New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post your builds, private or commercial set ups. This is where we will document the creation of housing or the planning and construction of projects from scratch. This differs from the Journal Section because this section does not concentrate on the Ants or the other animals that are being kept, this section focuses on the progress of the build.
Colin Morton
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New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Colin Morton » Wed Apr 13, 2016 12:16 pm

Hi Everyone,

I'm planning to build a Laboratory style setup in my home with as much visibility to the ants as possible without disturbing them. I'd like to house the colony in a bookcase with doors that will keep them in darkness most of the time, with a feeding area on the top of the bookcase for viewing. I've come up with a basic plan and I'd really appreciate any advice or ideas.

The book case will be: H106cm, W80cm, D28cm, giving enough space for 3 shelves each around 80 wide and around 30cm deep for the nest area.

I've included a diagram in this post. at the top right is a scale diagram showing the view looking down on a shelf and how much space is available. I'd like to have as much space as possible dedicated to the nest boxes, so I'm imagining 2 nest boxes on each shelf that will be 30x20x20cm in size with tubing in between to join them.

I'm having trouble getting the scan of my drawing down to under 280k, so here is a link to my dropbox folder and you can view the drawing there:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zsr8kf2htmri ... 8qPQa?dl=0

At the bottom left of the diagram is the acrylic tubing junction between the nest boxes. The tubing will be made of 35mm outer diameter acrylic tubing with a 3mm thickness, giving 29mm inner diameter. Inside this will go a 28mm OD, 24mm ID acrylic tube with two holes cut into it that match up with the outer tubing. If I need access or need to remove one of the nest boxes I can turn the inner tubing to stop the holes matching up and it will block off the passageway. Each end of the tubing will have a gland that joins the tubing to the nest boxes.

I plan to have similar tubing that runs up to the feeding platform on the top of the bookcase.

I'd like to have a shot at building the nest boxes myself. I'd like to use clear acrylic and have hinges on the top to allow access.

Does anyone have any experience with leaf cutter ants escaping from their setups? Would they be able to chew through acrylic - and what is the minimum thickness you would recommend for the acrylic tubing?

Regards,

Colin

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Acromyrmexbob
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Acromyrmexbob » Wed Apr 13, 2016 11:40 pm

Colin, nice start to your build thread.
Your plan looks good.
How do you propose to run the tube up into the feeding tank. Do you have an escape method in mind where the pipe enters the feeding tank or are you planning for this to be a closed tank. If so opening this to feed the ants when they are large in numbers will be a nightmare. Just ask Leafcutter.
Ants certainly cannot cut through any thickness of acryllic so no worries about minimum thickness. Wouldnt use silicone anywhere of you can avoid it, ants can cut through that! Pipe, 35mm with 3mm walls is great, plenty space, but thinner walls are cheaper and just as effective. I always try to keep walls as thin as poss.
Assuming this is an Atta setup. Ultimately you will run out of space with this setup. They will fill all of your nest tanks in around 30 months. Growth is exponential so it goes slow for a year and then..... brace yourself! A mature queen can lay 25000 eggs per day! I would worry slightly about overpopulation some way down the line unless you are planning on Acromyrmex which will live in this setup indefinitely.
Look forward to next posts.

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Andyj
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Andyj » Thu Apr 14, 2016 7:20 am

Here's a good free program that will resize your pics. It's the bottom one FastStone Photo Resizer 3.5 http://www.faststone.org/download.htm
colins.jpg
How do you plan on heating Colin ?
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Deansie26
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Deansie26 » Thu Apr 14, 2016 8:11 am

Hi, are you going to have doors?
I don't think the hassle warrants the effort in producing your own acrylic boxes. Be different if they where bespoke unusual in design but you could buy what you want to use pretty easy I'd imagine and cheaper.

Colin Morton
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Colin Morton » Fri Apr 15, 2016 9:15 am

Hi there,

Thanks very much for the replies,

Hi Andy, I was thinking about having some heat mats, but attaching them to the tops of the shelves, and having small computer fans that circulated the heat within the bookcase. But that was really just in the hope that I could maintain a constant temperature on each shelf. If anyone has a better idea I would be happy to change.

