About Atlantic Ants
Experience
I was drawn into the ant keeping hobby in late 2017 by Ants Canada videos on Youtube. The first ants I kept were Aphaenogaster rudis and Nylanderia flavipes and since then, I have kept 65 of the 150 or so species in Virginia and have seen 130 of them. I originally sold the extra colonies I had through GAN until I felt I had enough experience to build a website and start selling commercially.
Ants
Our ants are primarily kept in test tubes and fed a variety of dubia roaches, mealworms, crickets, and fruit flies several times a week. I offer heating to most colonies in order to speed up colony growth and encourage the queen to lay more. Colonies sold are set up for success and unhealthy colonies are often given away to buyers.
Purpose
My purpose is to offer healthy ants at a lower price to increase the accessibility of ant keeping to as many people as possible. All the money made from Atlantic Ants is reinvested into the business or saved for myrmecology supplies, such as specimen drawers and microscopes, which can get exceedingly expensive. To the left is one of my favorite species, Aphaenogaster mariae. I took this stacked picture of a worker with a microscope at the MEM (Mississippi Entomological Museum).