Creating The Ultimate Ecosystem Vivarium

OMG, AC Family! All your species lists! Thank you!!! Super helpful! I'm taking notes, guys. Love you and thank you. This vivarium build will be for us! Ant love forever! 💯❤️🐜 #RoadTo5M

Not fire ants, black crazy ants, marauder ants or leaf cutter ants. Any of them would destroy every other colony and half of the other creatures and/or plants.

For the water, I'd probably put a waterfall on one end, then run a very narrow, but increasingly deep 'river' along the glass edge the length of the terrarium. That would make any fish/amphibians viewable without taking up much real estate while also giving all creatures access to water without needing to invade 'enemy territory' to get to it. For the ants, I don't have preferences, but a suggestion: for species you're unsure about adding, make a few places to add 'portals' into the vivarium. Then you can move existing colonies close and run tubes to connect their existing setups to the vivarium. They can explore, perhaps colonize...but if they start either getting too invasive or they're getting killed off too quickly, the portal could be closed off again to keep both setups safe. It would also be very cool to have a whole group of 'networked' colonies, each with their own home, but still able to interact.

I used to watch this channel years ago. Just popped into my mind and to see how you grew is insane. Good to be back!

My dude, u deserve to be on animal planet or something with your own series ive learned so much from u

Regarding the dimensions, having a narrow tank would be problematic if you intend to keep predator species in there. I recommend you increase the width to 5 feet just so that the predator species can have some room to go around eachother's territory. It would also help give enough room for your waterfall. As for the camera work, you can put a cartesian machine in the top of your tank with a camera on the end. Hell I'll help you design one if needed. For making your pond there's an old landscaping trick adapted to terrariums you can use, glue a clear polycarbonate container to the bottom of the tank and build your pond inside that. The water won't be able to seep out into the nearby soils. Alternatively if you want to use natural materials you can use clay as it's much less permeable to water than soil but creatures can tunnel through clay so it's unlikely to remain watertight forever.

It would be cool to start all the ants from the same early stages to see how to evolve together…

I just recently discovered this channel, saw the "A War broke out in my rainforest vivarium" video, and it's kind of funny to me that the species he absolutely vetoed are the ones that were accidentally seeded into that vivarium.

Yes you should add the water feature‼️ 1. If it's a "tropical" biome, the tropics get more rainfall than any other area on earth. 2. The relatively small # of ants that might drown will just be part of population control! 3. A water portion will increase biodiversity more than it limits it. 4. As long as the setup A. Has proper drainage layer under the soil and B. Has the water properly isolated through use of pond liner/glass/etc. then it wont have much negative affect on the terrestrial inhabitants! In fact, it will likely be beneficial to many! 5. It's been done already so we know it works 😂 (the channel is NordicAnts I think that has done many multispecies eco-tanks 🤔)

I made a special effort and researched how the respective ants behave and came up with this list! First of all, our "The Spades" - These cute little lions fit perfectly into the setup for the floor, they don't grow extremely quickly which doesn't mean that they will conquer everything too quickly. In addition, they are not too aggressive which keeps the growth of other insects within the vivarium healthy and controlled. For the ants that live a little higher up, my first idea was to add the "Blades of Midas". However, these are already significantly too big and were immediately the top predators in the entire vivarium, even with predators against the ants. That's why I say here... The "Yellow Carpenter Ants", possibly also with the black ones... But as I found out, if there isn't enough space, they can quickly fight each other? So this would only work if you spaced them far enough apart. What happens in the future will be a surprise for all of us. It is of course possible that these coexist peacefully. Also because the sizes are currently very clear, it could really be successful. But you can take this risk. That's my opinion on everything that would fit in a vivarium of this size. :) I'm really looking forward to the adventures we'll have with the Vivarium!!

You should add a flooding system, so that there isnt always a large body of water, but water does build up in relatively large ponds that allow for a few little water critters to survive in like frogs. And also that way, the ground will be watered, and when it finally drains/evaporates, the ground creatures will break them down so the water does not dirty up.

I don’t have much of an opinion on the other ants, but personally I think that it would be best to keep the unidentified ants in their own separate terrarium. If they need to be further studied then you wouldn’t have easy access to them in such a large area and they run a risk (though it may be small) if being attacked and defeated. Though if they are successfully identified, then the choice to add them would be all yours.

I think picking the ant species that will theoretically create the least problems should be the number 1 priority. This whole concept is an amazing yet ambitious project and you don’t want to make it even more challenging on yourself.

I feel that the idea of the combo of ground dwelling species in spades and trap jaws would work well. The spades are small enough in colony size and stature that they wouldn’t compete with the trap jaws. The trap jaws also seem ‘passive’ enough that both species could work as long as they set up territory and colonies well spaced from each other. For the arboreal ants, both species of the carpenter ants (black and yellow) could work as well. It would be interesting to see how they would interact and where they would choose to build nests considering they are of the same genus. The Cromatogaster (probably didn’t spell that right) species wouldn’t be a good idea in case you are interested in seeing how they act if they are indeed a new species. Such a big tank would make research difficult. Unless that research was how they interact with other ant species and predators. In the case of the weaver ants I feel that it would be a bad idea in case they are completely dominant. However you could add them in a little after the start of the tank so the other species could become acquainted with the environment so they could have a chance with the weavers. The carnivorous plants would also be an interesting idea for a population control and also to see how the ants interact with them. Like whether they learn to avoid the plants. Overall this whole project sounds very interesting! Keep up the good work!

If you want something big but still visible, you could do a very big square with nothing at the center. So each side have an outside and inside wall. Then you could use one side as mountains and cut the lower part so you could go "inside" the square (between the inside walls) and have a 360° view

Dude you can open an ant museum!!!🤯 every breed of ant can have a giant vivarium suited for their specific needs. That would be dope. I’d go to that museum for sure🫶🏼🤘🏽

i love that the more things you make, the more beautiful and greater they become. I'm incredibly proud you're brilliant at what you do!

I feel that the carpenter ants and trap jaws would be the safest bet as neither of them would over hunt. As cool as weaver ants would be I think they'd get too big eventually, regardless of their starting size, and overeat thus killing the balance.

If you are adding weaver ants make sure to include Myrmarachne plataleoides (spider that mimics weaver ants). In wild the are fun to watch..they try to hang around weaver ant colonies to avoid predation, but they don't get too close. Same with some stilt legged flies

It’s crazy coming back to this after finding out that all the straight up no species ended up sliding their way into the ecosystem 😂