8 replies to this topic

[NikolaBale]

What in your opinion is the hardest species to keep in general and the hardest native in your area?

Also what is the specific reason it is so hard?It dosen't have to be from personal experience but you could name a few that you had hardships with.


Now there are some species that are relatively easy to keep but even those species fail from time to time for no apparent reason.What is your opinion the thing that makes antkeeping difficult in general?

In spite of the generally simple and generic antkeeping tutorial we can all agree there is more to it than that...What do you do differently to successfully keep different species? (natives and exotic).


I know this is a really broad line of questioning but I'm really interested in your guys opinion on these things and experiences.
Antkeeping is usually presented very generically.

[Manitobant]

1. The most obvious answer to this question would be army ants, which, (excluding possibly neivamyrmex), have been proven time and time again to be virtually impossible to keep alive long term, due to their nomadic habits, massive colony sizes and primary predation on ant brood.

2. Antkeeping can be difficult in general due to the unpredictability of it. Even easy to keep species can sometimes drop dead for no reason, or require sudden changes.

3. I always try to cater to the specific needs of a species, especially if that species is more specialized. For example, i always provide my polyergus colonies with new slave pupae, and for my messor i always give them a wide variety of different seeds.

Edited by Manitobant, October 9 2021 - 5:28 PM.

[Leptomyrmx]

I agree on army ants. Unless you had a giant 10km by 10km  aquarium to make a giant jungle complete with other ant colonies, keeping army ants is pretty much impossible.

 

The hardest to keep species in my area would probably be Spider ants, Leptomyrmex (my username!) due to their queens being wingless and the only way to really tell them apart from the workers is their tiny ocelli.

 

Keeping different ant species... well, I only have a few colonies myself, due to a pandemic starting as soon as I became interested in ants... but my advice is just try to replicate their natural environment, and try a bunch of different foods. Also, I always say to get a good sized outworld. My Pheidole colony that could be at 100 workers now has a tiny outworld I can barely fit food in, and due to a series of events, I can't attach their new larger outworld for a few weeks.

Also feed lots of protein

I always do small text at the end of my posts.

[Ant_KeeperSeb09]

I agree on army ants. Unless you had a giant 10km by 10km aquarium to make a giant jungle complete with other ant colonies, keeping army ants is pretty much impossible.

The hardest to keep species in my area would probably be Spider ants, Leptomyrmex (my username!) due to their queens being wingless and the only way to really tell them apart from the workers is their tiny ocelli.

Keeping different ant species... well, I only have a few colonies myself, due to a pandemic starting as soon as I became interested in ants... but my advice is just try to replicate their natural environment, and try a bunch of different foods. Also, I always say to get a good sized outworld. My Pheidole colony that could be at 100 workers now has a tiny outworld I can barely fit food in, and due to a series of events, I can't attach their new larger outworld for a few weeks.
Also feed lots of protein
I always do small text at the end of my posts.

Would take more kilometers than that for army ants, they move of so many kilometers per month that they would finish the ressources in short amounts of time. Army ants leave pheromone alerts so the don't over exploit an area and since the jungle is so big, they don't need to worry about that, they can just exploit dozens/hundreds of kilometers

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[antscientist]

I agree on army ants but the hardest to keep alive in my area is most likely lasius ants. Every lasius ant queen I catch is parasitic and I'm not really available to go outside and catch host ants for them.

[SYUTEO]

Everyone would probably agree with army ants being the hardest if not impossible to keep in captivity.

 

The hardest native ant to keep in my area other than army ants is probably Proceratium, Discothyrea or Probolomyrmex.

[Ant_KeeperSeb09]

Everyone would probably agree with army ants being the hardest if not impossible to keep in captivity.

The hardest native ant to keep in my area other than army ants is probably Proceratium, Discothyrea or Probolomyrmex.

Maybe also the ants (forgot the name) which have root aphids in their mandíbuls during the flights and they depend on them, it's the only food source so it can be easy to loose them of they're not in a good setup

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[SYUTEO]

 

Everyone would probably agree with army ants being the hardest if not impossible to keep in captivity.

The hardest native ant to keep in my area other than army ants is probably Proceratium, Discothyrea or Probolomyrmex.

Maybe also the ants (forgot the name) which have root aphids in their mandíbuls during the flights and they depend on them, it's the only food source so it can be easy to loose them of they're not in a good setup

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Acropyga? I heard those can be kept in a dirt setup with some plants.

[Ant_KeeperSeb09]

Everyone would probably agree with army ants being the hardest if not impossible to keep in captivity.

The hardest native ant to keep in my area other than army ants is probably Proceratium, Discothyrea or Probolomyrmex.

Maybe also the ants (forgot the name) which have root aphids in their mandíbuls during the flights and they depend on them, it's the only food source so it can be easy to loose them of they're not in a good setup

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Acropyga? I heard those can be kept in a dirt setup with some plants.

Oh aight. Then I might add lasius myrphyi, they always die in front of your eyes

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