Even if you are hard for funds (and I'm a great example of that lol...can barely afford anything. Could just BARELY afford my WoW subscription this month)...but wow, that 30 dollars I spent for Drtmiller's fluon he had up on Amazon...best money I've spent. Even if I had no money, I'd find a way to buy more when I eventually run out.
By the way, no pictures...my one and only camera has been broken a while (found it in a moving box and it was cracked) and I don't have funds for a new camera. My phone camera is WAY too low quality for ants.
Literally solves nearly all my ant keeping problems I've had. As some of you may know (or not), I kind of prefer a dirt/sand/substrate setup with no lid. Solves mold problems, but gives a natural-like design for the ants. Now, the problem is...so many ants always escaped. When I tried fixing it the cheap way with plastic wrap or paper napkins with rubber bands...I couldn't feed them easily as they'd swarm out and I couldn't give them enough water.
Well...after a few weeks (have had it a while) of using fluon. I now can pretty much use any container, and an keep a much much bigger variety of ants. Before I had to be really picky or use kind of ghetto ways of keeping ants from escaping.
I have (out of ants that can climb good) my P. megacephala colony (I never had issues with them escaping, so not a great example), a Monomorium ergatogyna colony, an Argentine ant colony (yuck), A new Dorymyrmex bicolor colony and a Tapinoma sessile colony.
Out of those...when I kept M. ergatogyna they'd die pretty quick and escape easily. If I kept them covered, it would get too condensed and moldy (they like wetter conditions). But, now my colony of them is doing great, and producing a lot of brood.
My Argentine ant colony started with one queen and now has three (guess I got alate pupae), and has grown from 10 ants to 30 ants. I can keep it wetter for them (which is key to keeping them alive) and they get better airflow. I'm only keeping them to test things, I'll probably let them go and release them so they can fight a different colony of Argentine ants (there is 3-4 colonies here and probably more smaller ones). I'm looking forward to finishing my test and releasing them cause I have no interest in this species. But, they are really hard to keep in captivity.
My Dorymyrmex bicolor I just got, but usually they swarm out super quick and get everywhere. Fluon works great on them and will make it SO much easier to keep them.
One great example is my Tapinoma sessile colony. A TON of people have issues with them. Except, I started with 15-17 queens (a lot, though I now have 13-15 as I must have accidentally injured a couple )...500-900 workers and actually very little in the way of brood (the colony didn't have any eggs at all, and looked really weak. A lot of construction near them must have really hurt their colony.). Now 4 weeks later...still have 500-900 ants (barely any have died) and I see HUGE brood piles of freshly laid eggs from the queens and some tiny larvae developing. The brood looks to be developing a bit slow, but I moved them to the garage from the living room...so brood development should speed up a lot. But, there must be over 1,000 eggs now judging by the egg piles all over the place on bottom of their container. I do pretty much the same, except having a lid on them that just made mold...I keep their home pretty wet and no worries about mold anymore. Literally, only thing I've done different (that might be part of it) from my previous attempts is made it like an aquarium. Mostly soil pushed to the side and about 2-3 inches of water that I might be able to put water critters in if I want. Over the water is a rotten termite-eaten log that they made a satellite nest in. Tapinoma sessile seem to really like this setup, and I don't even have to worry about mold or them escaping.
But, yes...fluon...really glad I bought it. No more worries about ants escaping, mold isn't even an issue anymore...solves SO many things. For so long I never used it, now I wonder how I kept ants without it lol.
Edited by Vendayn, April 27 2015 - 10:02 PM.