Before starting the question keeping ants at home, it is important to learn more about the features of such insects.
They live in their own "caste" society, therefore they are of interest not as individuals, but as representatives of a social structure.
Ants belong to the order Hymenoptera, their closest relatives are bees.
All ants are exclusively social insects, live in colonies and act like a large single organism.
Thanks to this, their evolutionary development has gone far ahead (compared to other insects), which allowed them to spread widely on our planet and have a dominant position among their fellows.
Ant colonies evolved through the formation of various highly specialized individuals within the same species. For example, soldier ants are larger and have proportionally large heads with powerful jaws.
In some species of ants, the soldiers have such large jaws that they cannot feed on their own! Worker ants are smaller individuals without obvious morphological changes, but with different specializations.
Some get and look for food, others equip an anthill, nurse (feed and grow larvae) future ants. There are also cook ants or individual barrel ants with a large abdomen, they play the role of storage tanks for food.
The uterus is the main ant in their entire society
. This is the largest individual of the species, the main function is the laying of eggs, the reproduction of ants.
It is the ant queen that monitors the ratio of individuals.
How many soldiers and workers there will be, she decides. When males will appear for mating and more queens will scatter and form new colonies, depends on her decision.
Many ants are engaged in their own animal husbandry: they grow aphids, protect their herds from predatory insects, and distill them to more succulent parts of plants.
Ants also have their own greenhouses, some species cultivate a fungus, which they choose the most suitable conditions in the anthill and, if necessary, transfer to new places.
Most species of ants live in colonies on a permanent territory, creating large dwellings on and under the ground, there are also vagrant species. Ants are omnivorous, eat animal and vegetable food, often play an important sanitary role in the natural ecosystem.
At home, you can keep many types of ants.. If the goal is to recreate a full-fledged long-lived colony, then it is better to use tropical species.
Small flat helium anthills are often on sale, they are perfect for keeping a small group of any kind of ants. You can eat gel in such anthills, the ants will eat through the winding passages in it until they swallow it all.
If you set yourself a more serious goal (to model a viable colony), then first of all you need to acquire an ant queen, it will give rise to the future ants.
Now often offered for sale are interesting ready-made options anthills (formicariums) made of glass, gypsum and plastic.
You can create an anthill yourself.
Before we start contain ants, you should acquire fodder insects in advance or find out the possibilities for their uninterrupted acquisition, since they are the main diet of ants.
Crickets and cockroaches are suitable, which do not have to be alive, frozen ones are also quite suitable. Ants can be fed fresh fruit and boiled vegetables. Ants need to put food in small portions, as they are consumed.
In no case should the feed be stale, this will lead to the appearance of mold (and other undesirable organisms) and the damping of the anthill.
Ants sometimes need to be sprayed a little, it is advisable to have a drinker with a small level (no more than 1 mm) of water so that it does not dry out. You can use the foam rubber or cotton wool placed in the drinker.
If you take the content of ants responsibly, then, undoubtedly, a home anthill (carefully thought out formicarium) will not only be beautiful visual aid for novice entomologists, but also a decoration of any room.
Contrary to popular belief, the arena is not just a box that ants use to get food and store garbage, the arena is a fairly important part of the formicarium that performs several functions. What exactly? This is what we are going to look at now.
What is an arena?
The arena is a space that simulates the area around the anthill. And if in nature ants have no boundaries other than natural ones, then at home they have to artificially restrain their movement.
What is the arena for?
The arena performs several functions at once. The most important thing is that it simplifies the care of the colony, facilitates feeding and cleaning. If your colony lives in a test tube, then every time the entrance is opened, the ants will raise the alarm and try to get out. And even if you manage to take out the garbage and throw in food instead before the workers run in, you still won’t be able to clean everything up. small particles, which the ants dragged onto the fleece. And each such particle is a potential source of mold, the appearance of which is undesirable in any case.
If you attach the arena, the ants do the cleaning work on their own - they themselves collect food in the arena, take out the garbage themselves, and go to the drinking bowl for water if they need it. All this not only simplifies the care of ants, but also gives the ants the opportunity to work "with their own hands", stretch their paws and generally be active.
In addition, a good arena also performs an aesthetic function. At proper planning, the arena becomes the decoration of the formicarium and a place where you can watch the ants during their hunting and foraging. A well designed arena should give good review everything that happens on it, and not create additional barriers to observation.
