# Need help with ant farm, and ant empire



## SirCain (Dec 15, 2007)

I am wanting to start a large Ant Empire. I need a link to where I can buy a ant queen. I want a farmer ant, the ones that eat leaves mainly, cause then I could just get plants and feed them, but anything helps. I have a ant farm, it is rather small but I will build a larger one once I can get a queen, so please help me with info.


----------



## What (Dec 16, 2007)

In the US you cannot legally buy/sell/ship ant queens. Some states allow intrastate travel of them, but some dont.


----------



## SirCain (Dec 16, 2007)

then how come this thing i got had a book to order them?


----------



## PhilK (Dec 16, 2007)

I would use the book to order them, if it came with a book.

I've always wanted a HUGE ant farm. With a forraging chamber and everything.. Like a big sealed vat with a trapdoor in the roof that I could throw little bits of food into. So the ants can forage it.

Damn that'd be cool.


----------



## What (Dec 16, 2007)

SirCain, I am almost positive that the 'book' will only have worker ants for you to order, no queens.


----------



## Spike (Dec 16, 2007)

I am actually trying to do this too but I wanted a fairly decent sized farm.  Any links you can offer would be good.  Im looking for something atleast as tall and wide as a 10g.


----------



## Fini (Dec 27, 2007)

Try Ant Store.  http://www.antstore.net

They have some pretty nice enclosures for just about any kind of colony.  The only issue will being paying for freight from Germany.  

You could also try http://www.antcam.com  He's got some decent pieces at much lower prices.


----------



## What (Dec 28, 2007)

The first link does not even sell Ants outside the EU and the second doesnt even seem to sell ants.

Even if he could get one place or the other to send him a queen it would still be illegal...


----------



## KyuZo (Dec 28, 2007)

you guys ever thought about digging them up? 
take over their castle, rescuse the queen (except for the fact that the probably don't want to be rescuse).
take her home, show her your dungeon... oops, i meant castle 
and make her your queen 

any queen would like _that_


----------



## Ecilious (Dec 30, 2007)

Nice link. 

Gods bless my cold british climate and our relative freedom.


----------



## Scythemantis (Dec 31, 2007)

I know someone who chanced upon a winged female carpenter ant just as she was dropping her wings. They built a HUGE ant farm for her, but it was so overcrowded two months later that they were dumped back in the wild. I never got to see it, I'm sure it was fascinating (and those are _big_ ants)


----------



## dtknow (Dec 31, 2007)

Wow...most people say Camponotus are very tough to keep.(ditto that...I might try again but it was heartbreaking to watch the colony slowly lose members and no new workers would emerge...they must not have liked the protein sources?)


----------



## damien00016 (Dec 31, 2007)

*starting up an ant farm*

i just ran into this thread by accident and wish i had done so sooner. for those of you that want to start an ant farm, its really a long drawn out process, if you want to do it the right way. first off as far as buying an ant farm and then ordering them from a certificate, thats only going to get you a couple hundred workers since buying the queens in the states is illegal. your best bet to do this thing right is to wait for nuptial flights which happen in the spring. depending on where you live in the US, you have different availiablity for ants. someone said they wanted a Farmer ant, i assume you're talking about leaf cutters. you're only going to get those if you live in florida or regions around there on the east coast. and maybe some in california and along mexico. thats where you can find some of the Atta species because they are pretty tropical. however thats a very difficult ant to make a farm with. you're talking about a colony size of well over 200,000 ants, and that would just be a small one. if you live in the southern half of the US, then your best bet is a fire ant colony. i have one thats has been up and running for over 4 years now. i started it from one single queen, well 7 queens actually. i waited until the nuptial flights then got a few and put them in what you call Clausteral cells so they can get a first brood going. this first ants will be minums and very small. so in a way its like a race, the queen that did the best got selected to be put in the actual ant farm, and the other six got their eggs taken away and given to the winning queen and she just accepts them as her own or eats a few of them which are both good outcomes. 
thats really just the tip of the iceberg because i could go on and on about this subject. as far as difficulty goes, if keeping a tarantula or centipede is the equivalent of keeping a little betta fish in a glass bowel, the a true Ant Farm is like keeping a salt water aquarium. they are both beautiful things to have but there are just factors you have to consider with ants that you dont have to with a solitary tarantula or scorpion. but i can say that if you do it right and really think it out having an ant farm is one of the most rewarding hobbies you can have, in short, its your chance to play god which is always fun. for anyone who has a question about set up and upkeep of an ant farm feel free to ask, because like i said, i could go on and on. but if you feel like consulting an actual book or two, i would highly recomend The Ants, writen by bert holdobler and Edward Wilson, and their other book called Journey to the Ants. they are both extremly informative and i have spent many hours looking over them before tackling an ant farm, otherwise you'll just kill some ants and just depress yourself in the process. 
happy hunting


