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[Newbie] Pogonomyrmex use "drinking fountain" as garbage disposal

newbie pogonomyrmex

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#1 Offline Kimera757 - Posted July 24 2016 - 7:45 AM

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I'm very enthusiastic about ant-keeping but due to various reasons never had an ant farm before. Unfortunately I made a basic mistake, not creating an "arena" for the ants, as I thought the ant farm was enough.

 

I've since put the farm into an arena. The farm itself is primitive and doesn't have a "pump" to add water to the nest. In order to keep the ants hydrated I've spread some cotton balls in the arena and drip water (sometimes but not always sugar water) onto them. On rare occasion I'll miss with the squirter and the water will just end up wetting part of the arena. The ants will often take bits of soil or even seeds and put them around the cotton balls or in the water. I don't know why they do this.

 

Because they're harvester ants, I naturally figured they would eat seeds. I bought some very small honey-dipped birdseed for them, but they don't eat them. They will happily eat bits of apple dropped into the arena though, and are voracious consumers of oatmeal. The seeds, while the smallest I could find, are bigger than the ants' heads, and they probably can't actually eat the seeds. Does anyone know any really small seed types?

 

The ants are just workers, I live in Canada and couldn't buy any queens near where I live. (I tried to start a colony with a queen I found after a mating flight but she absolutely hated the ant farm and after three weeks of her not digging I just let her go. I fear she may not have been mated by the time I picked her up.) So after a certain point all the workers will die, and I'll be bereft. Rather than just buying a new set of workers, I want to improve my setup first. I can buy a better arena (something flatter) but I'm having trouble finding a "good" farm itself.

 

You can find an example of a decent ant farm at this link: https://tarheelants....mber-mothership- it even has a hydration system, but I have a problem with it. The chambers are pre-dug. I want to see the ants dig their own tunnels. (The Pogonomyrmex dug up so much dirt they could easily reach the top of the ant farm, one of those problems I did not foresee, and so could escape. Not a problem as they can't breed, but a problem as they can sting. That's one reason to have an arena, it isn't necessary to keep them confined to a little ant farm. Watching them dig was fun too, so I don't want to give that up.)

 

Otherwise it's nice and flat so easy to observe, and I could easily attach it to an arena.


Edited by Kimera757, July 24 2016 - 7:46 AM.


#2 Offline dspdrew - Posted July 24 2016 - 9:05 AM

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  • LocationSanta Ana, CA
You might want to take a look at some of the ways I made my Pogonomyrmex setups.
 
This is my P. californicus colony. Check out everything from this point on.
http://www.formicult...16-2015/?p=9765
 
This is my P. rugosus colony. Check out everything from this point on.
http://www.formicult...0-2016/?p=28549
 
This is how I built the P. rugosus nest.
http://www.formicult...5-2016/?p=24464
 
And as for seeds small enough for the ants to eat, there are quite a few. I feed mine everything you see in this picture taken from a little experiment I did with my P. rugosus colony (which you will see in the link above).
 
med_gallery_2_120_937956.jpg

#3 Offline Kimera757 - Posted July 24 2016 - 9:11 AM

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Thanks, that is great info. They eat sunflower seeds? Those are a lot larger than the seeds I've been feeding them. Huh.



#4 Offline Herdo - Posted July 24 2016 - 9:17 AM

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Hello Kimera757, welcome to the forum.  It sounds like the best thing you could do is a bit more research.  Ants Canada has a ton of information on how to properly raise queens.  Check this one out. 

 

 

 

Dirt nests are not all that common in this hobby.  Some people do use them (including the owner of this forum), but you are probably going to have to make it yourself.  They also don't usually show the tunnels and chambers all that well.  I'd suggest if you really want to just keep harvester ants without a queen, then your best bet is probably one of those classic "Uncle Milton" ant farms.  

 

 

 

 

Like I said earlier, I'd recommend doing some more research, then catching and raising your own queen.  Putting the queen directly in a dirt nest is usually not a very good idea.  You want to create a somewhat claustrophobic environment with easy access to water for drinking and humidity.  The test tube setup is perfect for that.  The formicarium you linked is actually a founding chamber, and designed specifically for housing new queens if you don't like the test tubes, but it's not suitable for a real colony.  It's just meant to house the queen during the initial founding stage.

