Introduction:
I have been trying, and failing, to keep Argentine ants for the past 2+ years. I would always collect a large number of workers and queens, but they would simply continue to lose workers until nothing remained but queens, and little to no brood. This is the first colony that appears to be doing exceptionally well, even if I had a rocky start when thousands of ants were collected from an indoor foraging trail in November, 2015 (winter is the best time to collect them, as they frequently wander indoors). At first, during the winter, I did lose many thousands of workers; however, this is the first colony that I've kept that has been able to produce a large number of advanced brood, and continues to have a respectable number of healthy queens and workers such that I'm optimistic about the outlook.
Habitat:
Argentine ants require a spacious foraging area—I would say a small colony would need at least two square feet (0.2 sq meter)—in order for them to form their foraging trails and behave normally. Otherwise, they will simply swarm and wander randomly in a high concentration. In a spacious enclosure, the ants perform similarly, but are much more disperse, forming visible trails to food, water, nest sites, and other resources. A spacious enclosure may be required for a captive colony to grow and thrive. Also worth noting, is that the ants need special containment, with 5 to 6 inches minimum Fluon barrier. They can also flatten their body and have a high propensity to explore and test even the smallest, tightest crack or hole.
I currently have the colony contained within three, 19x15x6 inch plastic bins with a gypsum stone floor, connected with two tubes each—although for the colony at its current size of a few hundred ants, I probably only need a single bin.
16 mm test tubes stopped with a rubber plug, with an entry cut made in the plug, seem to be an excellent habitat, supporting brood development of all stages. Judging from old test tubes, nests stay extremely clean. The ants are not messy eaters, and do not expel much, if any, waste inside the nest.
These ants can not thrive without some humidity in the nest, and appear to stay thirsty like no other ants I've observed. It is common, where I live, to observe them nesting in pine straw flower beds, which can be somewhat damp in the lower layers closest to the soil.
Heat is also important. Although I haven't completed any experiments, and most of the brood that has developed has done so at a room temperature averaging around 23 C (74 F), it is safe to say that adding a supplemental heat source (around 28-30 C) would help the brood mature much more quickly.
Feeding:
In nature, this tramp ant establishes ravenous super colonies—consuming nearly anything edible in order to support many millions or billions of ants that are constantly hungry and on the move. In captivity, however, it is impossible to recreate the natural buffet of items they have available in nature, and so feeding very specific small prey that the ants might normally find among leaf litter or disturbed soil appears to be very important for colonies kept in captivity.
byFormica Sunburst Ant Nectar and small, soft prey items such as fruit flies, termites, and springtails are consistently accepted. Common protein gels do not appear to support growth, despite color indication that some portion of the food was fed to brood. Larger prey is generally ignored if whole, with a modest reception when the juicy innards are exposed—but even still, the ants don't seem to get many nutrients from larger items. It is worth noting that colonies in nature might easily dismember and carry back to their nest entire cubes of protein gel or larger prey items—I don't have any explanation as to why I have been unable to observe this behavior in captivity.
Perhaps the most critical element to feeding is constant access to water. In a test tube, they will constantly drink from the cotton, depleting it extremely quickly. If the test tubes dry out, they will drain a water-filled liquid feeder far more quickly than one would think is reasonable. The workers will die off quickly without constant access to water (sugar water is not enough—they must have access to a plain water source), though the queens are slightly more tolerant. I'm almost certain dehydration played an important role in my previous failures with this species.
Video:
In this video, I recently fed them some dead, frozen termites, which they had collected and brought back to their test tube nests. They are also drinking byFormica Sunburst Ant Nectar, which I keep available almost constantly.
Edited by drtrmiller, May 20 2016 - 3:35 PM.