----------



## KyuZo (Dec 31, 2007)

cool, thanks for all the great info. 
i have three questions for ya...
1. what is the minimum tank size for fire ants (i little red ants)?
2. can i use hard compact soil that are designed for lizards that dig burrows?
3. what is the minimum width and height that is acceptable (for red ants)?  
thank you in advance


----------



## damien00016 (Dec 31, 2007)

*tip of the iceberg right here*

well it sounds like you are just want to put some dirt in a ten gallon tank and then try and go from there. substrate for that would be pretty much any sort of blend of dirt and spagum so it can retain some water, maybe a bit off sand too so that its faster for the ants to work with. you'd want to try and use a lighter colored dirt as well because with a dark red fire ant, black dirt will make them very hard to see. i tried that maybe 5 years ago with little success and i learned one thing from that. it is very easy to make a something that is completly escape proof, but its very difficult to make something that is escape proff and easily accesable as well. and thats going to be your problem here. if you're not worried about them getting out, then put as much substrate as you can in the tank and they will do the rest, however this is going to be an issue for dranage in the future. the dirt has to be damp for the ants to dig in and a set up like that will just collect the water at the bottom. but aside from that a fire ant colony can average in a Lab type situation of around 90,000 ants. so eventually a solenopsis invicta (fire ant) colony would need something like a 55 gallon tank. 
you want to be able to deal with something you can easily control. for that i recomend making your own ant farm out of plaster of paris. i know, it sounds like a huge undertaking and if you dont have the supplies just lying around the house then yeah, it can be some work and get pretty messy. however, its really the only way you'd be able to have a colony that you can see and have a good amount of control over. in total, as far as supplies go you're looking at spending no more than 40 dollars i'd say. and i say use plaster because you can make any size farm you want, if you choose to make it out of glass or glass with a wood frame then you have to take in measurements into acount much more so. plus wood will buldge out over time with moisture, and i have some glass ant farms that i made that developed cracks because of temperature change over time. 
i also want to say that you're thinking about it a little wrong. you shouldnt want to start a colony by asking yourself, how much space DO i need, you should ask, how much space WILL i need. what you can do when you custom make your ant farms, you can daisy chain them together with tubes to expand, in this way you can make a individual farm say 6 inches by six inches by an inch. this will last longer than you think even with fire ants which propogate very quickly, then you can just add another farm of the same dimesions or larger or smaller, like i said, you get to play god. 
plaster of paris is also absorbant so you are able to just pour some water directly on part of the ant farm and the water will get sucked through to where the ants live making it uniformly humid, which if they dont have they will die. 
to build a plaster farm i would recomend checking out antcam.com thats where i got my start from. basically you'll just pick out a piece of glass that you want, can be any size you want, i like to use 6by6. then put some clay in the shape of like hemisperes on the glass so then when you put plaster down on top of the glass and clay, after it hardens you will be left with depressions that will form the chambers for the ants. 
sounds like a lot, i know, and i'm not explaining it very well but its easier than you think. 
i know this is probably not the stuff that you want to hear, but trust me, if you just try and put ants in a container they will either get out, die, or you'll lose interest because you wont ever see them for like a year until they finally start to make tunnles along a side of the container. you may think fire ants just grow like weeds, and comparativley, to other ant species they do. but even a colony of 500 ants is probably over 8 or 9 months old and could fit easily into a 5 gallon tank. that seems like a lot but in a big container like a ten gallon you wouldnt even know they were there, were as in plaster ant farms that would occupie at least 2 maybe 3 farms going by a 6 by 6 range and would seem like a lot more because you would actually be looking at all 500 ants and all the eggs larva and pupae, which will be very numerous. 
all of it sounds both disheartening and exciting but even if you put them in a 10 gallon tank you are going to have to be dedicated and patient. 
the conclusion of my attempt to put ants in a simple tank with dirt lasted 9 months and i did see some tunnles and interesting activity, i gave the ants everything they could need and monitored them everyday, and even still, one single night they just decided to leave and the entire colony, queen and all escaped outside and were never seen again, that the kind of thing you can expect if you try that. hope some of that helps you out. good luck


----------



## KyuZo (Dec 31, 2007)

:? ok, let me just read all that stuff a few more times again and i'll try do some more research also. thanks


----------



## KyuZo (Dec 31, 2007)

I think that i just figured out what you are trying to tell me.  check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPDRF7rBumM


----------



## mr.wilderness (Jan 4, 2008)

SirCain said:


> I am wanting to start a large Ant Empire. I need a link to where I can buy a ant queen.


