Feeding and Watering the Ants

Feed your ants once every 6 hours during the day. Ants need to eat regularly in order to stay healthy and to reproduce. Ants are omnivorous eaters and can be fed a variety of foods including bread or cake crumbs, bits of bread soaked in sugar water, or tiny pieces of fruit. Begin by giving the ants 1 small handful of food at every meal time. As time passes, adjust the amount of food that you give the ants after observing how much they eat.

• For example, if the ants only eat about half of the food you give them with each meal, cut back on the amount you give them. 
  
  

Give your ants soft-bodied insects with their feedings for protein. Since the natural diet of all species of ants contains large amounts of insects, purchase crickets, flies, mealworms, or wax worms from a pet store. Give the ant colony 4–6 such insects with each feeding. Make sure that the insects are dead (or wait for them to die) before you give them to the ants.

• It’s important that your pet ants receive plenty of protein or they won’t be able to produce healthy young. They may die, also.

Provide your ants with a mixture of sugar and water to drink. Ants need plenty of sweet substances. You can make your own sugar water easily. Mix 7 parts of tap water with 1 part of sugar (or, if you prefer, honey). Pour about 1 tablespoon (15 mL) in the lid of a soda bottle. Set the lid in the ant farm so that the colony can drink from it as they please.

• Keep an eye on the water in the bottle cap and replenish it as soon as it starts to get low.

Mist the inside of the farm to give the ants additional water. If you live in a warm climate, the syrupy water and sugar mixture may not be enough to keep your ants hydrated. So, fill a spray bottle with water, and lightly mist the interior walls of the ant farm or glass jar until they’re covered with water droplets.

• The droplets will work their way into the soil—or, if ants are thirsty, they can drink the droplets.
• Do not spray water directly into the sandy soil of the ant farm. You could cause the ants’ tunnels to collapse or drown the insects.

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