Looking for help about black garden ants.

[Shaggy]

Hello! I’m a new ant keeper and I’m interested in starting a Black garden ant colony to get me used to caring for ants. Is there anything I should know about them before I start? I’m hoping to start with a queen in a tube and tub setup before moving to an Ausants starter nest when they get large enough.

[Shaggy]

Small detail that I left out: I’ve researched quite a bit about ant care and Black garden ants themselves, I’m just looking for some general tips or tips for them specifically.

[RuinedDrone]

ONe thing I have lernt about ants is they dont like to be disterbed.

My daughter caught a queen a few months back and going from queen to coleny is a slow process. like 2-3 months and in that time as long as the tube has moisture the only otehr thing she needs is darkness and no desterbences. Just leave her for 4 to 5 days at a time between checking and when you do check do so gently and quickly.

Even after the first nenimatic apear they will not venture far so as long as they have access to water for the first 4 - 5 days they will be find with out food so no need to worry that if you dont chek them every day they will died as soon as they apear if you dont feed them.

After that just a bit of suger water and small bits of feeder insects and leave them to it. What i am finding is in the early days a hands off aproach works best.

One fun thing i did was set up a Raspberry pi with a night vision camara to film 24/7 so i can watch her and her brood develope with out the temptation to keep disterbing her.