Guys, What Species Is The Best For A First Colony?

[AntsIkhlef]

What Species is the best for a beginner like me! I am open to all sugestions!

[NegativeAnt]

You could try and catch a Black garden ant or a carpentor ant. The Black garden ants grow faster and are easy to take care of whiles the carpenter ants grow slowly and may take a while to grow into a big colony.

[Wardword]

What Species is the best for a beginner like me! I am open to all sugestions!

Tertamorium is what I am going with, I have a few Campanotus going as well, but from what I have read they don't seem to do very well often.

[TheRealAntMan]

What Species is the best for a beginner like me! I am open to all sugestions!

Tertamorium is what I am going with, I have a few Campanotus going as well, but from what I have read they don't seem to do very well often.

Camponotus is a great beginner species. People who fail with species aren’t patient enough so they do something wrong and kill their Carpenter ants. If you have patience then Camponotus is for you.

[MaxGen]

From my experience, Tetramorium immigrans is fool proof. Fast growing, tolerant of light and vibrations and will eat anything. They are also pleomatrotic, so you can put multiple queens together for the founding stage. Put 7 - 10 queens in a tube and you'll have 100+ workers by the end of the summer.

[TheRealAntMan]

But they are not polygynus so after the first workers eclose the queens will fight till one queen is left.

[idahoantgirl]

Or,more likely, all will end up dead and your colony will be doomed. Don't Mix Tetramorium queens, guys.

[AntsDakota]

What Species is the best for a beginner like me! I am open to all sugestions!

Formica fusca is a great beginner species too.

[Gradyleb]

Probably not the best idea but I like the idea of trial by fire and it's how I got started.

So I started off with Red Imported Fire Ants(RIFA), mostly because it was the most readily available species in my area(and most areas), and so many things went wrong.

1) They're readily available. I was able to collect a few dozen queens, and was able to experiment a bit with raising them. I had many failed colonies because of this but I am very glad for it, I'd rather lose 10 RIFA colonies than 10 camponotus or pogonomymex, this sounds bad but since they're so common and super invasive, to me they are expendable.

2) They escaped. Many times. RIFA are amazing escape artists, this has given me an amazing opportunity to learn better ways at containing ants. I've actually had them chew through the mesh at the bottom of the old AntsCanada Hybrid Nest over the course of a year or so. Because I experienced them escaping frequently when I started ant keeping, I haven't had any escapes from other species(nor a recent RIFA escape).
NOTE: I've never had an entire colony escape on me since their nests were usually the only habitable area nearby and I contained them again before they had time to venture out further.

3) The grow FAST. One big thing for beginner ant keepers is patience. Most species take months or sometimes over a year to get enough workers to safely move out of a test tube setup. RIFA don't. For an example, I started two queens in a test tube setup within a month of each other, one RIFA queen and one Pogonomymex queen, back in May of 2016. By the time the pogo queen had 20 workers, the Rifa had nearly 2000(this is an estimate, but it was an insane number of workers). Right now, I estimate my pogo colony has about 200-300 workers with her, over two years later. The RIFA colony has outgrown their setup several times and I've had to go in and cut back their numbers twice(through limiting space and food). I started keeping them along side other species just to keep me entertained while I wait for the other species to grow to an interesting size.

4) They eat everything. Some ants hare picky eaters(I'm looking at you Atta), but RIFA aren't. Back before I cut mine down in numbers, if I got lazy or didn't have any feeder insects on hand, I could just crack an egg inside their outworld or throw in a slice of bologna. For me, the most interesting something is as it eats(or the more convenient), the less likely I'll forget to feed it. Don't want to finish your apple? Throw it in! Finish eating some watermelon? Throw the rind in! Cat bring in a dead mouse as an offering? Throw it in! Their diversity in taste makes feeding them feel less routine and makes me want to watch them more.

5) They are AGGRESSIVE! This ties back in to the escapes and feeding. It is very entertaining to watch them eat, that's one of the main reasons I still have a colony of RIFA even though I have other colonies now. Also, on the matter of escapes, having an aggressive colony motivates me to ensure their habitat is as escape resistant and habitable as possible, this in turn has helped me with keeping other species, like Mikey said in one of his somewhat older videos, he tests his new products on his fire ants.

[AntsIkhlef]

Wait so you're saying that i should start of with fire ants, this is my first step into the ant world after 2 years of observing (literaly). i wouldn't consider myself ready for such an herculian task... thanks anyway, if i consider myself ready in some years i'll look back... you know i'm barely 13 sooo i'm kinda young for this (atleast i believe), i'm happy though coz starting so early i have more time 'til i have to start working. 8sorry for getting personal)