Test Tube Array Formicarium with Sand

One of the most common mistakes we come across is moving a colony to a formicarium (big space) too early, but it is also hard to make slow, gradual steps as it is hard to find a formicarium design or size that fits the colony needs, one solution, especially on the beginning stages (1 to 150) workers, is to slowly increase the space and with this formicarium doing so is very easy, remember ants like tight cozy spaces, and when we provide such ants tend to keep their chambers clean. When moving to a new place most ants decide so with a voting system so when we limit the options it is more likely they will move to where we want to and faster.

Each test tube has a watering hole at the back, allowing you to control the humidity levels on each tube, you can choose where to have more or less humidity as needed. We suggest always having at least one dry tube in the set-up, so your colony has a humidity gradient to choose from.

Due to the hole on the back, test tubes are not able to hold full level water capacity compared to a traditional test tube, water would flood into the insert area if filled too much, this is due to the lack of negative pressure, we recommend using crushed vermiculite or perlite to fill the water reservoir space, therefore increasing its capacity to hold more water and for longer periods of time, each tube comes already prefilled with perlite and cotton in place, photos show examples of this, when injecting water please do so slowly and carefully observing for saturation on the cotton, the goal is to add enough water but avoid flooding the insert underside. 

The test tube port is designed to have a little empty space within its connecting tunnels to avoid ants using it as a chamber, encouraging them to keep the port clean so it is only used for traffic. The port aligns perfectly to the back hole opening of our pors Glass outworlds, you can skip the hose between them by gluing it directly on the back with a tiny bit of fish tank safe silicone, this allows you to use the entire inside diameter.

Each kit comes with everything needed to get connected to an "Outworld" or any of our formicariums. You will receive; a test tube port, a piece of 5 cm vinyl tubing, 1 plug, enough silicone fittings to attach test tubes to the port, glass test tubes with a drilled hole at the back, a small bag of crushed perlite, long plastic inserts with the option of sand texture and either a red film with a one-piece ring or separate black jackets with rings or both if you choose so.