159 replies to this topic

[Gregory2455]

Hey look! A reason to use this one!  :sick2:

[Nexus]

what's wrong with keeping 10 colonies of the same species ?

1) I think it's boring and not very interesting : you see the same behavior, the same colors 10 times.

2) I think having 2 or 3 colonies of the same species to compensate the potential deaths or because the species is pretty is ok, but having 10 ! And you are saying a lot die ! We could ask ourselseves if you are a good ant keeper... (which I think you are of course).

3) It's a lot of work while you could take just 2 or 3 queens of the same species and work less but take better care of them. Usually, at the end, when you keep a lot of colonies at the same time (especially same species), you take less good care of them because it's boring feeding 10 colonies twice (or more) a week... I have done it with 20 colonies of about 12 different ant species and I can tell, it's very tireing at the end... And if dspdrew does this with all the species he finds, I can't imagine how many colonies he has to feed... Also, it's abit industrialist, I think, the "alive aspect" is less present.

4) There are very few ant queens that succeed in developping a mature colony so taking 10 queens or more decreases even more there chance

 

Nothing personal dspdrew ! That's just my personal opinion.

[dspdrew]

Liometopum Occidentale are very hard to raise. I have never had one survive so I am going to start with as many as I can. Also not everybody is lucky enough to be there when a species of ants is flying, so when one person is, they might as well collect a few for others to try to raise also. There are about 10,000,000,000,000,000 ants in the world, so making an issue about 10 is beyond silly. This subject comes up from time to time, and it still remains silly.

[Alza]

With your Liometopum queens, do you cycle feed them ? like if you had 10, you would feed five of them today, and tomorrow feed the other five ?

[dspdrew]

No I just feed all of them in one day.

[Gregory2455]

Also not everybody is lucky enough to be there when a species of ants is flying

Sounds like me!

[dspdrew]

A few new pictures.
 

 

 

[Wamdar]

Great Shots!

[dermy]

I am amazed at the amount of workers you get as the first batch!

[Alza]

How territorial are these ants in the wild ? 

[dspdrew]

Pretty territorial I would assume. They are very aggressive and one colony can form a foraging trail probably a mile long.

[Ants4fun]

Wow, these colonies must be huge!

[dspdrew]

Update 7-27-2015
 
The colonies I have put in foraging containers all seem to be doing well. The colonies that are in test tubes and nothing else, are not doing so good. I think part of the problem is that I kind of neglected them a little bit, and the tubes got pretty moldy. I'm not exactly sure what killed off all the workers in so many of these colonies in test tubes without foraging containers, because some of the healthy colonies had mold in their tubes as well. I gave away a lot of the queens that lost all their workers.

 

The last queen I caught just had all her workers eclose yesterday.

 

One thing about these is their feet have such good grip it is almost impossible to get them off anything they're walking on, including your hands. I've noticed this when trying to move them and collect them, making it very difficult.

[dspdrew]

Update 8-9-2015
 
The last colony to get workers, I decided to take out of a test tube and put in the "wood box" I made a while back.
 

 
 
The reason I never used it was because it ended up covered in green mold... not that I was surprised.
 

 

 
 
Since I have more of these colonies than I can really take care of, I figured I would just put this one in there anyways, and see if they even mind. Before doing this, I added TONS of springtails to it, hydrating it in the process. I am also curious to see how much of this mold the springtails will eat.
 
When I dropped them in, the first place they went was in the hole I premade for them.
 

 
 
So far they have been spending most of their time in the hole, and only coming out at night when the lights are off. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

[Gregory2455]

These seem to be like Nylanderia vividula. They just love mold and fungus in their environment.

[dspdrew]

Update 8-27-2015
 
All of these colonies are doing really well. I have five of them in test tubes and foraging containers, and one is in the "wood box" I talked about in the last update. The largest test tube colony now has around 220 workers, and the others all have around 100 or so.
 

 

 

 
Here's a short video showing four of these colonies. I forgot I had a fifth one while I was shooting this video.
 

 
 
The colony in the wood box cleaned out the little chamber they moved into, and have started trying to dig further down. The queen laid a pile of eggs shortly after they moved in, and by now they have all turned to pupae. This colony is pretty small, but should be doubling in size very soon. They hardly ever come out of their nest, and I seem to only find them out when the lights are off and it's dark.
 
Here's some new pictures of their nest in the wood box.
 

 

 

[dspdrew]

Update 10-11-2015
 
I sold a couple of these colonies, so now I only have three. The two in foraging containers have about 80 workers each, and the one in the wood box have about 90. One of the colonies in the foraging containers has a massive pile of new eggs. There's probably well over 500 of them, so this colony is probably going to be exploding in size soon.
 
The dirt box is now completely mold-free after adding all those springtales to it a couple months ago. The ants have been getting in between the wood and the plastic, but are still nesting in the little chamber I made for them.
 

 

 

[LC3]

Looks like the workers got themselves jammed in the glass ._.

[dspdrew]

Nah, they run around between the wood and the plastic. These ants are very flat, like other dolichoderines around here.

[dspdrew]

Update 2-1-2016
 
I still have three colonies of these left, although the two in the foraging containers aren't doing very well. I think one probably still has around 50 workers, and the other has much less now.
 
The colony in the wood "antfarm box" is getting huge. At this point I estimate a population of over 500 workers, and at least 500 brood, soon to be workers. They have started chewing tunnels in the wood exponentially faster all the time. This colony is going to need a bigger home very soon. I think I am going to make another 10 gallon "antfarm box" like I did for my Pogonomyrmex rugosus, except out of rotted wood like the one these are in now. It should be really interesting watching them carve out their nest in something that much larger.