ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Psychosimian]

Should i give them live or dead food? I went to a reptile shop today and they only had live crickets which were considerably bigger than the ants, and some kind of white maggots. I'm going to try the maggots live and see if they kill it or just wait for it to die. The Solder ants are pretty big though, i reckon they should be able to kill the maggot pretty easily.

Has anyone tried feeding them live cockroaches or anything like it?

[JimmyVe]

How big is your colony, to catch living food (as big as a cockroaches) the colony needs to be very big.
In most ants are cleaners, i mean they clean the forest from dead insects and stuff, not much ants really hunt. And if they do it mostly are on small insects.
There are ants who hunt on any living insect but not this species.

[ashhad1]

I think this specius should do fine in hunting insects as they do have major workers, But just dont put insects in which you know will deliberatly harm the ants as this could be quite disasterous.

[Stilton]

Those 'maggots' are probably mealworms. They make good ant-food but not alive; they have powerful jaws and would be dangerous. They also have a hard skin so cut them up before feeding.

[Bob]

C.l or the carpenter ant is a great species because considering its size, I've heard its fairly easy to keep (most larger ants are harder to keep). Hope you can post some pictures of your colony soon. Keep us posted.

[MilitANT]

A bit of advice: make sure the bug is dead if you do decide to kill it. Once I thought a cricket was dead after I smashed him and put him in my ant formicarium. The ants dragged him into the test tube and started feeding. I checked on them later and the cricket was somehow still moving! All he could do was kick one leg but since he was in the nest, he was causing chao! Be careful! LOL

[ashhad1]

try also just simple earth from bags u can buy as my C.ligniperda moved into that part instead of the sand loam mixture, keep the floor a little moist as this triggerd my ants to move out of the test tube but dont forget to give the basin some kind of air circulation for a small while (stops mould building) You could also try humus but it mould alot of faster if not air circulation is there. (my basin has simply soil, sand/loam and humas sections).