Another purpose that many keepers often forget about is maintaining the microclimate. Very often the arena looks like simple box made of plastic with a hole on the side - the ants take out food there and get food there. But keepers do not take into account that in nature, ants often use the space near the anthill for their needs - ants can set up solariums there and warm up cocoons, dry seeds in the bright sun, or simply warm themselves on their own to speed up their metabolism and digestion. Moreover, the further south an ant lives, the stronger the sun influences its behavior, and the more important it is to simulate daylight hours and temperature changes.
How to make a good arena?
The ideal arena for ants is their natural biome, where this species lives in the wild. Whatever we do, we will never be able to accurately replicate all the factors that ants deal with in the wild, but we can try to get as close to natural conditions as possible, while not forgetting the practical side.
The first is the size and height of the arena. The larger your colony, the larger size ants need arenas. It is not necessary to make one large arena - you can connect several using tubes, as they do, for example, for leaf cutters - in this case, you can detach one arena for cleaning, and transfer the ants from it to the second. For each species, the recommended size of the arena will be different, you just need to study this empirically, observing the behavior of ants in the arena that you already have. At the same time, most ant species forage on the ground, and only for aphids do they climb plants or low bushes - so there is no need to make arenas more than 10-20 cm high. Tall arenas are only needed if your species lives and hunts in trees or plants - for example, crematogasters, shiny wood borers, weavers. Most ants, as a rule, do not climb tall plants, which means that there is no need to place them, as well as to make a high arena. However, there is one more exception - for mass and small species, it makes sense to make an arena of great height - but only in order to apply a wide layer of anti-escape in an attempt to contain this hungry horde.
The second point is ventilation. Most ant farms have one major drawback - there is not enough ventilation in the arena. Small cuts in acrylic and thin slits between parts are unable to provide normal air circulation. Ants feel this very well, so they do not perceive the arena as an open external space - for them it is big, but closed place like a hollow in a tree or a cavity underground. Therefore, while there, the ants can often behave almost like in an anthill - they can drag brood back and forth, set up warehouses with seeds under shelters, or even drag the queen there. To avoid this behavior, need to provide good ventilation with mesh or open lid.
The third point is an overview. In pursuit of good level ventilation and imitation of natural conditions, one must not forget that the arena is needed, among other things, for convenient observation of ants. So when you are planning or choosing an arena for your ants, think about how you will look at the ants and what will get in your way. See where the ventilation nets are, where the ants will enter, where you can place waterers and feeders, make sure that no details or decorations will interfere with your observation.
The fourth point is convenience. There will be no use in the arena if you cannot properly maintain it. This means that you should be able to safely put food, remove trash, disconnect and connect the arena, update the anti-escape, without having to do any complicated manipulations. How easier care— so much the better for you and for the ants. There are a few points worth paying attention to:
1) The opening under the cover is large enough to allow manual manipulation with tweezers
2) There are several holes for connecting modules, from different sides
3) There is a large enough bezel to apply anti-escape
4) The surface of the arena is close enough to take macro photos
5) Above the arena there is a place to install a heating lamp
Despite the apparent simplicity, the organization of the arena should be approached wisely, and all possible nuances should be taken into account in advance. Even though many species can use the simplest arena without any problems, for a beautiful appearance you need to carefully consider the selection of both the scenery and the arena itself, so as not to encounter unexpected difficulties in leaving. But, if you do everything right, you can achieve not only functionality and convenience, but also a beautiful appearance - and your arena will delight you with its appearance, just like the ants that will use it.
Cats, dogs and hamsters are great, but many people have such pets. What if you want something unusual, interesting and not too expensive? You can make yourself or your child a wonderful gift - an ant farm. The originality of this gift lies, first of all, in the fact that it is quite easy to make it with your own hands.
Preparatory stage
To make an ant farm with your own hands, you need to do a little preparation. To start it is worth deciding on the capacity in which we will settle the restless family. An excellent ant farm is obtained from a flat aquarium, but this requires additional costs. Craftsmen can make a plexiglass container by bonding it with silicone glue. In this case, the design will turn out exactly the form that suits you the most.
The simplest option ant farm obtained from two containers for bulk products different size. These can be jars or boxes of transparent material without pattern and damage, one of which fits freely inside the other. Both jars must have tight lids. You will populate the ant colony in the space between the two banks so that it is convenient to observe her life.
Soil or base for an anthill
The choice of filler for an ant farm depends on where you are going to get its inhabitants:
Be sure to take into account that the mixture of soil and sand should not only be well loosened, but also moistened. However, do not overdo it, if you make the mixture too wet, then the ants will simply drown in it.
Do not fill the container all the way to the top with the mud mixture. Leave a few centimeters of free space. And do not tamp the mixture, but just shake it slightly so that the inhabitants can easily make their own moves.
