48 replies to this topic

[BrittonLS]

9/27/15

I seem to be just absolutely abysmal at raising these for some reason! I think the garage isn't a good place for my ants, not sure if it's too hot or what, but none of my ants seem to have done well there. Or maybe I just neglected them a bit too much. But at least one group is doing well and has plenty of healthy workers.

 

 

[Air]

Update?

[Adventurer390]

I thought the same Ice lol

[BrittonLS]

7/2/2016

Fine fine, I'll update. So I have them in a relatively small container right now. They grew a whole lot, but I think I've succeeded in feeding them only enough to keep their population under control. If I gave them all the food I wanted I'm sure I'd have a thousand times more ants in this colony. They still are in their original test tube, just in an outworld. They interestingly enough burrowed into the dry cotton to use the back end as its own nest chamber. It's my intent to move them into a larger formicarium and let them grow, but I haven't set anything up for them yet. I tried giving them a grout formicarium, but it seems there was a leak somewhere because I found a nice trail of ants leaving from it. Was pretty tiny though, so not many escapees, I just hand vacuumed them up.

 

Here are pictures not necessarily in order since the last time I updated. The very last one is most recent of their current setup. (Please ignore the giant trash pile I need to get rid of...)

 

They sure like their ByFormica Sunburst Ant Nectar.

 

[BrittonLS]

Oh and here's a formicarium I designed for them in my Additive Manufacturing class. I designed little tunnels through the formicarium that take in water through capillariy action, which actually worked out perfectly when I tested it. I'd probably cover the end of the capillaries with grout or something that can soak in the water without letting the ants go through them.

[Canadian anter]

People are naming queens now haha. cx

I also name queens.There's queen #1, queen #2,queen #3,queen #4,queen #5,queen #,queen #6,queen #7 and queen #8.

[drtrmiller]

I designed little tunnels through the formicarium that take in water through capillariy action, which actually worked out perfectly when I tested it.

Uhm, is this formicarium 1 cm^3? Not sure if capillary action is the right word for something that big, unless there's something I'm not seeing.

[BrittonLS]

 

I designed little tunnels through the formicarium that take in water through capillariy action, which actually worked out perfectly when I tested it.

Uhm, is this formicarium 1 cm^3? Not sure if capillary action is the right word for something that big, unless there's something I'm not seeing.

 

The section at the bottom is the water reservoir, you can see the triangles there that are the openings to the capillaries. I made the opening bigger and then taper down so the water could get inside the tunnels more easily. The capillaries are mostly the size of the triangles you see on the surface inside the nest. I want to say they were something like, 2 mm equilateral triangles? The "effective" capillary radius is smaller because they're triangles (close enough to the radius of a circle you could fit inside) and the capillaries are designed to only carry the water up about a centimeter or so, just enough to go to the nest. It keeps the water on the surface of the nest even when the water level goes below the formicarium floor height. 

 

The nest is 11x10 cm.

 

Edit: Here's this from wikipedia. I only needed to raise the water by 20 mm or so.

Edited by BrittonLS, July 2 2016 - 2:58 PM.

[dspdrew]

I too am pretty surprised that you can get that much travel from holes that large in diameter. That graph you posted is for glass, BTW. Plastic doesn't adhere to water as well as glass does, therefor it's less effective in capillary action.