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Does anyone know if ant protein Jelly is worth purchasing?


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7 replies to this topic

#1 Offline AntJohnny - Posted December 5 2018 - 3:52 PM

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Since I am new to ant keeping and started late in the year. I want to learn as much as I can and be as prepared as possible after hibernation. I try to find as much info as I can anywhere before I post here. I don't know if I can trust other sources online. I know a lot of you are expirenced here though. I wanted to know if anyone here has tried ant jelly. I'm sure it is good for them, I just don't know if it is worth buying or if it's better to use fruits or natural foods. Since my colony is still is hibernating the next few months I can stock up on supplies.

#2 Offline Serafine - Posted December 5 2018 - 4:37 PM

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Some ants eat it, others don't.

My Camponotus ants aren't really that impressed by any jelly but then they don't like anything that isn't liquid or 'liquid in a shell' (=fresh insects). The Lasius niger have just completely ignored it so far.

 

The type of food your ants eat heavily depends on which species they are. There are ants that eat fruits for sugars and there are ants that don't.


Edited by Serafine, December 5 2018 - 4:37 PM.

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#3 Offline drtrmiller - Posted December 5 2018 - 5:47 PM

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Keep in mind that most of these jellies are manufactured for the rearing of certain beetles which have vastly different diets than ants.  They've simply been adopted by antkeepers—mistakenly, in my view—because someone observed that ants would apparently consume the substance, and shopkeepers found they could make money selling it to a wider range of insect hobbyists.  However, whether ants eat a substance isn't a measure of its quality.  Ants will eat poison if it's loaded with sugar.

 

As has been discussed numerous times, many synthetic diets—particularly ones containing protein isolates derived from milk (whey and casein), are of dubious nutritive value to many species of ants.  In replication studies, scientists have observed that colonies fed a synthetic diet "failed to thrive," in that the workers remained relatively healthy, but brood production and development was stunted by the synthetic diet.

 

It sometimes takes decades for scientific findings to percolate up and modify the behavior of established hobbyist communities, so that is why many still use, recommend, and sell these products.  However, the fact remains that with all these synthetic or "complete" dietary products marketed towards antkeepers, one is effectively only overpaying for the sugar which acts to attract the ants, because the particular proteins the diets contain don't really benefit the ants.


Edited by drtrmiller, December 6 2018 - 12:33 AM.

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#4 Offline AntJohnny - Posted December 5 2018 - 8:06 PM

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Ok thank you so much. I was weary about trying it. With all my pets I like to go the natural route, and I'm still learning in a lot about ants. I like to try and to find out everything I can before I buy or try anything I'm not sure of. And thank you again. I'm glad you answered before I decided to buy some lol.
Ok thank you so much. I was weary about trying it. With all my pets I like to go the natural route, and I'm still learning in a lot about ants. I like to try and to find out everything I can before I buy or try anything I'm not sure of. And thank you again. I'm glad you answered before I decided to buy some lol.
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#5 Offline AntJohnny - Posted December 5 2018 - 8:09 PM

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While I'm in this thread I was also wondering. If anyone knows of any spiders or house insects in the northern states that ants Can't have.i live in Michigan and when it gets cold out my house fills with spiders and a lot of other bugs getting out of the cold. Mostly the spiders that look like daddy long legs but with a slender body and thick legs. IDK what they r called but there are a lot of those here even now in winter.

#6 Offline DaveJay - Posted December 5 2018 - 9:41 PM

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With any wild food you have to weigh up the risk of that animal having come into contact with contaminants, pesticides being the biggest risk obviously. Surface sprays are commonly used around buildings as are automatic sprayers and residual pesticide treatments, along with herbicides that may be detrimental. Even if only air borne direct sprays are used some will always remain on every surface in the area. There are also other chemicals that may be present in and around buildings which may be toxic even though they are not specifically "poisons". Then there are the biological risk factors like parasites, disease, bacteria, fungus and so on. Spiders eat flies and bugs that come into contact with all sorts of chemicals, bacteria and other pathogens etc so it's not just what the spider itself might come into contact with but also what it eats and what that prey eats. These are the reasons it is not recommended to feed wild caught prey, they hold true in respect to most pets you might keep even dogs and cats.

Having said all that you need to assess your own circumstances, I fed worms, slaters, moths and other "bugs" to my animals for nearly 30 years without a problem because we never used even fly spray in the house or yard, outdoor household sprays or treatments weren't really a thing and there was little chance of overspray from agriculture where I lived.

However in the last decade or so I stopped using wild prey altogether, mostly because even though I've lived in this house for 25 years and not used pesticides or herbicides in the house or yard automatic outdoor sprayers have become popular and I just don't want to take the risk but it really is up to you to decide for yourself, I'm sure nutritionally a varied diet would be beneficial. 

As to the spiders, look at Pholcus phalangioides and "spiders" from the Opiliones family to see if you recognise them.


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#7 Offline AntJohnny - Posted December 6 2018 - 1:31 AM

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Yes them are the spiders they are usually everywhere in my house. I think I'll just try to start feeder farms of different types.The closet pet store too me is almost an hour away. Where I live there are 100s of achers of farm land and mosquito trucks spray often in the summer. Thank you guys for all the help. I feel
a lot more confident raising ants now since I've joined this forum.
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#8 Offline Rstheant - Posted December 20 2018 - 3:41 PM

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When you catch a spider, you can freeze it, to get rid on mites, and you could boil it to get rid of surface sprays ,etc.




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