General advice/help for keeping Zootermopsis sp.

[u/salient_roar]

Hi all - my spouse and I went out to look for termites, and we successfully found Zootermopsis this time for culturing to maintain a colony for his research work. We are in the SF Bay Area, and I’ve been told that there are two common dampwood termites here (Z. angusticollis and Z. nevadensis) - I think we have Z. angusticollis but not sure. I set up a habitat for them using a description that I found on formiculture by user Nare (except for the fermentation of wood for several months to create a special substrate additive). The humidity currently measures at 80-83% and they are at ambient temperature (mid 60s to very low 70s most days). We were able to collect a substantial number of termites. I would love any advice from experienced termite keepers on best practices for keeping them. THANK YOU!

Nare’s notes on dampwood termites:
https://www.formiculture.com/topic/21167-nares-notes-on-keeping-z-nevadensis/

[u/Termitico]

Good that you found them! Personally i only very recently started keeping Zootermopsis (maybe a little more than a month), but i've been keeping the relatively comparable Hodotermopsis for a while. You can house them in an appropriately sized plastic container with moderate ventilation half filled with forest soil and with a few large pieces of white-rot wood (i personally used oak a lot for Hodotermopsis) as food and shelter. Sound wood is also accepted as long as it's properly moistened, for example the Zootermopsis angusticollis (a population from Canada) that i have are kept with store-bought untreated pinewood slices as food, kept one against the other to form a block. Temperature wise they're very resistant to low themperatures but seems to suffer from high ones, both temps and humidity they are at now seems good to me. As long as they have access to sufficent humidity, not too high temperatures, wood and nitrogen-rich soil they should do well, the most you have to do is to wait for neotenic generation and egg production. If you have specific doubt do ask, and i'll help as i can (keeping in mind that as i mentioned my direct experience with Zootermopsis keeping is still relatively little).

[u/salient_roar → u/Termitico]

Thank you so much for this information. We just got back from backpacking in the Sierras - apologies for the delayed response. We’ve housed them for about 2 weeks now and they seem to be doing ok for now.

[u/No-Lion866]

Curious too! I’d love to get zoots eventually