5 replies to this topic

[zantezaint]

Buying an acromyrmex versicolor queen with fungus coming from the queen herself and not from another queen. I've bought 2 Acromyrmex v. queens before and an additional 2 batch of fungus when the previous 2 failed to grow. Sadly, I lost quite a bit of money doing so, and it's been 2 years since then. I've done the island to island surrounded by water setup before, but that one turned disastrous as one of the Acromyrmex v. queen I had almost drowned to death if I had not noticed in time. I've used Drew's formicarium made for leaf cutters before, but that also didn't turn out well. Either way, I've done quite a bit of research, but if you can share some of yours ideas/tips on enclosures and humidity/temp control methods and so forth, I'd appreciate it as well. I also wanted to get your thoughts on using a growing tent to put the formicariums in.

Edited by zantezaint, February 19 2020 - 12:44 AM.

[CampoKing]

I've often wondered if keeping Atta is the same as growing shrooms: both require growing pure fungus cultures in an otherwise sterile setup. Humidity could be maintained with an aquarium bubbler in distilled water, which also creates a positive air pressure in the aquarium(?) that keeps out airborne contaminants from the Queen's fungus garden. If the interior is completely sanitized with UV etc before introducing the queen(s), with that air bubbler trick, I would imagine the Atta colony would succeed.

This is just my 2¢

[ponerinecat]

No atta here bud, its illegal. And very few people are willing to sell acromyrmex, doubled on the fact that they are semi harsd to find and get going.

[Zeiss]

It is illegal to have Atta sp. in California, as they are not native.  You must get proper permits for that.  

 

I have had success with Drew's Acromyrmex setups and my colony has been alive for almost 18 months.  It was most likely the case you got a trashy queen, which happens very often with keeping Acromyrmex versicolor.  

 

You will almost certainly not get a queen that had her own fungus because they deposit it fairly quickly when they start digging and we dig them up or grab them while they're outside (losing their almost-microscopic piece of fungus).  Almost all queens we have have been given fungus from another colony (this doesn't affect the quality of fungus unless a diseased or dead fungus is shared).  My 6 queens are all doing well from my oldest colony's fungus.  

 

This is how I care for my Acromyrmex versicolor:

 

• Keep them low-mid 70F
• Give them new material (dried rose petals, cichlid pellets) twice a week
• Not sure on humidity, haven't measured before.

Fairly simple stuff, the only hard part is making sure you have a healthy queen, which often takes a while to figure out.

[zantezaint]

What do you mean by trashy queen?

[Zeiss]

What do you mean by trashy queen?

Trashy as in they don't care for the fungus well, they don't produce workers, or just die.