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hey what's up guys welcome to the ants
Canada ant Channel where we talk about
ants as some of you might already know
or maybe you will soon find out one of
the most fun things about keeping an ant
colony is designing their living space a
captive an Colony needs two sections to
their living space they need a nest
section and they need an outworld
section also known as a basin where your
ants will be able to forage as establish
garbage sites and burial grounds in fact
as a rule the larger the outworld or the
more outworlds you have the better
especially for large colonies and so
this tutorial explores how to make your
own simple outworld all right guys and
so now I'm going to show you how to do a
simple outworld first what you need is
um you need a critter crawler this one's
made of acrylic most are um and I like
using Critter crawlers because the edges
here are rounded and I find some of the
harder to contain species uh find it
harder to escape um Aquaria that have
rounded edges as opposed to complete
straight you know squared
edges um so yeah I find them very
effective if you can find an aquarium a
larger than this that's circular or and
doesn't have edges even better um and in
that case you'll have to find a drill
bit that can drill glass but in my case
you can use um drill bits that are
specifically used for plastic they are
either cone-shaped or ball-shaped um or
you can do it just kind of ghetto home
Styles like you just heat up a knife a
sharp knife and then you bore a hole you
could do that
too um but yeah so that's what I've done
and I've reinforced the hole with some
silicone cocking
just so no ant Escape um and as you can
see here I have my barrier already there
ready to go of insecta slip right okay
so things you'll need is you'll need
some
books um you'll need some grout tying
grout um they sell tiling grout in um
well your local hardware store it's used
to secure tiles to the ground and join
them you'll of course need some some
fake plants which you can purchase um
pretty much anywhere but I find if
you're in North America Dollarama has
some great fake plants to choose from um
and I'll show you how you can arrange
those um some Twigs like this twig here
you don't want to get too complicated
and I'll explain why
later um you'll need a some sort of tub
um and stirring tool to mix the grout
you'll also need some stones I've got a
few gravel like pebbles here um I like
to use a little bit of spum
moss and you'll need some sand so you
can see here I've got like a really nice
grally
sand
um that you can use children's play sand
is fine all of those okay so to start
you're going to want to
tilt your outworld upwards um and so
you'll put books at the bottom just so
it tilts kind of upwards you see that
and what that does is when your grout
hardens you can have it slanted and what
the slant does is it increases your
surface area in your Out
World so more surface for your ants to
wander the better it's great um and I
think it just the display is better when
the the Earth is kind of slanted upwards
you can see more of the
outworld all right so the first step is
we need to mix some
grout my favorite all right um You can
also use cement if you don't have access
to grout um and the reason why you want
to use grout instead of just direct soil
assuming you're not going for a natural
Nest is because the ants won't be able
to dig into the Earth portion which is a
good thing because you want them to stay
in your formicarium and not nest in your
oakor right so I'm just going to pour
some gr
there all right I'm not sure if I'm
going to use the whole
bag the grout also comes in different
colors now I find it helps to wear a
mask when you're doing this because the
the dust gets really oo kind of gets
everywhere and it gets messy and it gets
in the air and sometimes it causes
people to cough or have allergic
reactions so if you could do this with a
mask or do it somewhere
where it's nicely ventilated like a
garage or outside that would be great
all right so now that we have our grout
in there now we just have to add water
Now you kind of have to make sure you
don't add too much water um the
consistency should be as thick as
toothpaste um and I think I've added
enough let's
see mix that you see how that powder
just Rises into the air sometimes that
inhaling that is not so good the
advantage of not using the whole bag is
if you've added too much water you can
just simply add more grow okay so
basically the consistency should look
like this you see kind of like loose
peanut butter slash melting ice cream
kind of consistency so that's
essentially what we
want you don't want it to have bubbles
of unmixed Gro so you're going to mix
that really well all right so from here
I'm going to add it to the outworld try
your best not to get it on the
sides
because if you do you're going to have
to work extra hard to wipe that
off if you do get some on thec you just
take a clock and wi it off you are the
creator of the outworld you are the
