Animals suitable to an open topped habitat

[evilhorde]

Many ants can bridge water and many can simply walk over it. I expect to be housing the tiny black ants that live outside (and occasionally, inside) my house. They are between 1/16" and 1/8" long. I have always called them 'sugar ants' but I don't know the actual name or the taxonomy at this time. These are the kind that can walk over water with some effort.

I can't find the website with the barge measurements but if I recall correctly it was 13" X 5.5". The lowest point of dirt will be just below the water line or maybe just at it if I am really good with the ballast. I haven't considered all the details yet, but I think if I mound the dirt high and then skin it over with a grout/dirt mix over 3/4 of it, it should be able to hold together fairly well. I'll leave the last 1/4 open so the ants can reshape it to suit themselves. If I can get a mound standing 6" over the deck of the barge along with 2" of barge depth should be enough for these tiny ants. I'll look in to it further before I aquire any specimens. For feeding, I may park a boat beside them with a gangplank over to it and some decks to climb around on.

As for the waterwalking, I will keep guard danios. They don't seem to like eating these little ants, but they do love drowning them.
So my complete ant containment system is as follows, first an ant must brave the deep lukewarm water. If he is lucky enough to be able to walk on it, he must face dozens of bloodthirsty zebra danios. And there is at least 16" of this deadly obstacle, which to a 1/8" critter struggling on water is a long long road. Finally across the water and in to the mudflats then up th the rockwall. A simple climb for the tired little survivor. Half way up and uh-oh, "Is that a crab?" yup. sure is. Time to go back down, uh-oh more crabs, back up! Dodging, ducking, dipping, diving and dodging, he escapes the crab and makes a run for it. Just another foot or so and he's going to make it! The crabs are gaining! Oh no! there is a giant smooth crystalline barrier! It's almost like glass and it's 12" tall! That's like 96 times as tall as the ant is long! Nowhere to go! Run Home! arrgh!

Okay, I don't know if the crabs would even bother with a tiny ant, but I do know that the danios love to torment any that walk on the water. I have tested that part out already in a previous tank.

[x5tr41ghtj4ck3t]

Alright, so ants escaping is clearly not an issue =]

I've never heard of crabs attacking ants, but I HAVE seen a video of huge land crabs being swarmed by legions of ants. The soldier ants pry open the soft parts of the crab and literally sit there holding them open so that the smaller ants can get in to take the poor guys apart from the inside out.

I doubt that would happen in this case.

Your ant story makes me wish I could be there to watch this living diorama.
Which then makes me think about how cool it would be to have little plastic soldiers (like those from Micro Machines) epoxied in places that would make them appear as though they were fighting the different giant species.

Thank you, because now instead of doing my homework, I'm going to be imagining all these cool scenarios that I'm never going to be able to build myself -.- =]