The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

I'm sure many people have asked this, but the requirement of regularly purchasing, or breeding another species of bug in order to keep ants is perhaps the biggest annoyance for me when it comes to taking care of them. Has anyone experimented with alternative protein sources to see if an Ant Colony can thrive on them?

If Dairy(whey) protein, for example, was sufficient, this would make ant keeping super cheap and super easy. Any experience with this? Do ants simply not recognize it as a protein source?

Hello. I know some websites sell protein sources like protein jelly from ant kit, or Ant Juice from Tarheelants. Ant juice is not meant to be used as a primary protein or food source. I don't know much about the protein jelly, but it seems expensive. If you're looking for something to last a while, I can assure that mealworms will be your best bet. I bought 100 mealworms from a local pet store, and they have lasted quite a few months with plenty left. Some websites sell them in bulk for a relatively low price. The last thing you should know though is that you should always be changing your ant's diet. Feeding an ant colony by mealworms for years won't give your ants the variety of nutrition they need.

If you want ants that are super easy to feed get harvester ants. They mostly eat seeds (grass, dandelion, also larger seeds like sunflower if they have majors), canary bird food and nuts (and almonds). They still do better with some additional insects added from time to time (they produce more majors and alates then) but it's not required.

I feed my ants reptile protein jelly that I get from my local pet store. If you live in the uk you should have a pets at home near you that sells a pack of 6 pots (each about 2 inches tall) for £5 but if you're somewhere else you can usually get something cheap off amazon

I just grab a spade and spend about an hour or two every Sunday digging around or overturning logs.

Ants love termites, termites are everywhere btw. Oh and spiders are everywhere two.

But my colony isn't past the first workers yet.

I have been keeping wolf spiders and brown and black widows, however, and you'd be surprised how many bugs are out there just waiting to get eaten lols

I would not recommend feeding bugs from out doors. It could prove fatal for your colony. A founding colony definitely should have insects as it's main protein. After they have a larger amount of workers you can bounce between insects, meats, egg, dog food, ect. But make sure that they are still getting insects as at least a *****. They probably won't thrive quite as well as if they were being feed a fully insect diet for protein, but they should be fine. I buy a package of mealworms or crickets and freeze them. (fruit flies work great for a very young colony) And then I freeze them (except for the fruit flies which will produce flies for a couple months. I would dump some fruit flies into a big jar every couple of days and freeze them, but leave the culture to produce more.) When my colony is hungry, I take out a mealworm or cricket and cut it up to make the juices easily accessible, and stick it in a testtube inside the outworld.

Why do you not recommend outdoor insects?

Diseases and mites?

If it is that, don't ant species quarantine their own?

I am a rookie with ants, so this is news to me lol!

JadamJedi wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 29, 2017 1:15 pm

Why do you not recommend outdoor insects?

Diseases and mites?

If it is that, don't ant species quarantine their own?

I am a rookie with ants, so this is news to me lol!

Pesticides

Yeah. Some pesticides can settle on the exoskeleton of insects and not harm them, but they can harm your ants. It is best to purchase feeder insects from a shop.

It really depends on your environment. If you know that there are no pesticides used nearby it's not an issue at all - I regularly feed spiders from the woods or around the house and never had any issues. Actually my ant's primary food source are frozen bee pupae I got from a friend and no problems so far.