The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

I just looked at my ants after 2 weeks and in a test tube I saw baby ants!! They are RIFA, about 5 small baby ants and still a decent pile of brood. The cotton in the test tube was looking a little gross so I put together a new test tube and attached it to the original test tube with tape. I also put a drop of honey water mixture in the new test tube.

My main question is about food. Do I need to start supplying my ants sugars and proteins? I was going to try fish flood for protein and honey water for sugar but am unsure if it is too early or if I need to start moving them to a bigger set up.

If I'm doing anything wrong please let me know and thank you for your time!

Make sure to have a little gap for air to move in when taping together tubes, also solid protein food is only eatable by the brood of the ants so if you either low on brood or you want the workers/queen to get protein asap use feeder insects instead of fish food. Sugary/honey water works. You can start feeding them but for up to a week or so they will be fine without food probably. Bear in mind that food will greatly increase mold growth

Ok, i punched holes in the tape for air. What kind of a set up should I move them into next and when?

VaderOG wrote: ↑

Mon May 01, 2017 11:07 pm

Ok, i punched holes in the tape for air. What kind of a set up should I move them into next and when?

Well you should wait till you quite a bit of workers. Like atleast 10 or 15 but 20 is optimal. I waited until mine had like 300. Currently my RIFA colony is living in three test tubes connected by small tubing with a 3 way connector and one of the test tubes being the outworld. This is not the setup you want, as I am waiting for my hybrid nest to arrive. Anyways, hybrid nests are good or the Omni nest on AntsCanada. You could always make your own, but this is can be quite difficult as you have to be crafty and knowing our RIFA ants, it has to be super escape proof. I would say get something from AntsCanada for solenopsis or get something from tar heel ants if it is within your budget. If not there are plenty of videos and forum posts on how to make your own formicarium and outworld.

Thanks! I ordered a nest from AntsCanada and im going to make my own outworld, or at least try. What do your RIFA like for proteins and sugars?

Nanitics/small workers are not baby ants. Actual baby ants are young larvae.

They will now need access to a foraging arena/outworld lined with talcum/rubbing alcohol mixture, where you can offer them their food. This will also simplify their access to a fresh test tube, because they can move in whenever they want.

VaderOG wrote: ↑

Tue May 02, 2017 2:06 am

Thanks! I ordered a nest from AntsCanada and im going to make my own outworld, or at least try. What do your RIFA like for proteins and sugars?

I usually give mine honey ( but very careful because they can get stuck inside of it!) for sugar and I mix it up sometimes and give them an orange. Once I get them setup where I can do more with the outworld, I'm going to feed them a larger variety. For protein I give them meal worms, wax worms, and crickets. I've noticed that my fire ants are not that picky and I have noticed that in the wild as well... you just have to see what exactly they like. Like for instance I noticed my ants love honey over oranges, and that they love meal worms over wax worms and even crickets.

And like BatSpiderFish said, they will need a foraging area. Now I would just like to say that with fire ants, they are escape artists, so I just always make them enclosed in area but you can use the baby powder and alcohol mixture like he said or something else, but try and see what your ants can and cannot escape from. My RIFA colony literally escapes from almost anything (I haven't tried fluon yet though).

For a foraging area what I did was get a sealed container and drilled a hole on top and put cotton for air and just open it and close it when I needed to feed them. This was when I was trying to sign up for the GAN project and had like 30 or 40 active colonies and had a low budget. Just look online and around forums and you will find much stuff. AntsCanada has some amazing tutorials and helpful videos. AntsCanada is how first learned to take care of ants and even that there was a hobby about keeping ants and I loved it because I have always loved ants. So hope all goes well!