JohnyDL Journal [0 - the before]

[JohnyDL]

If you're talking about Lasius flavus, Lasius umbratus, or Lasius fuliginosus, those don't need aphids in captivity.

Right now I'm doing a work up of everything I do before my first ants next year, I've got 3 choices for local species according to the powers that be, Lasius flavus, Lasius niger sensu lato, Myrmica rubra. Lasius flavus isn't ideal they're a farming species that live all their lives underground eating root aphids and finding a queen will be nearly impossible. Myrmica Rubra which are a little on the small side, not that I mind that, and are a stinging species which I might have a problem with. And Lasius niger which is common and I've experienced on more than one occasion foraging in my home ^_^ guess Lasius niger it probably will be.

[Batspiderfish]

Ok! I see. I wouldn't give up on finding Lasius flavus, unless you live in the middle of a city. Myrmica rubra have smaller queens than Lasius niger, but the workers are actually going to be a little bigger than Lasius. Why were these three the final selection? For lack of more pesty pests, Lasius niger must be the only real nuisance ant in much of the UK (excluding a few instances of non-native Camponotus. I'm sure that if the building managers were already this considerate, they might let you keep other benign genera like Formica, Temnothorax, or the rest of the Lasius genus (if you happen to find them).

[JohnyDL]

Ok! I see. I wouldn't give up on finding Lasius flavus, unless you live in the middle of a city. Myrmica rubra have smaller queens than Lasius niger, but the workers are actually going to be a little bigger than Lasius. Why were these three the final selection? For lack of more pesty pests, Lasius niger must be the only real nuisance ant in much of the UK (excluding a few instances of non-native Camponotus. I'm sure that if the building managers were already this considerate, they might let you keep other benign genera like Formica, Temnothorax, or the rest of the Lasius genus (if you happen to find them).

Stoke on Trent is a rural city it's a several square mile urban jungle but you're never more than a 10-20 minute walk from green space, canals, parks, farmland, etc. but little in the way of meadow land (typical home of Flavus), I'm not giving up on the Flavus but I'm not confident about finding any either, I've seen the Niger and I know they're much much more common.

Niger are pretty much the only nuisance ant here in stoke I know that much I see them everywhere, but they're not a species that tends to invade homes for nesting they invade them for food and foraging, in my experience anyway, and I don't mind looking after them.

The Rubra on the other hand, after some thought, I'm erring on the side of caution with. I've been stung by ants, wasps and bees in the past but not since I had an incident with a wasp nest in which I was on the receiving end of the better part of 300-400 stings. I'd rather air on the side of caution, I don't think I'm going to have an allergic reaction to the poisons these insects make but there's the possibility given the amount of poison of my last attack my immune system may overreact.

These three are the final selection because, I want to catch the queens myself, and while my building manager doesn't have a problem with any ant species I keep, my local authority told me to have local ants (based on the logic in the next paragraph). This survey https://data.nbn.org.uk/Datasets/GA000008 although out dated is the one that's most recent and most relevant to my local area and I'm basing my local species on that, I might be wrong but I've not found any more up to date data. There are a number of eusocial insects on the list but only the three species I've listed are hymenoptera formicidae (ants).

So I live in a rented property and a number of things might happen here, my house could be brought by another landlord, my landlord could change it's policy on pets, I could want to move house and my new landlord not like ants etc. All of these would result in my colony needing to be not in my house in short order without much chance of me to find them a new home, with the exception of moving house the request could come at any time without warning and I might only have a week or maybe a day before they'd have to be gone from my house (or I become homeless a month later which would be the same thing). I am dead set on not killing any colony I home if I don't have to, I've found no ant keepers on this forum that live within 40 miles of me, and even if I did could they accept a new colony at a moment's notice? So they'd get released into the wild, and being a new ant keeper I might make a mistake and my colony escape into the wild anyway. So whichever happens they've got to be local species just in case the colony cannot complete its natural lifespan in captivity.

I would absolutely love tetramorium C or ants of other sizes/species but I can't so I'm not going to complain however much and whatever I might be missing out on, I'm 25 and I doubt that my first species will be my only one.

[JohnyDL]

So designing my own formicarium.... Components and general thoughts

I had a think about this and I want to use recycled components or home made components as much as possible. That said I'm planing to buy a lot of tubing to build a really modular and expandable nest

for component scale I made this



For reference its 2px per mm you might have to zoom in to see it on some screens. The dark and light blue tubing is roughly the same size as AC tubing, though that's in imperial not metric, and the metric versions of red purple and dark blue tubing are what I can get really easily. If/when I can find completely clear orange tubing I'll probably buy it as the connectors are more awesome.

The top and bottom sections with orange and purple outlines are the see-through connectors I found (orange) and the cheap opaque connectors I can get at my local DIY store in black or white.

I think the red piping will be more than adequate for nesting I can make chambers of any length without any difficulty and link them to the purple tubes at each end for deeper connections or tunnels, hydration or cotton wool for air. allowing for managed hydration and oxygen.

I have some clear plastic boxes I'm going to use a small 3L for my outworld and a large 84L as a tank to keep everything in most of the time, Specifically they're 'really useful boxes' that look like this



the large one is 710mm Long x 440mm Wide x 380mm High External and 610mm x 370mm x 355mm Internal
the little one is 245mm Long x 180mm Wide x 160mm High External and 190mm x 140mm x 120mm Internal

I hope people will agree that this will be more than enough space to start with. And I've thought about how to ant seal them without air sealing them, the lid sits on the top of the box on little plastic struts and clips into place for a firm but not even ant proof seal, I'm going to cut a hole into a lid and use the way it clips together to put in something solid on between the lip and the lid to seal it and glue some wire mesh between this homemade gasket, if I need to have access I pop the clips and the whole lid comes off with and the seal too.

While I'd really like to be able to make a tree with the tubes I know that may cause problems so I'll settle for a partial tree with the furthest ends connected together into loops, there's no easy way to diagram what I'm thinking but I might be able to explain it better by way of how over time it'll get constructed.

I'll start off the nest with something like a # four Xs linked together and the ends mostly blocked off with cotton wool or stoppers. One section will lead off to the the test tube set up, which I'll eventually replace with a hydration test tube and another the outworld leaving six blocked off for later expansion and no excess tubing as they won't need it. As they grow I'll extend each of the ends off for a while with tubing, chambers made of bigger tubing, longer tunnel sections with smaller tubing and probably deeper junctions in the nest, when I think a section of tunnel and chambers has reached it's limit, maybe a meter long with 4-8 little off shoots (no more than 200mm deep, (8 inches) with chambers or hydration depending on what I think the colony needs at the time of expansion), I'll connect it back somewhere nearer to the # maybe on an existing line or with a T or X connecting it to the # and allowing me to start a new line.

Because I'll have plenty of tubing at the beginning I may be able to found a few colonies with the same equipment to start with, (although I might need cheap disposable out worlds) and either merge them (risky but possible) or release all but the most promising colony as I begin to need more space.

[JohnyDL]

Totally forgot to mention the ants in the bottom left corner of the parts image, the left pair are the workers smallest above largest bellow for Lasius Niger, (according to AntKeepers.com) and the pair on the right is the same deal but for the queen, I only know that the lengths are correct otherwise the stylising is all me, I'm probably massively out on their widths but in only a few pixels wide there's not much I could do about that.