HighTech Ants Foundation Nest Starter Kit

This starter kit makes feeding your new queen or colony even easier and is perfect for the beginner ant keeper.

This nest in this kit is our popular Foundation Nest which comes with our Temperature and Moisture Monitor.

Our Foundation Nest is perfect for a single queen ant, or a queen ant with a few workers. This small foundation nest 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.

To make feeding your new queen or colony easier, this kit includes our 4 Way connector and an extra test tube and test tube connector for feeding. It also comes with 1 x 'Tubeless Connector', 1 x 'Tubeless Connector for use with Standoffs' and 10cm of tube if you prefer to use tube for the connection.

Simply connect the 4 Way Connector to the nest with the tubeless connector or with the tube, and then connect your colony to one of the other entrances on the 4 Way Connector. The other test tube and connector in the kit can be connected to another free entrance on the 4 Way Connector. Feeding can now happen within this test tube. When you are ready to expend, there is a free entrance on the 4 Way Connector to add an outworld.

General Information

The foundation nest 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 nest via the 4 Way Connector within the kit. 

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. We recommend using these 15w heat cables which we have tested with our nests.