ANTSTORE World of Ants

[damondeionno]

Hi all, I'm looking for general thoughts and advice.

I have 2 fair sized colonies that are giving me all sorts of headaches. Pheidole pallidula and Messor barbarus. As many of you know, they easily chew through ytong, and the messors will also get through silicon in time. They are very very determined. I really do need to construct some new farms for them. I don't think I can do a ytong in a basin because the basin would have to be very large for the messors. So I'm thinking ytong again for the messors, but maybe coating all external areas with epoxy resin. Do people think it might be toxic? It's pretty hard stuff.

[JimmyVe]

Not sure its toxic. I keep my Messor barbarus colony in two farms, one is filled with ytong and coverd with a lid. They are all over the place, chewed through they ytong easily but they can not get out of it. The other one is a emty box where i feed them, i use PTFE and a lid for that one. Don't have much problem with them getting out.

[damondeionno]

Jimmy, the thing is I really want it to be a display on my wall. Now they have dug through the ytong, they attack the silicon where the acrylic is joined together. It takes them a while, so if I find the holes I can patch it up with more silicon, but it is not a long term display solution. The feeding arena I have setup similar to what you describe. They can't get out of that.

[UneXisted]

I got the same problem. I was thinking about using liquid rubber. You can easily lubricate the rubber on the sides of the ytong. Im not quite sure if you can buy liquid rubber and if the ants can bite through the rubber.

Another idea is to use a plastic sheet used to cover leftovers. Like this:


I think the solution can be found in this direction. Ofcourse, you can also use acryl or glass all around the ytong, but thats very expensive and not necessary. Another option is to use concrete. I hope we can find a solution for this problem. A cheap solution.

Also: you can use concrete around the ytong. I might try that one if its not to hard to get concrete/plaster in the netherlands.