ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Ajbizzle87]

Hi my name is Adam and i love everything to do with spiders and entomology. What an amazing site ive stumbled across! I live in gillingham, kent and i have a 22nd b-day comming up. I have in the past made my own formicarium standing a good 50x2x70cm with plastic and (urg) MDF what a plonker. As a result you could guess the mdf began to mould and fall apart under the slighty damp sand conditions. Regardless i managed to capture a mated Lasius Niger Queen from my true calling "The Great Outdoors", and sucessfully raised the coloney for 5 years. Now im looking to start again with Lasius Niger and some of the amazing equipment ive seen in antstore. My mission this time however, will be to successfully set up plants with aphids in a connecting basin for the ants to farm. Im looking at a small glass 60x1.2x30cm farm with connecting tubes to a slim glass basin 60x10x20. White Sand Loam Mix 1000g and ground for the basin ect and A Lasius Niger Queen 20-25 workers. Worked out total to be (inc package) £125 converted from Euro. What i was going to ask is what connecting tube would fit nicly from the small farm 3/4mm to 27mm drilling slim basin? Also any words of advice regarding my setup selection?

Ive got 3 spiders and ants would be nice too. I would love to document everything for this site, glad im not alone in my weird world of interest for Insects.
Thanks for your time

[MorbidMike]

Hi and welcome!
Your suggested setup sounds strange to me (I do not like sand nests much... lost a colony due to fungi and never used sand again, also hard to keep moist IMO), but it makes sense. I usually prefer Ytong nests (check out Building a farm forum section), easy to keep moist and most European ants are happy to nest in it. But if you are happy with a sand nest in a vertical farm, use that! If you are familiar with that you will probably have better results.
Good luck with the plants and aphids, that sounds very exciting to me, I should try it too someday.

[Ajbizzle87]

Thanks MorbidMike

I find that by watering the sand very little and not very often keeps the it in a tunnel building consistency. Once a year will do fine for example. I have to say though, that a basin in my opinion will restrict the insight to nest/colony growth and development. I like watching individual ants pick up small clusters of sand grains and carry it to the top, observing the ants as a whole make progress. I didnt really get to see my queen lasius niger at all during the previous 5 years, it kind of upset me i couldnt see the her. On the plus side though i could see various chambers for different stages in the ants life cycle, not to mention the fact i had a consistent supply of new ants everyday, so it wasnt all that bad. I might take note on how much water i put in the farm to begin with, and how long it might take before the sand gets too dry and a tunnels break down. Could be useful for new guys eh?

[damondeionno]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

We've all thought about aphids in captivity. Believe me it's not as easy as you might think. The problem is one of scale. Populations of aphids are very fluid in the wild. They are predated and exhaust resources. Populations die away and then re-establish themselves. This isn't really possible inside. If they don't get predated, the host (plant) will probably die. If they do, it's likely to completely wipe them out (parasitic wasps did for some on a house plant I had). The bigger the ecosystem the easier it is to maintain what appears to be a stable (it's actually highly dynamic) situation. In a container, it's almost impossible.

Still, I would love to see it done.

[Ajbizzle87]

Ok I’ve had a thought. If I was to set up let’s say 4 cuttings in a brick of moss or an oasis I think it’s called, all the plants would slowly be consumed by the aphids in turn killing them at the same time. If I was to begin with one cutting with a small amount of aphids to start with, I could add another cutting with aphids a day or so after once the first plant starts to show signs of wilting. What I could end up with is 4 or so plants all in separate stages of death, but ensuring the replenishment the aphids need. I think aphids move to another stem if their current one is nearly dead. Also in the basin they will have no predators, well except time ^^

[damondeionno]

It's a good plan. You will need a constant supply of cuttings. Don't assume that they won't be predated though...

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Ouch!

[Ajbizzle87]

Ok i understand now. Im going to dig deeper i think now it would be more or less replacing the aphids. Could the infected greenfly effect the colony? Im sure an extra parasitic wasp would be eaten, then again some wasps target larve. Not to mention the fact some parasites cant be detected by ants. If sypmtoms of predated aphids are easy to spot, then they will have to go through a screening process. But if a parasite wanted to infect a colony of ants the "ant aphid" relationship is so well developed, it wouldnt be hard?