How to collect ants
The easiest way is to find ants in the yard. There is nothing complicated in this, especially if you connect a restless child to the process. Small anthills are very common, to find them, it is enough to follow where the small workers so purposefully drag their finds.
To collect an ant, take gloves, a scoop and a jar with a tight lid. In the lid, you can make several holes for air access with a thin needle., but they must be so small that insects cannot crawl out. You can drop honey or jam on the bottom, then the ants will gather around the sweets and will not try to get out. Carefully dig up a few anthill inhabitants and place them in a jar. Try to find the mother. It is much larger than the rest of the ants. 30 - 40 inhabitants are enough for your farm.
To populate a farm created with your own hands, you need to consider the following nuances:
- Only working insects can be collected on the surface of the anthill. They are unable to reproduce. To watch the ants lay their eggs and care for them, it is imperative to get the queen queen. Alas, but for this you have to dig an anthill deep enough.
- An ant farm inhabited only by worker ants will last no more than four weeks. This is their natural lifespan.
- In the forest anthills you can find more large species insects than in urban areas. They are easier to look after.
How to care for an ant farm
It is not enough to make a house for an ant family. In order to observe how ants live for a long time, you need to properly care for the farm:
Understand how making an ant farm yourself is not at all difficult. If you involved children in this process, then watching the little inhabitants will be even more interesting. The main thing is to act carefully so that the ants live where it is convenient for you, and not where they want.
At the sight of an ant in a room, the natural reaction of every normal person is to figure out how to get rid of house ants. However, there are people who deliberately breed these insects in their homes. For what? IN Lately home ant farms are becoming increasingly popular.
Young children have a natural urge to explore the world around them, including various bugs and insects. Therefore very interesting idea it can be the manufacture of a safe anthill that can satisfy the curiosity of the child and become an interesting and informative visual aid for the study of ant life.
There are two main types of ant farms: gel and mud. In gel "houses" ants live in jelly filler. Such farms can be purchased ready-made.
mud ant farm
It will be easier and more interesting to make an ant farm on your own by connecting a child to the process. How to make an anthill at home with sand filler?
First you need to buy the narrowest glass container that you can find on sale. An excellent anthill will turn out from a double-glazed window for windows, in which you can see from both sides how insects dig tunnels.
You should lay a piece of polyethylene or oilcloth on the floor, put a container on it and fill it with soil.
It is necessary to lightly shake the soil so that there are no voids left, but it is not necessary to press down hard. Fill the container in this way almost to the very top, without adding about three centimeters to it.
Now you go outside with a container to look for an anthill. Most often it can be found along roadsides or under trees.
After the anthill is found, put on gloves, use a spatula or scoop to remove a few ants and place them in a container. It is advisable to find an ant queen, which differs from the rest of the ants in a larger size.
At home, you need to put a cotton ball moistened with water in the container so that your pets can drink water, and also place a small cracker as food. Now you should tightly close the container with a lid and seal the joints of the lid and walls with adhesive tape.
Wet cotton wool and crackers should be changed every 2-3 days. After a while, you will be able to see how the ants dig tunnels, drink, eat and communicate with each other.
Did you know?
If you decide to start an ant farm at home, then you will need to study some information about the anthill ecosystem. Few people know that all the ants that live in anthills are girls. Soldier girls, worker girls, and they only need boys to breed, just once. The winged prince and the winged princess mate during the breeding season, after which the princess discards her wings, and the prince ... skates. One such time is enough for a female to lay eggs for about twenty years! Interestingly, no other insects on Earth live as long as the queen ant, and the life span of worker ants is 1 to 5 years.
If you manage to find a fertilized, winged queen, and you put her in a home ant farm, you will become a real myrmikeper. A myrmicary is a person who has settled an ant queen in a home farm called myrmicarium or formicarium and watches how the ant family lives and develops.
Myrmikeper can see the following interesting pictures from the life of these insects:
As a soldier feeds each porter at a meeting.
How ants carry larvae larger than themselves.
How the ants decide to close up a hole in their plaster house.
How, after hard work, their mouths were filled with plaster.
How they help each other get rid of fillings.
How ants unpack a newborn from a cocoon.
One of my favorite treats is cat food.
Gel Ant Farm
How to make an anthill at home with gel filler? If you use jelly as a filler, you can observe in detail how the ants dig their passages, pulling out small pieces of gel to the surface.
To make such a farm, you will need 3 bags of gelatin, 15 g each, which should be dissolved in 2 glasses hot water. Stir until gelatin dissolves, then add 2 more cups of water.
