154 replies to this topic

[ANTdrew]

Just tell people they are the anachronistic leaf-cutters from the Lion King.

[Bugging3out]

Oh hey ant drew. Remember me, i am the one from the fire ant journal. i posted it in it in case you want to take a look. I saw you were active on the forum. 

[Bugging3out]

oh well

[ANTdrew]

I do remember you, but no need to take this thread off topic.

[Bugging3out]

sorry. 

[OhNoNotAgain]

And here I was hoping for fan posts about the fraggles or mushroom farmers.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Sooooooo I screwed up or something. I let the Acromyrmex be at winter room temp (low 70's), and ... I don't have the desert leaves they love (leaves that include "ocotillo, palo verde, and creosote" ... none of which are around here. They picked all that stuff clean. And despite me putting in all sorts of bits of leaf from all over my yard and indoor plant collection, including human-edible leaves, home-grown roses, home-grown clover, isopod-edible leaves, etc., etc., the workers are turning up their dainty little noses to practically all of it!

 

So over the last month, I noticed the fungus was no longer touching the ground, first in one container, then in the other (it is stuck to the cover). A few days ago I put in a sterilized blade and cut down a small chunk, rolled it under the fungus, and made a stair step up for both colonies.

Yesterday I REALLY noticed the fungus is frankly ... small. Colony 1 in fact no longer had a stair step. It was gone.

So I got officially worried.

 

Here's what I'm trying.

 

1. I turned on a heating pad to raise the temp of their fungus chambers from low 70's to mid-to-upper 70's (F).

2. Last night, I put in some more bits of home-grown unsprayed dried rose, and a worker in Container 1 seemed interested in it. (In fact, she did the typical thing of trying to drag it into the tub, but failing because of an obstacle, missing repeatedly, and I had to help her.) Nevermind I had previously put in bits into both outworlds and neither colony had been interested.

Taking that cue, I took a bit of rose petal and DUMPED IT DIRECTLY into the fungus chamber of the OTHER colony. I saw ants go to it.

I got to thinking. This is something I've noticed with other ant colonies: foraging workers are idiotically picky. Nursery ants tend to be accepting of protein in whatever form it arrives, while foraging workers apparently lose half their brains while transforming into foragers, and they get super picky (I am joking about losing half their brains, but it's clear their tiny minds do get altered).

3. So TODAY, I decided to just go with a known and proven leaf. I opened a commercially prepared bag of organic clover that other ant keepers have been using, and put some leaves DIRECTLY into the fungus chamber. The idea: BYPASS the inefficient and picky foragers completely with something that should be safe.

4. I squirted in a bit more water, too.

 

I'm HOPING this will save the fungus and the colonies.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, February 1 2022 - 10:41 AM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Update: yiss confirmed that Acromyrmex foragers are dumb, but says queens know what to do. Looks like openable fungus chambers might be important for this species.

 

Gonna add a bit more dried clover to Colony 1 (this time using sterilized tweezers... just waiting for them to cool). That fungus is sooooo tiny now The good news is the nursery ants seem to be hanging around at the clover bits that are already in there.

 

More notes:

 

Colony 1 used to have fungus 2x the volume at least of Colony 2... Well, that's inverted now.

Colony 1 had the worker who actually recognized the yard-grown rose petal as food. I wonder why their fungus is now so much smaller though.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, February 1 2022 - 11:00 AM.

[PaigeX]

I heard some people feed fish food/pellets if they don't take anything else. Maybe might help you

[NicholasP]

don't use fish pellets or fish flakes. Just feed natural things.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Hmmm they are so slow I took a time lapse video to see what they are doing. Basically I watched them investigate a pile of clover leaves I put in the fungus chamber. Saw only two cases where an ant dragged a leaf toward the fungus… only for an ant to drag it right back to the leaf pile. 🙄🙄🙄😑😑😑

[OhNoNotAgain]

In fact some of them appear to be taking the clover out of the fungus chamber…. 🙄🙄🙄

[OhNoNotAgain]

Wellllll that's not good. The ants in colony 1 seem to be DESTROYING their fungus. It's shrinking and shrinking! What are they doing?!

[OhNoNotAgain]

Okay I had a chat with Zeiss, who has a 3 year old colony. Among other advice:

- Sometimes Acromyrmex tear down and destroy fungus and restart from small pieces so don't panic yet.

- He says they like to have the fungus hanging from the ceiling (however, not usually in a way that leaves them clustered underneath trying in vain to reach up and climb onto it)

- Dried leaves are fine for Acromyrmex.

- Mid 70's temps is fine; any temp changes should be done gradually.

