I wanted to build a glass ant farm but instead of using wood or plastic for the frame I wanted to use molding clay. Can I use the clay to build the frame to hold the two pieces of glass and to make a removable top or will it hurt my ants???
Using plaster would be better than clay. Fired ceramic clay would also be fine, but that gets fairly complicated. If you use plaster it will be fairly easy, but you have to build a frame for your ant farm out of wood or use a suitably sized plastic or strong cardboard box. You could take a plastic box, put one plane of glass down. Use modeling clay to make the chambers for your ant farm. Make sure you connect them. Then mix plaster and cover everything so high you can still see your chambers. Put second pane of glass on it. After plaster has set, you should be able to remove one pane of glass, get out the modeling clay, then put the pane back on, you can use small clamps if necessary. Plaster is pretty good for an ant farm since it soaks up water. You don't want an ant farm to be absolutely dry, that isn't good for the ants. They need a certain humidity. Of course you don't want it really wet either, you'll have to observe the ants to see what they prefer. You can water the ant farm periodically or put one side into water so it soaks up some water. You also have to move the ants to a new ant farm once in a while, since the ant farm will become dirty. Make sure you feed the ants proteins and not just sugar. Make sure you have an ant queen. A good way to start an ant farm is to collect a queen if you see one outside. Since ants swarm, that is a good time to find a lot of queens. Make sure the queen doesn't have wings any more, only then she is mated.
