Time Lapse – My Ant Farm Routine

Hey, what’s up guys? AntsCanada here! Welcome to the AntsCanada ant channel.

Today, I wanted to walk you through a time-lapse video of my daily routine with one of my colonies.

So first, I make sure to spot clean my Outworld. To begin, with gloves, I start to baby powder my tweezers and gloves so that the ants slip off, and it makes it easier for me to work around these ants. Before spot cleaning this Outworld, I made sure to not feed them in this Outworld for a few days so that fewer and fewer workers would forage in this Outworld, which makes cleaning it a lot easier.

Now, this Outworld here, I try to spot clean at least once a week. The last time I spot cleaned this Outworld was last week. I try my best not to get any workers, and if there are workers on the pieces, I just wait till they fall off. It is super important to spot clean your Outworlds, guys, because these ants really depend on you to remove their leftover food and midden.

In nature, the elements and other creatures help break this down naturally, but because this is an artificial Outworld and we don’t have those cleaning agents, we have to be those cleaning agents. So, it’s important to remove these decaying pieces of insects and that sort of thing. It also leaves a foul smell if you leave all that decaying matter there, and it attracts mites and maggots from gnats. You definitely don’t want the ants’ garbage to sit there and decay.

Now, the next thing I’m doing here is cleaning the bathroom area. I carefully rub that area with a wet tissue. See all those ant feces caked on there? It’s good to keep that clean. I also use a damp tissue to wipe the acrylic to remove any grime or dirt that might be on the acrylic.

I proceed to further spot clean any little pieces that I can pick up and turn up the gravel a little bit. I turn up this gravel layer just so it keeps the surface fresh because, if you can imagine, day in and day out, these ants lay pheromones on this surface. So if you keep this mixed up and nicely turned every now and then, it gives them a fresh surface.

The next thing I do is hydrate my hybrid nests. I check the hydration chamber, and I see that it’s still relatively clean. I changed the hydration medium last week. Now, the second hybrid nest I hadn’t watered for a while, so I’m going to hydrate it now.

Alright, now it’s time to change the drinking water of my ants by switching these nearly empty water tubes. Basically, what I have to do is take a fresh test tube full of water, disconnect the old tube carefully, use my thumb to plug the hole, and then dump all of those ants that were in the old test tube into the Outworld along with the cotton. I use this dental hook to pull the cotton out, and all of that will be removed on a later date.

I make sure to grab any escapees and flick them into the Outworld. Every ant matters! Now, if you look at the Outworld where Solenopsis Hill is, you’ll see the bathroom area. I’m going to clean that maybe next week.

Alright, now it’s feeding time! Here are some Dubia roaches that I’m planning on feeding them today. If you look towards the back, that roach there is a dead roach. I wanted to remind you guys that you can also feed dead feeder insects. If you have dead feeders in your tanks where you’re rearing your feeder insects, throw them into your Outworlds. Remember that ants are one of the world’s best decomposers, so they’ll even eat dead insects. You don’t want to waste; your ants will relish them.

Now that this Outworld is clean, I’m also going to feed them some new super worms. I think I’ll throw in some more here. I try to crush these super worms by the head. I do the same for the cockroaches, but they still struggle. I don’t want to crush the entire insect because I want the insides to stay soft so that the ants can suck it up easier.

Finally, at the end of all of this, I make sure to clean all of the tools that I used. So, I clean my tweezers and this dental hook. And that’s it, guys! That is my daily routine. It takes about 25 minutes in total, and this doesn’t include any maintenance for my feeder insects. If you keep your ant colony nice and clean, well-maintained, and well-fed, your ant-keeping experience will be superb!

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Okay, thanks so much, guys, for watching my daily routine for my ant colony. Be sure to subscribe to our videos! We release a new video every week. Don’t forget to check out some of our cool playlists on this channel.

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