badman: Whats the minimum size glassfarm for ligniperda? (7. Apr 2008 17:27)

I was going to put them in a basin but farms take up less room. Do ligniperda work well in farms? I know some species wont use them as they like to dig wide chambers.

JimmyVe: (7. Apr 2008 17:50)

Don't know actually. It are large ants so it may be better to keep them in a basin.

Phasmid: (7. Apr 2008 18:33)

I had my colony in one of those XL glass farm from antstore. There is plenty of space (6cm wide) but these ants make very large chambers so they can't hide from you anyway.

badman: (7. Apr 2008 18:45)

what height/width was it? Do you still have the colony in there?

Phasmid: (7. Apr 2008 19:09)

Mine was the 40x30 one. You can see them here . I moved them out into a big glass tank about two days ago after having been in there for 1/2 a year because I wanted a slightly more natural envirnment for them. The colony grew nicely whilst in the XL farm.

badman: (7. Apr 2008 19:15)

Thanks for the info. One more question, how did you move them? Did you just hook the basin up and wait for them to move by themselves?

Phasmid: (7. Apr 2008 21:56)

Well I must admit I did it the impatient way. They were well dug in and had large chanbers along the bottom of the farm so I just scooped out the earth untill there was just the about 3" left then I poured them into the basin as they were all hiding in the last couple of chambers.
To get them into the farm I just put the test tube in the farm and they did the rest.

badman: (9. Apr 2008 20:57)

Does anyone know how many kilos of sand/loam is required to fill a 40*6*30 antfarm? This works out as 0.0072 cubic meters. I dont know the density of sand/loam so cant calculate it.

Also does everyone use the sand/loam mix straight from the antstore? I've found this to be very, very fine and can go rock hard if not kept very damp, and my ants were quite reluctant to dig in it, preferring a looser mix with humus.