Hello,
As some of you may be aware, my brother and I keep a number of ant colonies in captivity, including our personal favorite species, Pheidole tysoni. The queen of this colony was captured as a dealate during the summer of last year and has resided in a standard test tube set up since her collection, currently boasting an impressive worker count of nearly two hundred individuals, including several majors.
Little did we know, Pheidole tysoni happen to be extraordinarily small. The queen was approximately six millimeters long, while the majors barely reach three and the minor workers range from 1.5 mm to a rather lengthy 2.0 mm on rare occasions. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore little ants, hence my fascination with 'cryptic' ants and other tiny genera, but they can be somewhat challenging to contain.
As aforementioned, our Ph. tysoni colony is housed in a standard test tube set up. The test tube is attached by a snippet of 3/8" vinyl tubing to a custom, black sand outworld my brother and I lovingly built for the little suckers. We will occasionally catch a worker or two wandering outside of the tube, presumably having escaped through a miniscule crack between the tubing and the entrance of the outworld, but there's only so much we can do about that at this point. More pressingly, the tube is nearly out of water— we expect it to run out within a couple of weeks at most.
Do any of you have experience purchasing (or constructing) formicaria for particularly tiny species, such as my Ph. tysoni? I'd compare their size to that of a small Temnothorax or Solenopsis species. If so, any guidance would be greatly appreciated. My brother and I also recently purchased a dirt box formicarium from Drew for our Myrmica incompleta, that has been working wonders, although I doubt it'd be suitable for smaller ants.
Thank you!
Edited by VoidElecent, June 12 2018 - 8:41 AM.
