The most important rules of antkeeping

[SYUTEO]

Here are the most important rules of antkeeping according to the antkeeping community and it's best for you to not break one, if you do, your colony might sadly pass away. I made this post for beginners so they know what not to do.

1. Never feed your colony(s) wild caught insects. Wild caught insects may carry parasites, diseases or pesticides that may kill your colony. If you can't buy feeder insects to feed your colony, make sure that the insects your are feeding to your ants don't contain pesticides and it's best to check your local area if anyone sprays pesticides. To avoid parasites or diseases, make sure to boil or freeze them first before feeding them to your ants.

2. Never put your ants in an air conditioned room. Most ants (especially tropical ants) cannot tolerate low temperatures and some will die very quickly because of it. They growth rate of the brood will also slow down and it could take much longer to develop than normal which in some cases will be dangerous to your ants. However there are ants that can be placed in an air condition, most of them live in cold places such as on the mountains and some like Prenolepis imparis come out in colder months so they are ok to put them in an air conditioned room.

3. Never release invasive species into the wild. Invasive ants will destroy native ecosystems and in some cases wipe them out. They compete with native species and often raid them to get as much food as they can. This depends on where you live, in North America, the most common invasive ants are Solenopsis invicta (Red Imported Fire Ant), Linepithema humile (Argentine ant), Tapinoma melanocephalum (Ghost ant), Monomorium pharaohnis (Pharaoh ant), Nylanderia fulva (Rasberry crazy ant), Paratrechina longicornis (Black crazy ant) and more.

4.Never feed your ants live prey. Live insects can injure your ants, tire out the ants and it's also cruel. And if they go into the nest, they can ruin the nest, cause damage to the brood and queen, and cause a lot of stress to the colony. However there are some ants that need to be fed with live prey and you should only feed live prey to those ants, make sure the prey is a size they can deal with very easily.

5.Never mix your colonies. Even if it's the same species, it can lead to an ant war. This will cause one or both colonies to die and you'll be dealing with piles of dead ants. Though there are some species that can mix and create a multi-queen colony, only a very small number of ants in the world and even they will still war with other colonies of the same species.

Most beginners often break some of these rules and often have their entire colonies killed or have the native ecosystem destroyed. I hope that every antkeeper will not break any of these rules wether it's by accident or intentional (often filmed and posted on Youtube for views and likes with no regards of the ants' lives). Notes: Some of these need to be broken to give the ants their required needs or for experiments however try not to break the fourth one as breaking it will lead to the most dangerous results.

[AntsLuxembourg]

Those are some very good tips and would make a good summary of what people should avoid wherever possible.

[SYUTEO]

Those are some very good tips and would make a good summary of what people should avoid wherever possible.

Thanks.

And also, I made this post because of many reasons and you should probably already know one of them if you watch Mikey's newest video.

[AM1C39]

Some would call them the golden rules of ant keeping.

[SYUTEO]

Some would call them the golden rules of ant keeping.

I was going to call it that but then I decided to change my mind.