154 replies to this topic

[FinWins]

Dang, it’s always sad when you have an amazing colony that just fails. Hopefully they can recover.

[OhNoNotAgain]

The colony in Drew’s set up is about at status quo. The fungus grew a bit larger after the last purge.

Okay now for the other colony who lost their fungus again:

I experimentally gave them a piece from the other colony. They destroyed it!
So today, I ripped apart the system of deli cups.
I made two set ups out of them: a two-set containing mostly nursery ants (about 30) and the queen and brood, and a three set of deli cups containing the others, the older workers (over 50ish... talking number of ants, not age 🤣). I provided both with pieces of fungus.
The older workers are destroying their piece. The nursery group… well I did a few purges of more reactive, aggressive workers (presumably older ones) and we will see if they regrow the fungus I gave them.
Here is the pruned nursery group.



Here is the stable colony and their fungus after I stole a bunch of pieces:

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, August 21 2022 - 1:52 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Update: nursery workers grew the pieces I gave them. Their fungus is now bigger than the original donor fungus.



The older workers destroyed their fungus.

Other colony is at status quo….

All I can say is, wow nursery workers are much better gardeners, and … having two colonies is useful,

[UrbanOrganisms]

Do your Acromyrmex colonies have more than one queen?

[OhNoNotAgain]

Do your Acromyrmex colonies have more than one queen?

Nope, both are single queen colonies.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Soooo back in October I had a horrible disaster with both colonies losing all their fungus. I got help from an experienced keeper, who not only sold me another quality box set up (similar to the one I had for one but not the other colony), but also sent new fungus and some huge workers. I also followed her advice for set up as best I could. For example, I moved the heating mat to the SIDE and covered the nest boxes with layers of thermally insulating shipping material.

It was a bit touch and go. For example, there was a massive die off of the new fungus, plus one queen went down to zero workers in addition to her zero fungus. She was all by herself and starving when I finally had enough to give her a tiny piece, plus a few workers from the other colony and some brood. (You could really see her going from hopeless and depressed to interested in life again….) As of now (March) things are doing pretty well. The heating mat is registering at 79.5 F.
First photo shows how I keep it covered. Also, the brood is kept on the wall next to the heating mat and not on the fungus itself.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, March 22 2023 - 1:17 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

On the fraggles front, I had a different OOPS. I had a massive escape from a nestmate hole that I had plugged with cotton and tape. I didn’t even realize how many had gotten out for a long time. I returned as many as I could, but there were so many escaped workers that (1) the outworld no longer was carpeted in workers and (2) a nearby potted plant became a queenless colony of fraggles….

Good news is I don’t think the queen went on a walkabout, so I’m hoping now that I just fed them and turned up the heat, we will soon have another crop of workers sleeping in the outworld again.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, March 22 2023 - 1:35 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Two notes to self:

MONITOR after changing water reservoir.
Do NOT change both at the same time.

I lost one of the Acromyrmex colonies. I changed the water in the reservoir and didn’t check on them.
I can only think I must’ve contaminated the water badly somehow. Queen died. Fungus died. Brood died. The workers died!
I’ve never seen workers die off like this EVER.

The OTHER colony despite water added at same time seems to be doing okay.

[Ernteameise]

Oh no.
Any idea what could have caused it?

[OhNoNotAgain]

Oh no.
Any idea what could have caused it?

Must’ve been I contaminated the water. Something. I’ve never seen so many workers die so fast.

But like I said, other colony is okay.

I think I was more careful with their water (plus it's a smaller container so it was easier to refill).

I'm going to be extra careful with water changes from now on.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, May 24 2023 - 1:42 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Over the weekend I picked up a double queen Acromyrmex colony to replace the one that died. (When it comes to Acromyrmex, I'm now a very firm believer in keeping minimum two to always have a fungus backup.)
The new Acromyrmex colony survived an Uber trip and then 6 hours’ drive - I figured long car drives were still safer than being sent by mail.

The fungus is small but alive and it does have two queens.

They don't have many workers and I'm not sure the ones that are there are collecting the clover/rose/pellets I'm providing, so I did my usual and added a little bit to the nest.

What I might do is do a brood boost since my surviving Acromyrmex colony has a huge pile of brood.

Side by side (new on left, old on right):



New colony with two queens visible:

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, May 24 2023 - 1:45 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Just a quick update:

 

1. I acquired a second C. fragilis colony. So now I have two (assuming the big one is still queenright - can never find her in the Nucleus so it's always a bit of an assumption).

 

2. I'm having problems with my two setups for Acromyrmex. One is too dry (newer colony), the other too wet (one of the 2021 colonies). I dried out the wet one and then all their fungus died (sigh). I'll be attempting to rectify the moisture problems and will keep giving them bits of fungus from the other colony until they are re-established.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Figures. So the Old Acromyrmex colony adopted the fungus and is rebuilding its garden. The New Acromyrmex Colony then promptly destroyed their garden.  It's like conservation of fungus or something.

 

For some reason  New Acromyrmex do not like collecting leaves from the outworld themselves. Plus, these moisture problems are really problematic. I don't know why no moisture is going into New Acromyrmex while too much is going to Old Acromyrmex (and I tried trimming the sponge, too).

[BleepingBleepers]

Man, looking at all these journals with ants that cut / collect leaves and then make fungus gardens is so intriguing. You just gotta do some update videos with a better camera though as it would be great to see it in all its glory in 4k detail or something.

 

Like if I had these guys, I'd be staring at them all day and documenting their actions, picture and video. I probably would invest on glass / museum glass so I can see them super clear. But very interesting.

 

Btw, I heard the fungus growing ants, they smell?

 

Keep up the interesting journal and those neat pics / vids! I also take a lot of pictures and make my own youtube video so I appreciate those of you that do the same as well, it takes some work so thanks for the neat job!

[OhNoNotAgain]

Okay, so update:

 

C. fragilis 1: For some reason they didn't get much brood this year. I did spot the queen recently. This is a colony from what, 2019?

C. fragilis 2: Doing well in a mini-hearth.

 

Acromyrmex: I had them two years, and there were good times and some bad times. Yeah, they are dead. I no longer have any. The number one problem I have is moisture control. The fungus chamber is either wayyyyy too wet, or, if I cut off the water supply, it needs watering too often. The moisture issues probably contributed to regular cycles of boom-bust-boom-bust of the fungus, with every bust risking the fungus dying. So of a total of 3 colonies over the span of the 2 years (I always had 2 colonies to have backup fungus), 1 queen died for unknown reasons, one colony died due to my screw up with not enough moisture, and the last colony I gave away when their fungus crashed and I had no spare, but they apparently repeatedly destroyed the fungus that was offered to them and failed as a result.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, August 11 2024 - 9:54 PM.