Luxury Ant Farm: The mANTsion

Step 10 Final Assembly

I notched out a small hole in the side of the window frame to fit my 9V battery that powered the LED light and tucked the battery away inside of it to hide it from view. There was already a channel cut into the window from where the counterweight used to sit when it was an actual window, so it didn't take too much time to use a chisel to carve out a hole big enough to fit the battery.

I then filled the ant farm with children's play sand (I specifically chose this stuff because it's washed and kiln dried so it won't hurt the ants). It took about 40 pounds of sand to fill the ant farm almost 3/4 of the way to the top. This makes the whole thing pretty heavy, but it's very stable.

The ant farm is pretty big, so if you are looking to make something a bit more portable I would recommend starting with some smaller windows.

The ants need food and water inside the ant farm since they don't have any way to forage it for themselves. I stuffed a piece of cotton inside of small glass jar filled with water and turned it upside down inside the ant farm so that the ants could have access to water. I also glued some legs made out of copper wire onto the back of the water jug to keep it inverted inside the ant farm.

The ants don't drink much, so even the small amount of water should last them a little while. I then took another glass vial and filled it with some sugar so that the ants could have a burst of energy to start their tunneling. I plan on feeding my ants a healthy diet of vegetable and fruit scraps once they get going, but I have read that sugar is a nice treat to get them going.

The last step in finishing the ant farm was to drop a few ceramic letters through the top of the ant farm and down onto to the sand to spell out my friends name. J, E, S, S spells Jess.

Oh yeah.

Comments

[Hexpigge]

very clever! But how did you made the top part? How did you make holes for air?