#Ant food.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

dense flint
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Hello. I'm looking for a food that has all the necessary proteins, vitamins, etc for ants to develop healthily and at comparable speeds to natural alternatives. Ideally, this food should be liquid/gel and be able to be used in a syringe. Additionally, it must have safe preservatives to ensure it doesn't mould or rot within a reasonable period of time. I intend to use it in an automated feeding system. Please let me know if anyone knows something of this nature that exists already. If not, I'm happy to contract someone with sufficient credentials to develop it for me.

candid wing
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Just keep ants that eat simple food

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Like seed harvesters

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Or things like Tetramorium immigrans that will eat just about anything and do fine on it

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Automated feeding isn't a great idea because ants don't always eat at constant rates

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Also, most ant species need proteins and carbohydrates, but offering both together in a single food source isn't ideal

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It's much more practical to manually feed two separate types of food

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@dense flint

dense flint
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I need to feed 100s of colonies of all different species, I'm working with a friend on a project of his

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Thats why I'm trying to automate it all

candid wing
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It's also not practical to make a single diet for all of them

candid wing
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And even with preservatives, food does spoil if left uneaten

dense flint
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Of course, it's about delaying it

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Ideally I want a cycle of food being placed, left for 12 hours or so, removed

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Ants can eat or not eat what they want

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Generally the majority of ants will have similar enough diets to work with this system, I'm aware there are some more complicated exceptions though

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These are also for colonies of up to a maximum of 100w

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Not huge colonies

candid wing
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Sp?

dense flint
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Many, but primarily an array of camponotus

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not limited to long-term

candid wing
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Hmm

dense flint
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https://byformica.com/pages/byformica-blue-faq

byFormica Ant Products
byFormica Blue Pre-Release FAQ
  1. When will the product be available? - After nearly a decade of development, we are now working to validate our manufacturing processes and packaging and hope to make byFormica Blue available through byFormica dealers worldwide in the coming months (2023). 1. What exactly is byFormica Blue? - byFormica Blue cubes s
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byformica has something "similar" in development

candid wing
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That one ended up not working

dense flint
candid wing
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The original formula tried to combine protein and carbohydrates

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It seems like the new one is protein-only, though

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It should work

dense flint
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Yeah, so I'm looking for something similar

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but something I can make in house so a recipe

candid wing
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The Byformica stuff needs quite a bit of processing to work

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You'd have to use live fresh insects to make it anyways

dense flint
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That's fine

candid wing
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So you might as well just feed those to the ants

dense flint
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It's impractical and messy to serve and remove insects to 100s of tubes

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A liquid is easier and I can automate that

candid wing
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It's also impractical and messy to use liquids

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And very hard to automate

dense flint
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Not really, it can be automated.

candid wing
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Not really

dense flint
candid wing
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Proof?

dense flint
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I'll ask my friend for screenshots I dont have it saved

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Besides I dont need anyones help with the system, he's engineering it, I just need a recipe for reliable liquid food

candid wing
tulip ridge
candid wing
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As well as preventing escapes