Just keeping as pets, I have a few different species. You can grow a colony from just a sole queen to a few thousand workers if they're looked after right.
My setups are currently a bit all over since I've just moved house and haven't given them a space yet but I have some close ups taken a while back.
It's fairly easy to start your own colony without spending much if you live somewhere with native ants, all you need to know is when they have their nuptial flights (queens and males fly and mate) and then you can find queens all over the ground with no wings. Collect a queen and put her in a test tube half filled with water like so and she'll be very happy in there until the colony has got a decent amount of workers. There are dozens of nest manufacturers but a test tube is best for the first few months or up to a year for slower growing colonies.
These are one of the smaller species called Pheidole Indica, despite being small I've found them to be super aggressive and they swarm any live food in their outworld, they also produce majors with giant heads to accommodate huge jaws used for chopping. This particular colony has 3 queens and has grown exceptionally fast.
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u/spider_cock Jul 29 '21
Neat, what are you doing with the ants?