MMoudry: Rega-Hemp (24. Mai 2004 15:55)

Hi,
I just wanted to say that you should seriousely consider reading a short story from George R. R. Martin called Sandkings. It's an excellent story (if you like science-fiction) about a man who that tried to keep a species not so unsimillar to ants in his home. He treated them badly so to say (made them fight for pleasure etc.)

When I read your posts about keeping a gigant anthill on your table in your bedroom (the room you SLEEP IN??) and making two colonies fight... SOMEHOW I couldn't get this book out of my mind.

If you are interested I can send you this story (it's not very long) by email :P

What could be interesting though is to have a slave-keeping colony and a normal colony separated, and sometimes drop some larvae from the normal colony into the slave keeping colony. You could have this way two species of ants in one colony. (Like REALLY huge slaves hehe)

Also a friend of mie asked me once how to keep an ant colony in the open and we came with a simple solution.

We used a large rectangular basin that was filled with water. The basin wasnt very tall about 5 cm. We placed a large rectangular pot in the middle. Now inside the pot we put a tree and the ants.

Tree ants nest :
Example

It looks EXTREMELY cool and works equally well with ground and tree ants. It's like you have in your room a tree with LOTS of ants on it. And they can't break loose because of the water and of course you don't have to worry about giving water to them.

Only major problem with this setup is when you forget to add water to the lower basin since your ants will get free in an instant ! We created a small electronic circuit that actions a water pump. Two electrodes float inside the basin and when the water level gets below a certain level a rele actions the water pump to add water to the lower basin automatically.
Also the tree shouldn't be very large since sometimes ants fall from it and you don't want to drown them in the lower basin or falling on the floor of your chamber. a bonsai works the best.

In the image on the link I gave you they use a small container apart for ant waste. You can keep the ants from escaping that container by vaseline. Coat the top edges of the container with it and it should keep the ants inside.

You can also train your ants to use the container as waste disposal by putting some of their waste into it.

If you you use the other setups keep the waste container below the level of the nest so that the gases that are produced by the waste and are heavier than air are kept inside that waster container.

Mipam Moudry

ralphdrake: (31. Mai 2005 09:54)

hi

I have a c. ligniperda queen is there anything I should know about her and keeping her at the moment I have her in a test tube with cotton wool of water and at the end a cotton bud.

thxs seeya ralph

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