Good Day Guys
This is my ant colony and I regard them as my pets. I finally went back to this hobby after a very long time. It all started with a single ant which was the queen. It's really difficult to spot her with all the ants right now. I asked somebody to identify them and the person said that it's a Camponotus sp. Let me share with you how I expanded their nest and the materials that I used.
I didn't like to spend that much so I recycled some items here at our house. I saw this aquarium just stocked up. I asked if could use it.
I was thinking of putting styrofoam at the bottom of the aquarium for a cushion then my brother suggested putting these furniture pads. He helped me make it. The pad's adhesive was no working anymore we had to use a glue gun to stick it.
Then I gathered some materials that I got from the orchidarium which was soil and coco soil. I bought these so that the substrate that I will put is clean, instead of getting soil from the garden.
I mixed the soil and the cocopeat together and I decided to look for a rock so they have a place that they can hide inside. I also topped it with moss.
This may look really disgusting but these are springtails. We are culturing them with my brother, we use these when he's making enclosures with his tarantulas. I added springtails because they are decomposers. I love them because they prevent mold breakouts. It's really easy to put them because they usually jump out because of the water.
This is how it looked like. I added some moss to make it look better and to keep moisture. I had to hydrate the nest just to make sure that the springtails would live because they need a moist environment.
I mixed alcohol and baby powder to make a barrier. I used a paintbrush to spread it on top just to make sure that the ants won't escape the formicarium.
This was my old setup, it had an outworld connecting to it, I usually feed them through the container at the right. I forgot to add ventilation there so it stunk so bad when I was moving them.
The first thing that I had to do it carefully carry it then remove then detach the nest from the outworld. I just laid it on top of their new home.
If you look closely there were a lot of ants exploring.
I decided to give them a housewarming gift, which was cockroaches that I breed. This kind of cockroaches is called Blatta Lateralis/ Turkestan cockroach/ Red Runners. Here comes the fun part. The cockroaches were running all over and the ants started chasing them.
I also placed a test tube full of sugar water just to energize them. They were all there drinking from it.
I checked them recently and they calmed down a bit, They seem to love their old formicarium and are not leaving the chambers.
But I saw something that I love and it was some of the ants are using the rock as shelter. I'm just waiting patiently for them to all transfer to the all-natural setup. If you look at the test tube closely only 1/4th of the sugar water is left. This project was fun to make because it tested my creativity. I'm scared to put plants because I might wake up and see that they're not in their setup anymore.
Thanks for reading and Stay safe always!
The photos used in this post are owned by me .
