Ha! If only there were actually a field or business in formicarium (artificial ant nest) design. Never the less, over the years, I’ve seen people try a lot of different things; plaster with glass coverings, acrylic boxes and most recently someone combined two ideas using plaster inside an acrylic box. (http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/885)
My problem with plaster nests is that it always seems like you have to manually water them using a spray bottle or drip, whatever. Coinciding with the recent acrylic/plaster combinations I came across an article on the naturalistic display of the M. Mendax colony at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden insectarium (http://www.sasionline.org/antsfiles/pages/mendax/mendax.html). It is an incredible display and very ambitious. The director informed me that it took over 100 hours to build. Anyway, within the article it mentions the idea of moisture being at the bottom of the case and being allowed to flow up naturally during evaporation. This is much like the real conditions in the earth’s soil where so many ant species thrive.
So I put all this together and came up with this design. As you can see it has a plaster interior with chambers molded from clay during the casting process and resides in a plastic/acrylic box. No innovation there really. However, what I have added is the gravel/moisture basin and externally controlled water supply.
The plaster block actually sits on top of a cut piece of acrylic about 1mm thick with multiple holes drilled into it to allow moisture to pass directly into the plaster. I call this the saturation plate because its there to prevent the plaster from becoming over saturated with water if it were to sit directly on the gravel below. Beneath the plate is a gravel layer which is used to prevent drowning but allow the ants access to the water for drinking, etc. The jar to the left has a 1/4″ outside diameter tube running from it to the case into the gravel layer and below the saturation plate. When I need to add water, I just pop the top and pour. My hope is that I will not have to do this regularly, perhaps a few times per month.
The top of the case is removable which allows easy feeding and cleaning. Ideally there would be more space between the top of the plaster block and the lid, but hey this is the first one I’ve done.
I hope to have a small colony in there shortly. I plan to test with the overabundant and invasive argentine ant by transplanting a queen, her brood and several workers in here within the next week.
Close up of tubing, gravel and saturation plate:
