ANTSTORE World of Ants

[JimmyVe]

I like your setup donbilbo, nice to think ahead. Its really nice when the farms have much plants and stuff, looks very nice but so hard to clean up. When colonies are bigger they have also a lot of garbage so if you use a lot of plants it is hard to clean up, do not let that hold you back, if you don't have problems with that its fine. Like is said, i like those setups with lots of plants and stuff.

[donbilbo]

Thanks for the input, i guess i will try breeding crickets now.

[jartok]

i use plastic see through boxes with plant mesh over top for air flow and i feed mine green beans very cheap.

id breed black crickets they need more space but are not as fast and dont really jump.

heat mat is a must for breeding in winter thoe unless ur house is a furnace

[Skippy]

I tried to breed crickets ... it is good , but It was better economicaly buy it in animal shop as to breed them myself in home. You know their price in shop is always smaller (when you have good shop) , here one cricket cost cca 10 cents and they´re buying them from "cricket keepers" for ca 2 cents/one , so you can imagine how much they have to keep in home to sell it to shop for so small price ... keep them in thousands
simply: production of crickets was much smaller than i needed

[SteveUK28]

Well i can get a bulk bag of mixed size and species of crickets, around 850 - 1250 in a bag for around €13.42 Not to bad huh

[SNiDE]

donbilbo your setups looks really nicely organised. Maybe I'm missing the obvious but I can't see where the connecters are between basins? Did you drill through the glass, use pipes etc?
Akel, good to hear you're not having trouble with your Polyrhachis dives, is that nest what they came in or have they weaved it since moving in? With regards to feeding them sweet things (i.e fruit) I've found it best to just use sugar/honey water concentrates, with occasional little chunks of fruit. Large bits tend to rot and are difficult to clean/remove when they have lots of ants camping on them Best of luck!

[donbilbo]

Hello SNiDE sorry for the late reply. I wish i had drilled through the glass basins but by the time i bought the second and third one they allready lived in the first one. So i made lids out of plexiglass and left a gap on each side. On those gaps i put the small glass basins (upside down). I really tightened and secured those basins with a special adhesive tape. You can see the tape if you really go near and that sucks but if you stand like 1 meter away you can hardly see it.

I had the time to put some more branches in there for the ants to explore but its still not enough, will have to find more...

[DJRGEN]

Hi donbilbo,
How is your colony now?

cheers
Djr

[neab]

This is my setup:





40/25 for roughly 150 ants

[donbilbo]

DJRGEN my colony was in some king of hibernation or pause. First they had alates for the very first time, then they stopped eating proteines and only sat in the nest. (well, like 200 ants were out there at any given time but its still a huge difference)
Now they seem back to normla, i hope.

Neab looking good!

[donbilbo]

Hi, whats happening? This board is kind of dead. What happened to the huge colonies some of you (especially akell) bought? Doing well?

This is a new setup i tried to let the ants build their nest in a tree. the new nest is only one day old, when i feel they finished building i will cut the remaining straw with scissors to make it look better.

[highered]

I tried to make my photos smaller using my free website software but it didn't work so here is the link to where the relevant picture is:
My Poly dives nest next to my H venators:
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(Yes I know they can cut through the netting).

My new colony arrived in a big box nesting around and in a brown paper bag. Imagine that?
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Poly dives foraging area:
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The top of my nest, its made up of 3 small connected boxes:
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[highered]

One more picture:
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