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[AntsVietnam]

Hi,

My name is Nguyen and I'm an ant lover from Vietnam and I've recently caught a red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) queen in my backyard. I've put her in a test tube set up and she should be laying some eggs in the next few weeks. My plan is as the queen fill up the tubes with her first worker ants, I will intoduce her to an outworld and more test tubes. Put after that I would like to move her to a soil formicarium to make it looks more natural and partly because I don't have that much money to buy professional ant products and do not have access to material like ytong.

Here are some questions I have about using a soil nest that I hope you can answer in order to help me grow my colony:
- What kind of substance should I use (soil from my garden, soil from plant store, sand from playground, or a mixture of the substances above)?
- How do you hydrate the formicarium without making the tunnels to collapse and drowning the ants?
- I heard that in soil formicarium, ant would just simply burry their waste and that would increase the chance of harmful bacteria to grow, is that true? If so, how to prevent that?
- Finally, how would clean a soil nest (it just can't be cleaned with water and vinegar like other formicarium)?

Thanks for spending your time to read my topic and I hope that you would comment and answer my questions as soon as possible.

Regards,
Nguyen Dung