472 replies to this topic

[specimen24-6]

very nice picture, I would love to know where you find these beautiful ant sp. 

[dspdrew]

The deserts of the Southwest United States.

[dermy]

Wow these Colonies are doing very well! I hope they like the new setup

[dspdrew]

Apparently these ants can even chew through vinyl tubing.
 

 

 

 
 
Now of course the ants did have access to an edge, and this happened over a period of many months, but it's still much more than I thought they would have ever been able to do.

[NightsWebs]

who knew they like vinyl so much

[dspdrew]

They want their entrances and tunnels bigger is what they want. That's what I'm giving them in these new designs too.

[dspdrew]

Update 12-3-2015
 
About half of the twenty new queens I picked up this summer now have workers. Other than a few queens that died in the beginning, every queen I found seems to be doing great.

[drtrmiller]

It seems like it takes about 2-3 years of experience with a specialist species before truly getting the hang of not having them all die so quickly.

 

Congrats on your continued success with these more challenging ants.

[dspdrew]

For anyone who didn't know, I have way more of these than I want, so I am selling them along with the fungus-grower formicariums I design for a relatively low price.
 
http://www.formicult...fornia/?p=30269

[BrittonLS]

They want their entrances and tunnels bigger is what they want. That's what I'm giving them in these new designs too.

Funny, because I'm having the exact opposite problem, my ants all want tiny entrances.

 

Also, man I wish I could get some of those ants, but alas, not even native near me. 

[dspdrew]

Update 12-6-2015
 
All but four of the twenty new queens have workers now. Some have up to five workers already.

[NightsWebs]

that's awesome I want mine to start growing rapidly

[Vendayn]

 

65q24g4g5f

Edited by Vendayn, March 9 2018 - 7:06 PM.

[Foogoo]

How many of the queens you found in 2015 still had their fungus pellet, if any? I'm curious how quick they drop it.

[dspdrew]

Also, when I get a colony in a few days. When I give them leaves/flowers and what not for their fungus, should I bake it like you did the roses in your earlier substrate picture? I know if I give them stuff from inside, I'll still wash everything to make sure its clean. But, I imagine you baked the rose petals for a reason. Does the flowers/roses still act as good "food" for the fungus even when baked?

 

I only baked it enough to dry it up and turn it slightly brown.

 

I baked it for three reasons: 1) I have only gotten them to accept dry substrate. Chromerust said his loved fresh rose petals, but none of mine ever did. 2) It kills pathogens and other pests. I even ended up with a bunch of strange little moths inside my container of already-baked-substrate once. Their little caterpillar larvae were actually eating the dried substrate, and spinning annoying silky cocoons inside it. 3) Dried substrate I can keep in a container unrefrigerated for as long as I want, and it never goes bad as long as it stays dry.

 

 

How many of the queens you found in 2015 still had their fungus pellet, if any? I'm curious how quick they drop it.

 

I have no idea. I didn't check to see.

[Vendayn]

65q24g4g5f

Edited by Vendayn, March 9 2018 - 7:06 PM.

[dspdrew]

The hardest part is getting a queen that starts a fungus garden, but I don't have to worry about that now, because I have plenty of the fungus.

 

BTW, this is where I got my rose petals.

 

http://www.amazon.co...duct/B0012LWWSE

[dspdrew]

Update 1-16-2016
 
This update is really on just one of the large colonies.
 
The garbage pile has really built up in all three of my large colonies' out worlds, so I decided it's time to clean them out. I still haven't gotten proper lids made for these new formicariums, so once the Fluon started wearing off a few months ago, I had to just put the stock lids on them. This obviously raised the humidity in the out world enough to allow fungus to continue growing in the fungus chambers from their old nests, as they are still sitting in the out world. The ants have actually been using these to hold most of their brood.
 
I have to get these old nests out of the out worlds, so I decided to try forcefully transferring the lid and the fungus to one of the chambers of their newer nests, just like I did the time I started that civil war. I really do feel like that was just an anomaly, and it probably won't happen again.
 
So far, I've transplanted them, and see no signs of aggression yet. Now last time it didn't start immediately, so I'm not out of the woods yet. It's been about an hour though, so it's looking good.
 
A rough count puts this colony at over 1000 workers now! In addition to that, they have a massive pile of brood.
 
The chamber on the far right is the one I transplanted.
 

 
 
Using this picture, I counted about 450 in this tub alone. These were just the ants that were in the out world and the old container.
 

[dspdrew]

Update 1-17-2016
 
This update is on the second of the three large colonies.
 
This colony is in the newest of the prototype formicariums I made. There isn't a whole lot of differences between the final design and this one. The Hydrostone in the out world is one thing I am planning to do without. It stains way too easily and is just a pain in the butt to clean. These ants climb very well, so it really isn't necessary anyways.
 
Like the other colony, this one easily has over 1000 workers as well. The out world was getting pretty nasty with the sealed lid on it for a few months, so I decided to clean it out. I cut the lid out this time forming a lip like some of the lids on my other formicariums. I did this for the other one as well. The Fluon-coated lip I have on my Veromessor pergandei formicarium is still holding them in without a problem after more than six months now, and they climb as good these ants do. This should buy me enough time to get some mesh lids made for them.
 
This is the old fungus chamber from the old formicarium. This has been sitting in the out world since I first moved them in, but as you can see, even without any water source, they just did not want to move out of it. It looks like this was their primary storage area for pupae as well; there's definitely a lot of them.
 

 

 
 
Here is everything that was in that container minus the fungus on the lid and whatever workers and brood were attached to it.
 

 

 
 
Here's the entire nest now, along with the old fungus chamber added to it on the top right.
 

 
 
This is the old fungus chamber. I just swapped lids basically. This was what started a civil war in another large colony of mine a while back, but it seems that was just a freak occurrence, because it didn't happen with the one in the update before this, nor did it happen with this colony either.
 

 
 
This is the entrance tube that fits loosely inside the connector in the out world. This makes it easy to plug both at the same time, allowing them to be separated without any ants getting loose.
 

 
 
I'm guessing this is where the queen is probably located. You can see all the eggs and very young brood here. It's no wonder these things are blowing up in size so fast. This is one productive queen.
 

 
 
Like I mentioned earlier, the Hydrostone stains so bad; it looks nasty even though it's all clean and dry. I clean these with bleach, then dry them out really good after soaking and rinsing them with water multiple times.
 

 
 
Once the cleaning was finished, I dumped everything back in the out world. This time I put their substrate in a container to see what exactly they decide to do with it. These ants love to organize everything in nice little piles, so I'm curious to see what they will do with the container.
 

 

 

 
 
Here's the entrance connector.
 

 
 
I decided to add a few more containers to their out world to give them even more places to put things. I'm hoping hey will pile their trash inside one of them the way my Veromessor pergandei does; it sure makes it a lot easier to clean out.
 

[drtrmiller]

I wonder if hydrogen peroxide would whiten just as good as bleach, and not leave any toxic residue or odor?