4 replies to this topic

[Socalfireants]

Any experience with their larger nests?, I feel the ytong will disintegrate after being soiled by ants and reused. Not willing to spend 200$ on a non reusable nest

[dspdrew]

I'm sure you can reuse an Ytong nest. Maybe after enough times it might wear out, but that is probably more times than anyone would ever try to reuse one.

[Socalfireants]

I just feel that mold would stick to the deep crevices and look awful. I have a tha atom and the nest part feels delicate. Idk

[dspdrew]

It's going to look like that no matter what once you have a colony living in there.

[Foogoo]

You'd be surprised how well they hold up and clean up. Here's my two year old Nucleus, the first nest I got from them which has gone through countless colonies of different species:

The only debris stuck in the pores are some substrate. I didn't even really clean it between uses other than some alcohol and dumping out the trash piles. Ants are pretty good about housekeeping themselves.

 

If you're still worried about Ytong there's also the other type of material available (made from the same material as the Atom) which is actually really dense, which is probably not noticeable with the Atoms. Here's one of the first Mini Hearths that's also been through a number of colonies. Dumping the trash and wiping the glass is the only cleaning I've done:

 

I probably sound like a shill for THA but it's only because I'm very happy with their nests. I don't have the time or patience to make my own nests (and the ones I have made are pretty bad) and my experience with acrylic nests were not good.