A formicarium that brings the functionality and practicality of test tubes to the next level. The Test Tube Array Formicarium is modular, expandable, easy to care and full of features. We love that you can expand slowly and serve only the areas that need to; best of all, its chambers use a long insert and have refillable water chambers. 
 
One of our most common mistakes is moving a colony to a formicarium (ample space) too early. Still, it is also hard to make slow, gradual steps as it is hard to find a formicarium design or size that fits the colony's needs; one solution, especially in the beginning stages (1 to 150) workers, is to increase the space slowly and with this formicarium doing so is very easy, remember ants like tight cozy spaces, and when we provide such ants tend to keep their chambers clean. Also, when moving to a new place, most ants decide, so with a voting system, they will likely move to where we want them to and faster when we limit the options.
 
Each test tube has a watering hole at the back, allowing you to control the humidity levels on each tube; you can choose where to have more or less humidity as needed. We suggest always having at least one dry tube in the setup so your colony has a humidity gradient to choose from.
 
Due to the hole on the back, test tubes are not able to hold whole level water capacity compared to a traditional test tube; water would flood into the insert area if filled too much; this is due to the lack of negative pressure; we recommend using crushed vermiculite or perlite to fill the water reservoir space, therefore increasing its capacity to hold more water and for more extended periods, each tube comes already prefilled with perlite and cotton in place, you can buy more perlite here, photos show examples of this, when injecting water please do so slowly and carefully observing for saturation on the cotton, the goal is to add enough water but avoid flooding the insert underside. 
 
The test tube port is designed to have a little space within its connecting tunnels to avoid ants using it as a chamber, encouraging them to keep the port clean, so it is only used for traffic. The port aligns perfectly with the back hole opening of our "glass outworlds" you can skip the hose between them by gluing it directly on the back with a tiny bit of fish tank-safe silicone; this allows you to use the entire inside diameter.
 
Each kit has everything needed to connect to an "outworld (foraging area)" or any of our formicaria. You will receive; a test tube port, a piece of 5 cm vinyl tubing, one plug, enough silicone fittings to attach test tubes to the port, glass test tubes with a drilled hole at the back, a small bag of crushed perlite, long plastic inserts with the option of sand texture and either a red film with a one-piece ring or separate black jackets with rings or both if you choose so.
 
The red film has the advantage of allowing you to see inside without touching the setup; the black jackets are helpful as they can protect only the areas you need to; they also wholly block all light but do need to be removed by gently sliding them out to be able to see the insides of the tubes. 
 
This unit is compatible with our 16x125mm test tubes (also fits 16x150mm); you can buy extra test tubes, inserts, cotton water keepers, jackets, feeding inserts, etc., all fit and can help further customize your test tube formicarium.