having an ant farm before, but with no queen it didn't last long. I have, however, raised a few species of vespid wasp colonies(something almost nobody does, for somewhat obvious reasons) and (with queens) was very successful with them.

Please keep us posted with your ant colonys' progress. It's really fun to watch them work as a whole.

 

[wandering]

The ants here in North Wales have woken up and started foraging but as there's still a remnant of the surprise spring snowfall and cold weather they're doing it indoors. Been finding them around and on top of the tanks. Found none inside though.......

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[oceanblue]

Despite the snow the mid Wales ants have also woken up! I too quite like ants in their place, but unfortunately yesterday the small black garden ants were crawling over the kitchen and I have had to feed them on a borate sugar mix to kill them.

 

[froggy]

I would always be tempted to expose a few of them to Cordyceps fungus...!

 

[karipatra]

I think ants are amazing, even more so after I read this!
Underground ant city in Brazil that 'rivals the Great Wall of China' with a labyrinth of highways | Mail Online

 

[Azhael]

It´s been a while and things are getting interesting. Unfortunately the M.barbarus queen and her offspring died for no apparent reason. However, the other Messor queen, which turned out to be M.capitatus, is creating her own army of destruction. I´ve been observing them and i think they are bent on world domination..i´ve seen them "talking" to each other in dark corners.
Atropos (that´s the queen´s name, she deserves nothing less) took some time to start laying, but once she begun, there was no stopping her. Now her minions number 21 with many more to come. It´s been a slow start, but the colony is really picking up the pace, there is always a nice pile of offspring, which they feed on the blood of countless mealworms.

Here is a picture from a couple of days ago, of the colony in their acrylic fortress of doom.

 

[Lugubris]

Ants, how fascinating! I too have become a bad caudatophile, I now have a colony of Porcellio scaber woodlice and a Pseudouroctonus iviei scorpion. The woodlice will be fed to my Sal's sometimes but for the most part I just find it interesting observing these terrestrial crustaceans.

 

[frogman]

Way to venture out of phibs, I could never imagine doing that **shivers**