- He uses rose petals and Aqueon Cichlid Pellets (which are apparently hugely popular with Acromyrmex)

- Also he suggested upgrading the set up.

 

UPSHOT ACTION PLAN:

- Wait a few days. The ants might be doing necessary maintenance on the fungus.

- Get Aqueon Cichlid Pellets

- Research a new formicarium for the Acromyrmex.

 

I'll include photos of the decimated fungus and Colony 2's larger fungus (how times have changed).

P.S. Yes I think I overwatered in my panic yesterday.

 

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, February 2 2022 - 11:24 AM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Well okay, the fungus is GONE. They've dismantled and destroyed it all.

Now I think I need a new container for them because ... well, apparently something Went Horribly Wrong.

 

Colony 2 APPEARS to be chugging along okay though.

[NicholasP]

I think I can explain what happened. Well... I actually can't. It's really weird. But what I've noticed with my Acromyrmex versicolor that I acquired one time was that they thrived but then all of the sudden the fungus stopped growing and dying rapidly almost 1/4 of the fungus that was around 1 inch wide and 2 inches across died in just one day and continued to shrink at a rapid pace no matter what I tried. I couldn't see anything wrong besides mango leaves which are known to kill leafcutter ant fungus, but they never took in the mango leaves. So, what they started doing during the process that the fungus died was they plugged up the outworld vinyl tubing with fungus. Sometimes Acromyrmex versicolor colonies die for no reason. You can try brood boosting colony 1 with colony 2's fungus but I honestly wouldn't risk performing a fungus donation from colony 2 to 1 at the moment since both had something go wrong. I'd just wait. If colony 1 doesn't recover even with a fungus donation is, you could try adding 1 queen from colony 1 into colony 2's outworld and see if they accept the queen. if they do then 1 queen at a time add another until all have been accepted and you could try adding the workers too. Make sure if you go with the latter option to dunk the queens in white vinegar for around 30 seconds, dry them off with a towel and pop one in the outworld of colony 2. I wish you good luck. Hopefully colony 1 and 2 recover well.

Edited by NicholasP, February 4 2022 - 1:10 PM.

[NicholasP]

Also, another thing to do is that the biggest container you give them if they need a bigger container for fungus is a maximum size of 4 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches. bigger than 4 inches Acromyrmex versicolor do not do well with.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Thanks!

So a couple days ago I tried giving colony 1 a tiny bit of colony 2's fungus.

They got super excited and groups of ants picked up the bits of fluff.

I came back a couple hours later and ... no fungus.

Nada.

Nothing.

 

I might try again, but I want to find a food that colony 2 accepts without hesitation. I got Zeiss' recommended food brand and will try that.

 

Not sure about doing a queen thing because each only has 1 queen as far as I know.

[NicholasP]

Here's some advice. Take some sugar water and put it in colony 1's outworld and they should drink it and that's a good food alternative for fungus for now. Once you see them drinking continue to give them more until they no longer seem interested and then give them a bigger piece of fungus than the last. If you have questions about this method let me know.

[OhNoNotAgain]

So today I ran some more experiments.

 

I put in cichlid pellets, and no one was interested.

 

I dried a bit more of Colony 1's fungus chamber (it's still a bit damp), then dropped in one MORE crumb from Colony 2. I stuck a cichlid pellet to it as a hint and a gift.

The workers went nuts again. They pried off the pellet and threw it away, then ran around holding the crumb like a prized lollipop, and workers licked it and touched it and then they hauled it to another area and repeat. Finally they are chilling with one ant holding a somewhat reduced crumb. I doubt it will last long, but I tossed in a couple leaves because.....

 

Colony 2's fungus is okay, but it is AGAIN no longer touching the floor, and the ants can't get to it (facepalm). However, today when I dropped in bits of commercial clover leaf, the chamber workers picked them up and IMMEDIATELY STUCK THEM TO THE FUNGUS. Apparently they haven't lost their minds, unlike Colony 1, which threw away all its fungus and the leaves I had put in. So this also shows that their foragers are way too picky.

 

So my theory is sort of looking possibly true for Colony 2 (have no idea what happened to Colony 1).

 

The colonies were fine while they had their favorite desert leaves.

However, when they ran out of their favorites, the foragers refused to bring in anything else. This is why the fungi began to decline and recede from the floor.

SOMETHING triggered Colony 1 to start dismantling and destroying their fungus (remember they started doing that before I intervened).

However, Colony 2 hasn't gone craycray, and the fungus workers are willing to pick up leaves in the fungus chamber and add them to their fungus.

 

Will add photos hopefully.