Pour the prepared mixture into a container and send it to the refrigerator.
After some time, remove the container from the refrigerator, wait until the gel takes room temperature and you can run into a new house of tenants.
It is necessary to keep an eye on the young entomologist, since children's curiosity may require you to find out how the container with insects opens, and they will spread throughout the apartment.
You can use a plastic CD or DVD box as a temporary portable container by filling it with soil or sand.
Ant farm with built-in gypsum block
This farm is very convenient both for observing ants for humans and for insects for life.
The features of such a farm are:
Embedded plaster block.
The entrance to the gypsum block is located at the bottom, which avoids problems with debris in the chambers.
To prevent escape inner surface glasses on top should be treated with baby powder or a special powder bought in a store
As a filler, aquarium soil was used, with which the ants play quite amusingly, dragging pebbles around the cameras and around the arena.
The arena has a fairly large volume, so a small test tube with water is placed in it, which is used as an additional source of moisture. A gypsum block 2 cm thick was processed using a milling cutter.
Basic conditions for an ant farm
The farm should not have sharp corners, about which a person can get hurt, or ants inside the house.
The material from which the container is made must be environmentally friendly without harmful impurities.
The container should be provided with a ventilation system to ensure that air enters it.
If your farm is do-it-yourself, and not purchased, then you should purchase a temperature controller for it. As a rule, purchased farms are equipped with such regulators.
Ants should not be cramped in the container.
The gel for the farm can be either made independently from gelatin or purchased ready-made in a special store. You should know that the gel for the ant is not only a habitat, but also a nutrient medium.
Basic conditions for ants
All ants must be from the same anthill, since most insects can kill a stranger who accidentally gets to them.
The farm should not be placed in the sun, as ants prefer cool places.
Don't have too many ants.
You should know that these insects are afraid of a sudden change in lighting and perceive bright light as a signal that they are not in an anthill.
If the filler for the farm is gel, then you do not need to water and feed the insects, since the gel
is both food and drink for them.
An open container should not be installed as a drinking bowl for ants, because they can drown in water. For a small colony, a cotton ball dipped in water, which is changed once every 2 to 3 days, will suffice.
How to care for an ant farm?
It is important to know not only how to make an anthill at home, but also how to care for it. Ants do not require special care. Quite rarely, owners of a gel-filled farm will have to replace the gel with a new one (it can be purchased separately), wash and dry the container.
If pets live in a filler made of sand, soil or gypsum, they need to be fed and watered. You should know that, in addition to bread crumbs, various grains and much more, ants also love sweets. However, when treating them with sugar syrup, it is necessary to control that they do not get stuck or drown in it, so the syrup should not be poured into a container, but slightly spread over the surface.
The ant farm will especially appeal to the child. It is very interesting and informative to consider how life is in full swing in these insects, how and what they eat, what they love, and what not. It is advisable, before you get ants at home, to read the necessary literature about them in order to know exactly how to properly care for them.
An ant farm, or as it is also called, formicarium, is an anthill under glass, a space where one or more colonies of insects live. The owner gets the opportunity to observe life different types ants, as if under a microscope: how they make a tunnel, collect food, grow larvae. Workers, soldiers, uterus - it's literally a whole city under the control of one person! In everyday life, formicaria are unpretentious, they don’t walk ants at 5 in the morning, they don’t bathe, they don’t take them for vaccinations.
What is an ant farm
Formicaria come from the 19th century. At first they were used exclusively for scientific research. A surge in popularity among naturalists led to the commercialization of the project. Since 1929, formicaria began to be made for sale, and in 1931, the inventor Frank Austin patented his design. The world's most famous formicaria is created by the Ant Farm brand, sending ants by mail, AntKing and AntPlanet.
The ant farm is a home anthill for a child. It will be interesting for him to have a whole "kingdom" in his administration. Observing unique processes, he will be closer to nature, will learn to be responsible for those whom he has tamed. Adults also like it: in the office it entertains visitors and inspires employees, at home it helps to relax, clear thoughts and recharge with energy. In stores, there are small models that are convenient to put on the table, and large ones, like aquariums.
Formicary for ants
The farm looks like a neat aquarium or showcase with filler inside. There are simple and complex systems, where lighting, an acceptable level of humidity, and temperature are automatically maintained. Designer farms are very popular. They have unusual shape, bright colors, arena connection function (spaces where insects walk and hunt), backlight. Size - from small to large: there are desktop, for the living room or office. As a filler, gel, gypsum, a mixture of soil and sand are used.
