What should I feed the ants in my kid's ant farm?
My bug-loving preschooler has an ant farm and realized I'll have to feed and water them (I assumed the substrate they tunnel through was ant food, but no). What crumbs should I toss in there? I don't want to buy special ant food nor do I want to clean up rotted lettuce leaves every few days.
Answers ( 1 )
Ants will eat pretty much anything. For preference, they like sweet things, but, truly, they will eat bits of leaves, drag off a dead fly, forage fallen fruits, even dumpster dive for days old detritus. They aren't a picky insect.
I remember the ant farms my Mother let we kids have** and dropping in bread and cracker crumbs, bits of cereal, even teensy-small pieces of fruit or vegetable peelings. Once I was given a teeny-tiny bit of raw hamburger- but only the once.
I think you'll not have much clean up to do if you realize that, while ants are the strongest creatures for their size on the planet, anything bigger than a baby's fingernail paring is overkill. A couple crumbs, a tiny bit of vegetable or fruit, maybe even a shoe-button bit of raw hamburger. They'll eat pretty much anything, at all.
**So, my Mother did not like insects which makes the few ant farms I recall rather odd. I'd never considered it before, her not liking bugs, and six of we kids bringing bugs into the house as if they were pets. Come to think of it, while I recall us having ant farms, I have no recollection at all of what happened to said ant farms.
I bet when she thought we weren't paying attention anymore, she tossed those ants toot de sweet. It's what I wouldv'e done.