Formicarium suggestions for tiny species?

[kykel09]

Hey AC family.

I love tiny species. Well, really, just unique and difficult species but that's another post. Anyway, I currently have a 3 queen Phiedole Bicarinata colony in founding stage and a 7+ queen Solenopsis molesta colony with possibly hundreds of workers I caught from a dead tree. Aside from this I have dual queen test tubes of both Tapinoma sessile and Forelius pruinosis.

However, anyone who's ever had tiny species knows, they are escape artists. They're nice species to have as they are small and don't take up much space but keeping them properly contained presents a challenge.

I recently 3D printed a small white modular nest for my Solenopsis molesta species to replace my current tubes and tubs setup for them. See link:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1675262
I loved this idea because it's small initially but expandable and thought the white background contrasted my tiny orange ants very well. Obvious problem, where the chambers connect together there are tiny cracks as a result of the curved walls around the port holes. This allows my ants to simply crawl out.
To fix the issue I took the entire nest apart and put a thick layer of elmers glue around all the port holes before reconnecting them, in the hopes that this will seal these gaps. I'm hoping this will fix my issue. I will know once I attempt to add them again.

However, my phiedole workers are even smaller and I'm not the biggest fan of glueing and hoping for the best. Too many windows of potential failure when you're connecting lots of small pieces like this together.

So my question: does anyone have any suggestions for making good maintainable formicariums for tiny ant species such as these?

By maintainable I mean that there is a logical and secure way to attach an outworld and the nest has a hydration system that will last a day or more. This nest was ideal because you can hook up a test tube (I had to modify it because my printer could not print the micro-pores).

I was contemplating creating my own tiny grout nests for tiny species like tarheel ants does or potentially just modeling a new nest for tiny species all together and posting it to thingyverse but wanted to see some methods others have used first.

[betterForm]

...
So my question: does anyone have any suggestions for making good maintainable formicariums for tiny ant species such as these?
...

How about this?
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2933397

[kykel09]

Update:

So, I ultimately decided on a tarheel ants and Ants Australia acrylic nest for my Pheidole and this has worked nicely. However, the acrylic AA nest was initially intended for my solenopsis. No luck there. They simply escaped through the air holes. One particular difficulty for this species is size. With Pheidole they have a wider head than their bodies and this limits to some extent the spaces they can fit through but Solenopsis Molesta have extremely thin workers enabling them to fit through cracks and holes that otherwise seem safe.

So Pheidole handled, back to the drawing board for Solenopsis. So far, the only method I've found for keeping these ants is a single contained all in one nest and outworld. I will update in the future.

[kykel09]

How about this?
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2933397

@Betterform

So I actually found your designs on thingiverse a while back and am a huge fan of your modular and expandable design. I'm actually planning on using the modular model for my Lasius Neoniger soon as they are again outgrowing their current nest.

I will try this nest next but I find, when it comes to 3D printing, the Solenopsis Molesta can often squeeze through tiny creases between print layers, especially at connecting ports. I will try this and we shall see what happens. I'll update when I've tested it.

[kykel09]

...
So my question: does anyone have any suggestions for making good maintainable formicariums for tiny ant species such as these?
...

How about this?
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2933397

Question, where do you get your acrylic cover?

[LasiusSapien]

Update:

So, I ultimately decided on a tarheel ants and Ants Australia acrylic nest for my Pheidole and this has worked nicely. However, the acrylic AA nest was initially intended for my solenopsis. No luck there. They simply escaped through the air holes. One particular difficulty for this species is size. With Pheidole they have a wider head than their bodies and this limits to some extent the spaces they can fit through but Solenopsis Molesta have extremely thin workers enabling them to fit through cracks and holes that otherwise seem safe.

So Pheidole handled, back to the drawing board for Solenopsis. So far, the only method I've found for keeping these ants is a single contained all in one nest and outworld. I will update in the future.

hi kykel09 this company clams their acrylic nest are solenopsis proof might be worth a look

https://www.lcants.uk/product-category/formicaria/acrylic-sp-nests/

[kykel09]

Update:

So, I ultimately decided on a tarheel ants and Ants Australia acrylic nest for my Pheidole and this has worked nicely. However, the acrylic AA nest was initially intended for my solenopsis. No luck there. They simply escaped through the air holes. One particular difficulty for this species is size. With Pheidole they have a wider head than their bodies and this limits to some extent the spaces they can fit through but Solenopsis Molesta have extremely thin workers enabling them to fit through cracks and holes that otherwise seem safe.

So Pheidole handled, back to the drawing board for Solenopsis. So far, the only method I've found for keeping these ants is a single contained all in one nest and outworld. I will update in the future.

hi kykel09 this company clams their acrylic nest are solenopsis proof might be worth a look

https://www.lcants.uk/product-category/formicaria/acrylic-sp-nests/

Thank you very much for pointing these guys out! I'll definitely try them out. I hadn't come across them before.

[LasiusSapien]

np I've got a solenopsis fugax queen who should have her first set of workers soon so been looking at ton's of nest's ive got a 3d printed nest from wakooshi which appears like it could work too i've got a small colony of lasius niger in it but there not exactly tiny ants just small