2 replies to this topic

[GavinF]

Hello,

I am new to ant keeping but recently I have bought ants from a GAN farmer over on ants canada. When I met up with the guy and bought the ants I noticed the cotton blocking the water was completly black with mold and there wasn't much water at all. My ants as of now are suppost to be hibernating as I live in a cold area in the winter. How can I move the ants to a new clean test tube or should I just not do anything.

[Hunter]

for starters he's a dick for selling you that and you can just hook a clean one up to the hole-hole and tape them together

[Kevin]

for starters he's a *censored* for selling you that and you can just hook a clean one up to the hole-hole and tape them together

 

Mold is a common occurrence in ant-keeping. Mold is usually uncontrollable, and often quite harmless in test tubes to an extent. Ants live in similar non-sterile conditions naturally, and having your test tube a bit dark won't harm them - but needless to say a fresh tube is always good. Regarding his case with the water, it goes along with the mold/age of your tube. While the seller should have provided a fresher tube, I don't think they were necessarily a terrible person for providing a tube that needed to be changed.

 

OP, you can simply take another tube and hold them together then tap the colony into the fresh one. Light taps on a hard surface will not cause significant stress to a colony and is in my opinion the most efficient way to move a colony out of a tube. You could also tape two together and cover the new one up so they move to the darker area.

Edited by Kevin, January 28 2018 - 3:41 PM.