 

Unfortunately the whole "I want the ants to dig all the tunnels" is easier said than done.


Edited by Herdo, July 24 2016 - 9:17 AM.


#5 Offline Kimera757 - Posted July 24 2016 - 11:13 AM

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I didn't have any trouble seeing the tunnels for the current setup I have now. However, the owner of that site I linked to answered my question on a Sunday (I let him know I'm impressed by that) and he said the big problem with sand/dirt nests are tunnels collapsing, because real life nests interact with the water table and artificial nests do not. He specifically noted that it's easy to lose a colony raised from a queen due to collapsing tunnels.

 

I've actually bought the Ants Canada handbook (I'm from Canada), and while I saw lots of good advice about test tube colony foundation, I don't recall seeing anything about collapsing tunnels, so there was no information on why a more natural-seeming colony was a bad idea. The gel farm I have isn't really working out, not because of the cautions of what was in the Ants Canada book, but simply due to lack of space for foraging and removing waste. (Harvester ants aren't good at climbing, but the mounds built up high enough that they could crawl out when I opened the colony to add water, food or remove waste.)

 

The Ants Canada book is probably for people who want to raise from a queen, and if I somehow buy a queen (nearly impossible in the part of Canada I'm in) I would use a test tube or founding chamber setup. I would want to switch the colony space after a certain point, however.



#6 Offline dspdrew - Posted July 24 2016 - 12:12 PM

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Thanks, that is great info. They eat sunflower seeds? Those are a lot larger than the seeds I've been feeding them. Huh.


If you break the sunflower seeds up they will eat them.


There has been discussion before about collapsing tunnels. Basically it all depends on the substrate you use. A hardened clay dirt ant farm, 1/4 inch thick is not going to collapse. Loosely packed sandy soil probably will collapse once it's dry enough.
 
From an old post:
 

Keep in mind, there are other factors that effect how easily a substrate nest will collapse. It's all about the ratio between the total weight of the substrate, and how well it is being held up, along with how well the particles stick together (hold each other up). If you have a very thin ant farm style nest, a large amount of that dirt will be stuck to the walls of the nest, and over all there is a very small amount of weight pushing down on it. Those will not collapse very easily. If you have an aquarium filled with dirt, there is a very tiny percentage of that dirt being held up by the sides, with a LOT of weight pushing down on it. Those will probably collapse very easily. The dirt needs something to hold it up, and the more dirt there is, the more it needs that reinforcement.



#7 Offline Kimera757 - Posted July 24 2016 - 1:23 PM

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Apparently I've forgotten how quote functions work...

 

dspdrew:There has been discussion before about collapsing tunnels. Basically it all depends on the substrate you use. A hardened clay dirt ant farm, 1/4 inch thick is not going to collapse. Loosely packed sandy soil probably will collapse once it's dry enough.

Would clay cause problems with digging?

 

dspdrew:From an old post:

Keep in mind, there are other factors that effect how easily a substrate nest will collapse. It's all about the ratio between the total weight of the substrate, and how well it is being held up, along with how well the particles stick together (hold each other up). If you have a very thin ant farm style nest, a large amount of that dirt will be stuck to the walls of the nest, and over all there is a very small amount of weight pushing down on it. Those will not collapse very easily. If you have an aquarium filled with dirt, there is a very tiny percentage of that dirt being held up by the sides, with a LOT of weight pushing down on it. Those will probably collapse very easily. The dirt needs something to hold it up, and the more dirt there is, the more it needs that reinforcement.

 

Me: I'm looking at the very thin option (so I can see inside the nest), so I don't think collapsing tunnels are going to be a problem for me. At least not after workers emerge.



#8 Offline dspdrew - Posted July 24 2016 - 2:32 PM

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Pogonomyrmex have no problem digging in clay. I normally use a mixture of clay and sand. I try to use the soil from the ants' natural habitat, and if it's too sandy, I sometimes add more clay to it for strength.







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