HELP MOVING FROM A NATURALISTIC SETUP

[Ryderw]

I have a small (probably in the 50s or 60s by now) colony of trap-jaw ants in a smallish tank.I have noticed i am seeing them allot more and and i think they are starting to fill up the tank. I want to make a whole new much bigger naturalistic setup for them. My only problem is that they are in a naturalistic set up right now and I don't know how i would move them completely out of that tank to the new bigger one. Any tips would help especially from previous experience .

[antnest8]

could you possibly put the small tank in the big tank? If your set up is full of dirt you could just dry out the old setup and then water the new one while the small tank is in the larger one. If not you could do what I just did and carefully scoop the dirt out of the old set up and into the new.

[Ryderw]

I wouldn't be able to fit the smaller one in with the bigger one so i think i might to the second option. I just didn't want to injure the queen.

[Hunter36o]

Take a page out of Mikey's book dude!
Get two empty plastic bottles like a coke bottle or anything like it.
Cut about a quarter of the bottle off from the top.
Then place some tubing into the top of the bottle on both ends of the tube, make sure this tubing is long enough to go from one tank to the other. Also if necessary you can use cotton to help hold the bottle on the tube.
Then cover the inside of the bottle in baby power of what ever barrier you prefer. This will stop the ants from climbing all over the tube and getting free.
You will now have a safe tunnel from one tank to the other with to transfer the ants.

Then as said above. Dry out the current tank so the ants will actively look for a new home.

[antnest8]

the biggest problem I see is that ants seem to never move if they are in dirt.