So, uhhhh... after you obtain a queen when exactly do you plan on putting your world domination plan into action and creating a new empire revolving around ant worship??   Sorry, couldn't resist


----------



## Aradaer (Jan 6, 2008)

Fire ants are a really easy ant to capture, don't even need to wait for the mating flights. The nests around here I just dig a couple inches or a few inches into the soil on a warm day and the queens will be up near the surface. Then look through the soil you dug up and you should find one or usually more queens. Fire ants have hundreds of queens in a colony, so taking a few won't hurt them. Just be careful when collecting them, I usually get bit when doing this but to me the bites don't hurt that much so it doesn't bother me.

Collecting them is the easy part and don't feel bad digging them up. There are millions of Fire ants, just make sure to put the dirt back to cover the hole). For a container you want an acrylic aquarium. With a regular aquarium they will climb up the corners and escape. I prefer putting mine in soil, its more interesting to watch them dig and build mounds. With an acrylic aquarium they will still manage to climb up the sides, so what works for me is going to a bike store and buying Teflon (not exactly sure what it is, but its bike oil or something like that). With Teflon put a small bit of it on a cloth or napkin or something and put it around the sides of the aquarium (doesn't have to take up the entire sides, I just coat the Teflon around the top of the aquarium). This will make it very slippery (unless you use too much, then it won't work) and the ants won't be able to climb up. I like this method better than having a lid to the container.

Don't use too much water either, as mold can grow easily and the nests I've had the ants seem to die when there is excess amount of water. Oh and about the Teflon, it might be hard to find but it works really really well...but the bike store I go to has it, so I assume others should as well. 

I kept a colony of Fire ants (oh and they were the Imported fire ants, the invasive ones) for about 6 months, they easily had over 100,000 ants and I only started with one queen and about 200 workers. I'm not sure how they grew so fast with just one queen and only in 6 months, but I had no choice but to let them go because I was out of room for them. I estimated the number because only 10% of the colony will forage at once, but I could have had a lot less....but I had tons of ants in three containers. The containers were connected with tubes for them to crawl through, it looked really neat.

I've been keeping ants for about 5-6 years now. I do have a colony right now of Forelius ants I captured a week ago, they have 5 queens and about 100 ants. Forelius ants are active even in 120 degree weather, they are desert ants. They are really easy too since they have a harder time escaping than Fire ants and like Fire ants they will eat pretty much anything.

If you have any questions let me know and I'll be glad to answer them.


----------



## SirCain (Jan 17, 2008)

Well, I have tons of ant hills, at least in the thousands on a hill by my house (I live in the country, very country) and I can probably just dig a couple up, I think my aquarium will do, I think cow poop (yes I have cows) would help? 

I can get sand, and gravel, and just dirt. 

Why is it illegal to order queen ants? Whati s the point of getting worker ones? Don't they die in months?


----------



## syndicate (Jan 17, 2008)

Fini said:


> Try Ant Store.  http://www.antstore.net


ah ive tried to order some of there tanks and setups from there.they def wont ship outside of europe tho.ashame there isnt anyone selling similar things in the usa.ants are very cool to keep.mabey this summer i will collect some queens


----------



## anter (Feb 10, 2008)

WoW! 

Thanks for the info, but when making a plaster ant farm, do u need  dirt or sand in the habitat? Could you post a picture of your antfarm, if you still have one?
It would really help ^_^


----------



## anter (Feb 10, 2008)

SirCain said:


> Well, I have tons of ant hills, at least in the thousands on a hill by my house (I live in the country, very country) and I can probably just dig a couple up, I think my aquarium will do, I think cow poop (yes I have cows) would help?
> 
> I can get sand, and gravel, and just dirt.
> 
> Why is it illegal to order queen ants? Whati s the point of getting worker ones? Don't they die in months?



GOOD question! I have been wondering that for a while myslef.

I have noticed that if you dont have any workers when you kidnap a queen from a colony, the queen would do absolutly nothing. IT will giver up. She needs workers to help her with everything after her early young founding days are over.
Also, if you get a fertile queen from a nupltial flight, it will take a while for it to mature, so go 4 the Martian-invading tactics!!


----------



## Deathla (May 30, 2008)

if you want a queen ant,wait till their nupital flight which happens anytime during late spring to fall


----------

