5 replies to this topic

[FelixTheAnter]

I've found that my Lasius colonies tend to take as much protein as they need, and not much more. If I drop in a ton of flies, they'll generally take what they need and leave the rest.

My Pheidole Pallidula on the other hand...I once dropped in half a test tube worth of fruit flies, and they took EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. And then later that night trashed a bunch of them, uneaten.

I know Pheidole are known to eat a ton of food for their size, which is fine - I've got tons of feeder insect cultures. But I'm worried they'll take in too much food & it'll rot inside the nest.

They currently have about 200ish workers, plus a good pile of varying sizes of larvae. I want to make sure they get enough protein, but not be wasteful or overfeed. How exactly do you manage that? Perhaps I should be giving larger items that they can't drag whole into the nest?

Yesterday they got a fly, today I dropped in two more and they're ripping them both apart like they've never gotten protein before lol



Edit to add: these flies were raised from bait store maggots, so I don't need to worry about pesticide exposure. All of my colonies seem to be going absolutely insane over these

Edited by FelixTheAnter, April 25 2023 - 2:43 AM.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

nothing specific to the ants you have:

 

I find a colony is not uniform in their actions. Some ants will ID something as food and bring it to the nest, others will take the same thing directly to the trash pile. I've seen stuff carried into the nest by one ant only to be taken back out again a moment later by a different one.
in terms of is it food/trash, i assume to not see a uniform behavior, but just a general consensus.

In terms of staying clean i think this has a lot to do with this combo:

right amount of nest space + enough outworld space.

 

too much nest space and any ants likely start filling up the unwanted extra space with their refuse. Which we want to be taken outside the nest.
Too little outworld space and they may not find a good distinction of where it is best to take trash to get it away from the nest.

 

Anytime i add more outwrold space on, my colony always moves the trash pile as far from the nest as they can.

So while i have a very limited scope of observations, i believe they may generically apply to many ants being kept.

They want a "not too big" amount of nest space so may keep trash in the nest in order to get that

While they also want to keep trash away from the nest, but can only do so when the distinction between nest and not nest space is obvious for them.


I imagine you can run into rot issues over feeding, but as long as they have a place to take the trash and don't wish their nest was smaller. Then I would imagine they probably keep a fairly clean nest as mine do.

Also fishflakes. I find fish flakes are readily taken as food and used by other ant keepers. And they don't have shell or other unwanted parts left around to rot, they either get used up fully or as before, some ants just treat them as trash for some reason.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, April 25 2023 - 8:44 AM.

[Ernteameise]

nothing specific to the ants you have:

 

I find a colony is not uniform in their actions. Some ants will ID something as food and bring it to the nest, others will take the same thing directly to the trash pile. I've seen stuff carried into the nest by one ant only to be taken back out again a moment later by a different one.
in terms of is it food/trash, i assume to not see a uniform behavior, but just a general consensus.

In terms of staying clean i think this has a lot to do with this combo:

right amount of nest space + enough outworld space.

 

too much nest space and any ants likely start filling up the unwanted extra space with their refuse. Which we want to be taken outside the nest.
Too little outworld space and they may not find a good distinction of where it is best to take trash to get it away from the nest.

 

Anytime i add more outwrold space on, my colony always moves the trash pile as far from the nest as they can.

So while i have a very limited scope of observations, i believe they may generically apply to many ants being kept.

They want a "not too big" amount of nest space so may keep trash in the nest in order to get that

While they also want to keep trash away from the nest, but can only do so when the distinction between nest and not nest space is obvious for them.


I imagine you can run into rot issues over feeding, but as long as they have a place to take the trash and don't wish their nest was smaller. Then I would imagine they probably keep a fairly clean nest as mine do.

Also fishflakes. I find fish flakes are readily taken as food and used by other ant keepers. And they don't have shell or other unwanted parts left around to rot, they either get used up fully or as before, some ants just treat them as trash for some reason.

I do not have a lot of experience yet, but I have to agree with most of what you say.

I made pretty much the same observations- I even once saw one Messor worker taking away the food item another worker was carrying into the nest and doing a u-turn and carrying it right into the trash.

I also tried fish food with my ants and neither colony liked it.

 

As for the amount of protein to give-

it also depends on the food item.

My acorn ants will take all fruit flies I throw at them and transport them off to the nest, and in my Messor journal I shared a picture of the Messors (who are pigs when it comes to food) trying to fit a huge piece of ham through the tube leading to the nest. They are much less interested in fruit flies and insect slurry and some of it they just dump into the trash right away.

Edited by Ernteameise, April 25 2023 - 10:38 AM.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

I also tried fish food with my ants and neither colony liked it.

 

 

I noticed when i went to check out fish flakes, that most of the common ones at petsmart or whatever,  all have a laundry list of unpronounceable 5+ syllable words that amount to fillers and preservatives, exactly like a lot of cheap crap junkie people foods have. The wonderbread of fish flakes as it were.

I spent some time to find a fish flake that had a shorter more basic ingredient list like how i buy my own food. And specifically one that had the krill/shrimp/fish paste in the first three ingredients. As order indicates relative amounts.

I wound up with this stuff with mysis shrimp as the number one ingredient.

 

as before some of the ants treat it as trash, but most go for it. And the red color shows up in the pupae it was fed to, which is kinda neat looking.

[ColAnt735]

I think that there isn't a limit to how much you should feed them. That being said, if you can afford it, experiment around and feed as much food as your ants will take (and they don't dump the excess in the outworld).

Edited by ColAnt735, April 25 2023 - 1:10 PM.

[Rrar]

Technically, my ants leave the excess food alone, so you should just give them as much as they need