HighTech Ants Foundation Nest with Monitor

Our Foundation Module is perfect for a single queen ant, or a queen ant with a few workers. This small foundation module allows your new queen ant to feel comfortable in a small space and keeps the nest nice and dark. In the wild a queen ant, after mating, will dig a small hole or chamber to start her colony, and this module replicates this. A natural looking plaster piece, to which water is added, provides the essential moisture needed within the nest, and also provides a moisture gradient for the queen and colony to raise their brood.

General Information

The foundation module is supplied with a strong 3mm clear acrylic lid for to view within the nest, but also comes with a dark red acrylic lid to keep the nest dark.

If you have purchased and queen ant, or have found one, we recommend keeping the her in a test tube setup initially. This can then be connected to this foundation module with our included test tube connector. Our test tube connector is designed to fit our plastic test tubes, so this foundation module also comes with with a plastic test tube.

A tube connector is supplied with the foundation module to connect it to an outworld or an arena. The tube connector is designed for tube which has an outer diameter of 13mm and an inner diameter of 10mm. The tube also has no writing on it for an extra clear view of the colony.

What makes this nest, and all our nests, special, is the ability to attach our temperature and moisture monitor to it. This nest comes with our temperature and moisture monitor, and simply attaches to the formicarium with the use of powerful magnets which are located in the nest's wall.

Each species of ant has its own temperature and moisture requirement within the nest. For example, Lasius Niger ants prefer a moisture level of between 10-50% and a temperature of between 20-27°C. In order for your colony to be happy and for your queen to lay eggs at an optimal rate, you should keep the nest within these moisture and temperature ranges. Our temperature and moisture monitor makes this job easy. If the nest is too dry, and a few drops of water and watch the humidity within the nest increase. Or, if the nest is too cold, use a heat cable to raise the temperature. No longer do you need to guess if your nest is at the correct temperature or humidity.

We recommend using a heat cable rather than a heat mat to heat the nest, because a heat cable can be used to heat a certain part of a nest to provide a temperature gradient for your ants. A heat cable can also be used to heat more than one nest at a time. We actually have one of our heat cables heating eight formicariums over a number of shelves.

All of our nests are supplied with  heat cable standoffs. Care must be taken when using a heat cable, and only very low wattage cables should be used.