Hi Deansie26, yes I was planning to have doors on the bookcase. With regards to the acrylic boxes, I had been a little frustrated finding exactly the sizes that I had in mind that came in at an affordable price, but recently found an acrylic supplier that would make the correct size sheets for £1 each, so I'm hoping to make each nest box for under £10.

Hi Andrew, I'm not sure about the tube running up to the feeding tank - I think space will end up dictating whether its enclosed, or whether it runs on the outside of the bookcase, but I had hoped that the whole structure would be sturdy enough to be moved around by one person.

Good question about the opening of the tank. I'd like to have a feeding tank that has a hinged lid that will allow me to add and take out food when I need to, but I wonder if I could line the top inside of the arena with a moat to stop ants getting as far as the lid.

I would ideally like to have the most interesting species, and I had hoped to keep that a species with as many different castes as possible, but really the welfare of the ants is most important. I think Acromyrmex sounds like the better choice, and if I find them ok to keep I'll see if I can get some more space in the future.

Just out of interest, can you recommend a minimum space needed to keep Atta? In terms of the setup described, how many more times that would you need? I've heard an adult nest in the wild can eat as much vegetation a day as a cow. I don't think I have a garden big enough to provide the food.....

Regards,

Colin

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Deansie26
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Deansie26 » Fri Apr 15, 2016 11:13 am

I'd question the quality of the material at that price Colin, its usually fairly expensive. Can you share the sourse? Hope its good as would get some myself lol.

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Andyj
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Andyj » Fri Apr 15, 2016 11:44 am

Hi Colin, sounds pretty much what i have done with my set up. I Incorporated a fan to distribute the heat but strangely i found that the humidity dropped very quickly, ie in less than 2 minutes it had gone from 99% to 92% and would have gone lower. I can only think that there was a gap somewhere, perhaps an unattached pipe that was ventilating the fungus pod, in fact that probably what it was and the fan was blowing air through it. Rather than experiment i decided not use the fan because it was something else that may stop working. If the fan stopped, the soil could boil. My fungus is about 6 inches higher than the heat mat so its mainly the small amount of water and damp clay balls that are heating the pod and keeping it really stable. Stable isn't that for a horse :? rather than the heat generated directly from the heat mat.

If you make your boxes yourself imagine what could happen if the joints came apart. I would go with a sealed unit if using acrylic....Look at Seans pods :)

Colin Morton
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Colin Morton » Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:04 pm

Sure thing, here is the link for what I had in mind - https://www.sheetplastics.co.uk/bespoke-design
You can order specific sizes down to the millimeter as far as I can see.

I had planned to make the acrylic nest boxes 3mm thick and 30cmx20cmx20cm. So I had thought about ordering 2x300x200mm sheets for the top and base, then 2x194x194mm for the small sides, and 2x 300x194mm for the front and backs.

I thought that the boxes might be quite fragile, so I thought about adding 3mm right angled triangular rods on the inside for the joins to add extra strength: http://www.clearplasticsupplies.co.uk/a ... iangle.htm

If this looked ok then I was going to go bigger for the arena anything up to 750lx250wx400h

What do you think?

Colin

Colin Morton
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by Colin Morton » Fri May 06, 2016 6:54 pm

Hi There,

Here is a quick update: I spent a few hours today starting to put things together. It's my first time working with acrylic so I've been trying my best not to make any silly mistakes! Here is what the first nest box of 6 looks like:
20160506_180228.jpg
I've decided to put the connections to the feeding area inside the cupboard to make the setup look neater:
20160506_180708.jpg
The feeding area has only been partly built - I need to add a moat to the inside of the top of the tank, and the protective covers are still on but I added it to show the approximate size of the tank:
20160506_180804.jpg
Colin
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RichardP
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Re: New Member Build Project - any help and advice welcome

Post by RichardP » Fri May 06, 2016 8:45 pm

That looks great... I love the clean crisp look. The integrated piping is a great touch.

I assume the box on the top is the feeding station? How will you restrict the ants to the box?

It will be interesting to see how the project develops.

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