27 replies to this topic

[Aaron567]

August 30, 2020

 

I moved them into a Tar Heel Ants Fortress a few days ago. They've settled in nicely but they definitely have some growing to do before they'll be filling up this nest. It looks like they're just passing 100 workers now, and there are around 20 majors.

 

[NickAnter]

Awesome!

[Aaron567]

September 15, 2020

 

I did an official worker count today and counted over 260 workers. The brood pile is a pretty nice size, maybe 30-35 millimeters long and about 7 millimeters tall at its tallest point. Unfortunately I think this is not the largest that it could be, because the queen has been skinny now for quite some time. I've been feeding this colony a lot (as soon as they finish their previous meal I give them another, and that is usually every 2-3 days) but it doesn't look like the queen is getting as much as she should, and I am not exactly sure why. Maybe I need to start giving them smaller insects instead of whole crickets.

 

[123LordOfAnts123]

I wouldn’t worry much as long as you see the queen being fed still. Do try and offer more variety though.

[ANTdrew]

Maybe some termites would do them good? Put a cardboard trap out under an infested log.

[Antkid12]

Mine destroy termites and fruit flies.

[KitsAntVa]

In the beginning you were right about them living in sand the one I found which I think is Morissi (that's what it was boiled down to) i found in some sand under my spilled sand bucket in my backyard, and wow look at all those workers in such short time honestly that's why i don't want to have much to do with pheidole anymore my harvester ants will grow fast enough next year anyway, at least i may be able to catch up to them.

[Aaron567]

October 22, 2020

 

Bad news. A few days ago I checked on the colony to find that all of their brood was gone. Over the last week or so I've noticed the pile was slowly dwindling, but I figured it was because I needed to feed them more. Then, suddenly the entire pile vanishes completely and I'm left with a colony of several hundred workers that has no brood pile.

 

I think I know why this happened. For more than a week straight (I cannot remember exactly how long), I did not give this colony any sugars, only crickets and a few roaches, because I ran out of sugar-water solution and never got around to making more. I wasn't too worried, because I've kept both Pheidole dentata and Pheidole obscurithorax, which are in the same general clade as morrisii, and I regularly went weeks without giving them sugars yet they did just fine. However, keeping Crematogaster pinicola, Pheidole navigans, and Pheidole floridana, I found out that when sugar-loving species do not get enough sugar, a common thing they'll do is consume the entire brood pile very suddenly. So, I think that may be what happened with my P. morrisii colony.

 

Upon discovering that they were completely broodless I immediately made some more sugar solution and fed it to them. Dozens of workers rushed to it and they temporarily completely ignored the pieces of crickets I put in their outworld, something that they would never normally do, had they not been starved of sugar. Today I can see that there is a pile of a few dozen eggs in the nest, but I'm not sure how many of those are brand new and how many of them were just eggs that I didn't spot earlier. Either way I learned that I should definitely not skip sugar feedings with this species, and hopefully my colony will recover. This is a pretty big setback.

 

The colony right now.