Happy New Year Everybody,

I'm Joe and frequent White Plains, Poughkeepsie, and Hamburg shows. PM me if you are local Hudson Valley we can carpool sometimes.

So in the past few days I've read much of the 49 pages of threads in this ASF forum. (Yes I have a lot of time on my hands.) I cannot seem to find any posts which deal with a ratio of greater than 1.5

Please consider the following excerpts:
"For a group of 1.3, the smallest amount of space I personally give is approx the same floor space as a ten gallon tank, or a 56 qt plastic tub. I think this is roughly 17" x 12" square inches... The only hazard with having a female heavy group is the possibility that the older pups will push the pinks down to the bottom of the pile removing them from nutrition and subjecting them to possible suffocation or crushing."
This is from: metalmonkeyexotics.com/blog/?page_id=822

So, we have an old 75 gallon tank with a screen cover. I would never purchase such a monstrosity for rodents, but, here it is collecting dust. We have rats in the standard rat cages. One of them contains what is left of 20+ ASF pups, there are only 8 left cause we fed off all but 1 of the males. So we now are now down to a 1.7 ratio of pups and are gonna stop feeding them off. They will soon reach sexual maturity. I have some experience with ASFs and know that they are exceptionally clean rodents, about as clean as clean can get in regards to rodents. I would never put Norwegians in a 75 gallon it would become an utter mess, a stinking catastrophe.

Ok, so now my question (finally). The floor space of this 75 gallon is 48" x 24" and seems to offer plenty of room for 8 ASFs. These guys (actually gals and 1 guy) are hand tame they are not the skittish type to hide in a corner overwhelmed by too large an enclosure. They are at the stage where they want to run and dart all over and even try to fly LOL so I me thinks they will absolutely love the 75 gallon. How is it that the "hazard with having a female heavy group is the possibility that the older pups will push the pinks down to the bottom of the pile removing them from nutrition and subjecting them to possible suffocation or crushing?" I just don't get it. Does it mean that with 7 hides throughout the tank that the nursing mothers will all congregate under 1 hide instead of claiming their own real estate? Yeah I know 2 might shack up together and share responsibilities but all 7? I'm having a hard time visualizing this. I'm ready to give them their new giant home but there's no turning back once I do so I wanna get some input first.

Thanks for reading my long, drawn-out post!