>no ant thread What's wrong with you fuckers? You can

Tru

I am waiting for the season to catch my first camopnatus pen queen. They are my favorite local species.

I captured a few pavement queens but they were infertile so I am bust until it warms up.

>>2310081
I've had bad luck with Camponatus queens just up and dying after getting some larva. I suppose I'm not catching enough.

>>2310085

Well the downside is of course how long they take to start their colony. I forgot my local camp is Camponotus modoc.

I was also debating on finding out what would be the closest species to harvester ants in my area so I can raise a few colonies for ant eating reptiles.

I'm in Washington state myself.

Maybe P. occidentalis?

>>2310096
Opposite side of the continent from me. I don't know anything about the species in your area. Probably some neat stuff though, what with having the only temperate rainforest in the world within the bounds of your state.

Should I buy a ant colony kit or build my own?

>>2311411
Depends on the kit. Some of them are death traps. Not too hard to build your own.

File: IMG_0513.jpg (2MB, 2448x3264px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 2448x3264px

Why would you ever keep ants instead of bees if you have the money and somewhere to put them.

>>2311557
Cheaper, less work, (depending on species) more complex social structure, more interesting to watch unless you can easily afford an observation hive, can be done in a wider variety of areas...

However no delicious honey or side business selling products. And most ants are not as cute as honey bees. So it's a trade off.

>not keeping superior shrimp
I feed ants to mine. They get drug to a watery death.

>>2311660
Unless you're keeping that eusocial species of shrimp they found in a sponge fuck off

>>2311660
So what happens when you put the shrimp on an ant formicarium?

Amazing they would devour the shrimp. Weird how that works.

I've gotta do a project for my class (behavioral ecology) and was considering working with ants. Something like comparing area of their colony over the grain size of their dirt.

Any other cool projects I could do looking at ant behavior?

>>2310050
>going full sperg and being a beekeeper

What's wrong with being a beekeeper?

>>2312001
More work and cost.

anyone in the NE ohio area?

>>2311411
antscanada has some really nifty stuff to get you started. If you have some pvc and a terrarium you're about g2g. I would recommend getting some kind of small omninest for ~30 bucks

>>2314064

Oh on the Ants Canada thing.

They also have GRANT farmers who may have queens in your state or area so check that out.

Also invest in liquid tephlon (SP?)

I own a hybrid setup myself just no queens last year.

The only thing I don't like about these nests is you can't see them dig.

>>2311557
Because I have space for ants but not bees.

>>2314074

True I guess since I tend to want camopnatus spp. I don't tend to think of that.

A cool thing to do would maybe to get a huge cork bark slab and dremmel some chambers and let them use that as housing so I could watch.

Sometimes people build hollowish things in their outworld that they can use when the colonies get bigger.

You could probably diy a thin rectangle fill it with soil and connect it up to see if they dig it out. You could probably still see them if it was thin enough.

Soil nests are pretty easy to make. I've used some acrylic sheets and a solvent to get them to the right size. You only need about 1/8th between the sheets for smaller ants. The tricky part is keeping the nest hydrated. When mold gets in a soil nest, there's pretty much nothing you can do except try to move the ants out.

>>2314166
The condensation on the glass will end up culturing any cyanobacteria or proteobacteria present within the initial soil sample. You're effectively building a very shitty version of a Winogradsky column.

I would go with a sterile solution like plaster unless you like switching ant colonies every few months. You can use the gel that some ant colonies use but you will need to provide nutrition for the queen in such a case. Also anthropomorphzing ant forum faggots will bitch at you for "cruelty" as if kidnapping ants from the wild and forcing them to be your companion is any better.

>>2314145
>A cool thing to do would maybe to get a huge cork bark slab and dremmel some chambers and let them use that as housing so I could watch.
I was thinking about doing this as well. If you try it tell me how it goes. The only problem I see is mold but surely they have to deal with that in the wild as well?

>You could probably diy a thin rectangle fill it with soil and connect it up to see if they dig it out. You could probably still see them if it was thin enough.
True. The danger there is the soil may be full of all kinds of nasty things. Worse than wood.

>>2314196
>Also anthropomorphzing ant forum faggots will bitch at you for "cruelty" as if kidnapping ants from the wild and forcing them to be your companion is any better.
individuals are disposable. the litter of the world gotta be littered with the hemolymph of workers and termites.eusocialism and heterarchy not hierarchism and polygyny ok. Praise Wilson

>>2314210
In the wild, they have a vast open area to expand in all directions in.

Between two places of plexiglas, whatever nasties are produced by the mold (neither cyanobacteria nor fungi would be good they all produce toxins of some form or another) have no choice but to accumulate over time and poison your colony.

>>2314232
So what, in the wild when a chamber gets overgrown they just stop using it? I know they can stretch pretty far underground but I'm not sure how much they use at a time.

>>2314196
You should always bake your soil, which will get rid of most of the initial bacteria, along with anything else that might be living in it. Most ant species are fairly clever and will use their substrate to soak up excess water and smother any harmful growths. I've kept a soil formicarium going for five or six months without a problem. The real trick is to keep the moisture at just the right level. Too much and you'll get an explosion of mold. Too little and your ants will start dying off. In my opinion it's not worth the risk to the ants and the general maintenance, but there is something to be said for watching the ants do what comes natural to them.

>>2314342
What about using species that live in drier conditions?

>>2314636
Even if they can tolerate the dryness, there's a risk of tunnel collapses if the soil is too dry. I've made horizontal versions of the standard ant farm and even these have the occasional cave in. I've heard of people using a mixture of soil, sand, and clay to make a very sturdy digging medium, but I've never tried that myself. If the ants aren't a species that naturally digs, they may have trouble with it.