landscaper you get to
decide how you want this outworld to
look now I recommend boring the holes
first
because it's just easier that
way before doing this part um if you
have really small
ends you may have problems in
future with the ants being able to fit
between the acrylic and this grout
section so what I would recommend is if
you're keeping small
ends add some sort of screw at the
bottom just so the plate doesn't
separate look something like that I'm
happy with
that nice
sloping now you can use use this time to
shape um pools or you know little nooks
and crannies that you
want in your Out World um and I've got
some of the grout onto the acrylic so
for that I'm going to need to wipe
it okay so the next step is to add the
decorations so um if you want you can
actually
set in a test tube so that there can be
an official area where you put the test
tubes full of water for your ants
completely up to you I don't I just I
like my
elbows just kind of rugged natural
looking um so I like to use uh fake
plants again the problem with using real
plants is they need soil and of course
plants need water and when there's water
and soil together you have ants creating
nests
and you don't want the ants moving into
your outworld right another thing to
keep in mind with that in mind is that
you don't want to decorate it too
intricate
because the ants will be able to hide if
it's too intricate and they're too many
hiding places the ants will move in
there so you want to keep it just simple
not too not too complicated me my
favorite are grasses so I like to also
use plants with flowers
but kind of limited on supplies here you
can use whatever you like you are the
designer of your
ants space I like to vary The Greenery a
little bit I
use maybe this
here now I like to keep tallest plants
at the back and shorter plants towards
the front it's just for me it's visually
appealing that way call me a fan of funu
all right um now I'm going to try using
some of this here got some cool PLS that
stick these near the
back you see I'm not using the whole
plant just little sections because I'm
just trying to imagine the space here
I'm not going to want to use too much
plant life all right so something like
that is totally okay um we've got some
open area for the ants to forage in um
it any area in the outworld is pretty
accessible to my hand or whatever I'm
using to clean up you got to keep in
mind too that the ants will be choosing
a site for their garbage and you want
that area to be easy to get to which is
why you don't want to get too intricate
with things um by adding too many plants
Etc so I'm just going to keep things
nice and simple like so all right so
from here the next step is to add your
rocks add some rocks they make a big
difference
just add few rocks there I like to add
Rocky out
props looks really nice um another thing
that looks nice is when you create kind
of like rock
paths kind of looks
neat you can also use different sizes of
rocks if you like but just remember the
more rocks you use the heavier the out
world
is all right there we go
um next I'm going to add my sticks my
Twigs um I just have this small twig
here just to give it a little bit of
woodiness to give it that sort of Woody
feel of course with taking decorations
from the wild you want to make sure you
wash it well yada yada y of
course um okay so it's looks like it's
starting to come together now I'm going
to get my sand and with my hand I'm just
going to sprinkle all exposed areas of
grow so something like that just kind of
like
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busted this is kind of like the final
covering of all of the
outworld just to give it that more
naturalistic finish now you can also use
different grains of sand like if you
want one area to be of a thick thicker
sand and another area to be of a thinner
sand you could totally do that one of
the things I like to add if my Ants um
aren't really opportunistic in nesting
habits like I find if I use spum Moss it
works except again if your ants are more
opportunistic in nesting habits like my
find if I use this for Mera rubra
they'll nest in there um but if your
ants really like your formicarium I
totally recommend using just pieces of
spagna it gives it a nice sort of
natural finish and you can actually
moisten this bagum Moss by spraying it
give the ants some moisture there we
have it so what you do is you let this
dry overnight and then the next day you
will have a beautiful and simply made
outworld see
that not too shabby right um you also
want to make sure some of the
decorations don't go past the
barrier yeah like this I would either F
make sure that stays folded or I would
cut that
leaf all right guys thanks for watching
hope you enjoyed the video bye
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[Music]
[Music]
what's up guys thank you so much for
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ant love
forever like my aunt's Canada
mug all
right oops there was a
hole oh no oh no all right well that was
an epic fa