Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

God I hope I don't say anything wrong, but here we go.That designs amazing in how it can be used to kick start a colony and then provide for it once it's grown, but when you move to the stage of filling it in, does that not remove the option to view the fungus as dont they burrow into it and make a space to create the fungus inside, where you can't see it? My thought was that if you were buying it wouldn't you want to be able to see the whole infrastructure of the colony, including the fungus?

Hope this made sense D:

That makes perfect sense to me... seeing the fungus itself and moreover seeing it grow is a large part of the experience.

How could the design be tweaked to ensure that the fungus was always visible even when it was expanded?

You could place a smaller tank inside so there was effectively a square donut around the outside which could be filled with soil. The fungus, no matter where it was built, would always be against the glass. And the central tank could be filled with water and heated.

what about something like this?

https://gyazo.com/e69ae046c1d55fd2083b9117fae7fc57

sorry its a link :S

Dont judge my drawing, I promis I can do better, this was a quick sketch as you can see xD

Love it... I particularly like the pipe to the outside. I'd been thinking about that myself as it goes.

If you have a pipe out you can then:

a) Allow the customer to create "walkways", through rooms etc.
b) Make the unit modular
c) Have a feeding station and waste chamber exterior to the climate controlled nest area.

Nice one...

I also thought, dont ants need a "dump" chamber bellow all the other chambers?

Good point. And does the dump chamber need to be emptied?

Thinking about it, the ants will probably dump in the moat so how would the moat be "changed"/cleaned?

I have no idea but I presume so, maybe a design could be made for an easy clean dump chamber could be made too? a removable bottom maybe, to save having to take the whole cube out?

Glass is a lot cheaper and I've approached small and large manufacturers with designs with no luck! the greatest worry is that it needs to meet a price point and be able to survive our dodgy postal service! If one in three gets damaged the next two sales are at a loss! no (small) business could afford that risk. Packaging on such items could amount to a third of the price not to mention the weight costs! Antstore make more profit because they construct them, removing the middle man as it where. It's something I'm still interested in tho!

What about going down the route of reinforcing the designs with plastic rims? Also, someone mentioned somewhere that ants may eat away the silicone if they find a weak spot, well what If fibreglass or is it epoxy? was used to seal internal joints? Also what's your average price to set up an ant colony?