Soil-sand
Popular specimens have the form of a display, a cube or a double-walled cylinder (the so-called Cubus, Colosseum models). The containers are filled with multi-colored sand, in which the ant family develops and builds passages. It is expensive, but the kit immediately comes with sand, insect food and other useful things. The soil and sand farm is very visual and exciting.
Gel anthill
A gel-filled farm looks like an aquarium, but is not filled with water, but with a transparent gel. blue color. It is non-toxic, safe for insects, and at the same time serves as a living environment and food. The ant gel farm is airtight, convenient. It does not require care, once every 5-7 days the lid must be opened for a couple of minutes to ventilate, and remove dead insects that have already outlived their lives.
with gypsum filler
The gypsum ant farm is not so spectacular, but the insects are comfortable there, and the price is affordable. Gypsum - practical, available material. This is the most common type of formicarium. Among the models there are both compact, for the desktop, and large. The surface of the plaster is often brightly colored, which makes the anthill a stylish and unusual addition to any interior.
How to choose an ant farm with ants
Among domestic buyers, artificial ant farms are only becoming popular, but in the West they have been selling well for a long time. It is convenient to order a farm in the online store, where there are models of all types, designs and sizes. Sellers offer to visit the showroom and choose a product there or place a purchase remotely with delivery. Among the assortment of an ordinary pet store, especially in the outback, it is usually impossible to buy a formicarium with ants.
Formicaria price
In Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities of Russia, a popular ant farm from Antking or Antplanet can be bought separately or together with an ant family, food, and accessories. The average price is 3-6 thousand rubles, models self made, with additional modules are more expensive. You can save a lot by using promotions, discounts, sales, gift coupons.
How much does an ant farm cost in Moscow - an overview of online stores:
How to make an ant farm with your own hands
An anthill at home can be created even from improvised means. For the price, it will be cheap, but in appearance it will turn out to be no worse than the store. You can save on everything - containers, mixtures, ants. Get a farm with ants original form different from typical mass production models. Alternatively, you can buy a ready-made form, fill it yourself with a mixture and insects.
What you need for a home anthill
An ant farm at home is made from two jars with wide necks, a flat bottom, and tight lids. One should freely enter the other so that there is a gap between the walls and necks. Even for the ant house, a soil-sand mixture is bought (or a special gel, which is sold in the same place as the formicaria), a family of ants.
Where to get ants
There are two ways to provide formicaria with hardworking residents:
- Buy ants for an ant farm at a pet store (where ant farms are sold). This is convenient, since you can immediately buy ants with a queen plus special soil for them. The disadvantages are obvious - the rise in price, the risk of damaging its inhabitants during shipment.
- Find near the house or in the forest. In the second case, you need to take the ground nearby so that the insects do not experience stress. In order for the colony to multiply, dig out the uterus, that is, destroy the nest. Catching ants - only with gloves, in order to avoid bites.
Farm device
Preparation of an ant house - two cans that were placed one inside the other. It is important to close the inner lid tightly. A mixture of soil and sand is poured into the opening between them (proportion 2 to 1). The farm is ready. It remains to create a recess with a stick and launch 20-25 ants so that they start digging tunnels. The structure is tightly closed with a lid with small holes so that air enters. You can’t use cloth or paper for this, the ants will gnaw through them and run away.
A true colony is a self-regulating system. How to care for the inhabitants of the farm, tells the instructions for the ant farm with a photo, as well as the video below. In order for insects to live long and comfortably, it is important to observe simple rules:
- feed with sweet formulations or special food;
- moisten the soil - it’s enough to put a piece on the lid once a week wet cotton;
- make sure that the temperature in the room is not lower than +15 degrees;
- close the jar sunlight(ants live in the dark);
- remove dead individuals with a cotton swab or disc.
What can not be done with the farm:
- Close the jar tightly - the insects will suffocate. Make holes only small so that the pets do not run away.
- Leave the farm in the cold - the ants will hibernate. They also do not tolerate extreme heat, so it is better to keep the jar away from direct rays of light.
- Shake, drop the container - insects are under severe stress.
- Pouring water - the ants will die. Forgetting to moisturize is also impossible, this leads to the death of the colony.
Ant feeding
The best food for ants is honey, sugar syrup, jam or pieces of sweet fruit, you can prepare a glucose solution. It is allowed to feed insects, if they are definitely not poisonous. Food intake - no more than 1 time in several days, the amount of food is small, otherwise the entire colony will stop developing. If the filler is gel, there is no need to worry about the feed at all. For a small family, gel reserves are enough to eat for 3-6 months, then they buy more.
