ANTSTORE World of Ants

[ProXi]

Hello,

I was wondering.
What is the biggest, easiest, agressive ant specie to keep on room temperature?

Greetz,

ProX

[Markus]

Its an question, easy to answer at Pokemon,
but impossible for ants!
By the way, why do they have to be agressive everytime?

My Oppinion:
easiest: Lasius sp.
good to look: Camponotus sp.
best looking: Myrmica sp.
most interesting: Messor sp.

[antsfriend99]

Pheidologeton spec.,but Pheildologeton is not so easy.I think Messor spec.

[Creature]

Messor are not aggresive. Pheidologeton is too hard to keep. I would recommend Pheidole palidulla , its a pretty easy and fast growing ant spec. with real soldiers and an aggresive behaviour

[Antchrist]

Pogonomyrmex rugosus.
Easy in every way, OK aggresive when they reach 70+ workers and "big" 0,8mm-1cm.
Eat birdseeds (bought in any petstore) and dead bugs. You can hear them popping (split) the seed with their jaws.

Downsides: Need some heat (25C), grows up to 10.000 ants (BIG formicarium is needed) and they got a nasty stinger...
Make the formicarium escape safe.

[Gast - ehem. User]

biggest, easiest, agressive ant specie to keep on room temperature?

I think you already have that type of ant colony: Formica sanguinea

Other types of ants require either higher temperatures or are smaller, less aggressive etc. Camponotus vagus is also really nice and aggressive but I think you also need a temperature > room temperature to have a fast rate of growth.

[baumarkthammer]

I would recomend a Camponotus species. They are generelly pretty big and very easy to keep.
My Camponotus vagus is now probably over 300 workers big and is very nice to watch. But Camponotus are very slow growing.
I generally wouldn´t recomend keeping ants only with room temperature. The brood takes very long time then, also the ants don´t have their most active behaviour on room temperature.
A single lamp as you use it on your desk is enough to heat up most exotic ants. In fact such lamps are one of the only items I use to keep ants like Harpegnathos saltator and venator and Camponotus nigriceps but also other animals. So the heating up isn´t that much of a problem.

So if you use a lamp for heating, there are many ants that are quite nice to watch and active.
When you only want big ants I would recomend Camponotus.
By the way I don´t like Messor, those are the most boring ants I ever had, was happy to sell them again.^^
If those aren´t supposed to be your first ants then you also could get Odontomachus, in my opinion quite easy to keep.

[amrik singh]

Big, aggressive , dynamic and relatively easy to keep are Raptiformica sanguinea and Formica cinerea but the temperature of the nest have to stay always above 20 °c during the active season and better around 25°c.
My personal preference go to Myrmicinae like Tetramorium , Pheidole or Solenopsis but these are always small or very small ants . The good side is that these are evolved ,aggressive and dynamic and easy to keep and because of their small size a big colony of thousands of workers can be kept in a reasonable size accommodation. I once had some Camponotus sp. from the tropics that were the most sluggish , boring and fearful ants I have ever had.

[Zagone]

Out of curiosity, how big was this Camponotus colony, Amrik?

[amrik singh]

I did capture the lone queen in India and the colony developed at a good speed having between two and three hundred workers ( maybe more) in less than two years with ten or twenty majors but these ants were interested mostly in diluted honey and were very ineffective hunters , this Camponotus specie was non agressive , visibly sub-dominant .
Camponotus are a very diverse genus of ants by their behaviour and many species are dominant and aggressive wile others are complete wimps .

[Zagone]

HEhe, yeah. I was just curious because it's often the case with Camponotus that even if they're agressive in general, in young colonies they will be very timid, in stages where they can't quite afford to lose even a single worker.