122 replies to this topic

[Antkid12]

Nice.

[RushmoreAnts]

You could design another outworld after the Colosseum. 

[Wegmier]

You could design another outworld after the Colosseum.

Derp! Of all the decorations I considered, the Colosseum didn’t pop up in my head 😂
That will go in the Italia Outworld

[Wegmier]

Not an update but found this cool, the size difference between nanitic-sized pupae and those of my semi-mature colony
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[NickAnter]

You could also do Britiania as another theme. Specifically Scotland, as it was never tamed.

[DIACAMMAWORLDCOOL]

awesome

[Wegmier]

Update 33: Outworld cleaning (August 27 2020)

Removed a bunch of rocks and trash from their outworld. There were a lot of ants just sitting idle under the decorative pebbles

There was a 1,5 month build-up of insect carcasses - so the outworld was long overdue for a cleaning session. 

The nests appear a lot more full this week



Left: The outworld as it looks now. Still not done cleaning it.
Right: The trash that I threw in a separate container. A lot of the trash still contains ants, so I dump it and wait for the ants to move to the water-tube I provide in there. Then I tap them back into the outworld.

Edited by Wegmier, February 25 2021 - 3:16 PM.

[Wegmier]

Update 34: Escape! (September 19 2020)

 
There's a lot to cover here. I went on a week long vacation and got my cousin to feed the ants once, halfway the holiday. I left 4 emergency test tubes of water in the outworld, just in case their nests dried out.

On the morning that I was supposed to leave, I noticed dozens of ants walking over the desk!
I went into full damage control mode and scooped up as many as I could with pieces of cotton. I found about ~100 escapees in total. A number of ants died during my attempts to plug the leak. Those that fell down and got lost in my room, God have their tiny ant-sized souls.
A number of escaped ants near the 3D nest:
 



The escape was caused by a cottonball that was supposed to plug an exit in their 3D nest. It had become too wet and the workers were chewing on it 24/7. They managed to make a small opening in it. I have now taped the holes shut.
I am very lucky that I extensively fed the colony the night before, so they didn't have much reason to escape and there were only a few outside. And I am extremely lucky that they escaped on the morning I was supposed to leave - and not one day later. If this had happened while I was away, most of the colony would have been lost.

The colony as it is looking now: 
 


Also noteworthy to mention is that the queen has now reverted her physogastry. I didn't manage to take a photo, but her massive swollen gaster shrunk in size over past two weeks and she is now the size of a normal niger queen (I'll post a picture in this thread when she shows herself again). Maybe she's sensing the approach of hibernation as my room temperature dropped. Good for her. The queen has laid thousands of eggs this year, she deserves a rest!

Lastly their new vertical nest is almost finished. It's not the same nest as in Update 31, but a new slightly smaller one
I had bought a dremel tool a few months ago, but I can't find it anywhere in my house anymore, so I had to carve it with a drill and a screwdriver (blisters)
 

Edited by Wegmier, September 18 2020 - 3:54 PM.

[ANTdrew]

Just last night I noticed a big pile of shredded cotton under a hole I had plugged with cotton in my Crematogasters’ outworld. I promptly replaced it with a recently freed up rubber stopper I had. It felt so good to foil their latest escape attempt. Muahahahaha!!!

Edited by ANTdrew, September 18 2020 - 4:31 PM.

[Wegmier]

Update 35: A new home (September 22 2020)

 
The new vertical nest is finally done. The watering system didn't exactly work out the way I hoped it would. There's a small breach in the glue layer around the water reservoir, allowing water to pour out instead of slowly diffusing through the Ytong like I wanted. It's not too bad though, and I'm sure the ants won't care hah. This new home is more of an experiment. I think I'll stick with horizontal nests in the future.

I hooked up the new nest to the ants' outworld. It doesn't have a direct connection to the other 3 nests - instead the ants have to go through the outworld to reach it, kind of making it a satellite nest. Immediately a few workers started exploring this new space. I'm letting the old nests dry out a bit so that more will move.

The finished product:
 

 

Introduction
Left = 30 minutes after conncetion
Right = 12 hours after connection

Edited by Wegmier, October 21 2020 - 5:08 AM.

[Wegmier]

Update 36: Fridge time (October 21 2020)

 
Hibernation has come. Over the past few weeks I dropped the temperature in my room. Yesterday I finally finished relocating this colony into the fridge! It was a challenge removing and re-connecting the tubing without having too many escapees.

The top 3 shelves are for this colony. Next year I'm going to have to stack them.
I also provided the colony with a little outworld so that I can still offer sugarwater during hibernation (not a necessity, but just in case)

 

The new vertical nest filled up nicely too:



They will be going into hibernation with thousands of larvae this year. This pile below is like 2% of the total amount of larvae, many rooms are stacked with them:

Edited by Wegmier, October 21 2020 - 5:19 AM.

[Kaelwizard]

This is insane! The nest looks awesome too!

Edited by Kaelwizard, October 22 2020 - 9:04 AM.

[Wegmier]

Update 37: Hibernation Update (December 5 2020)

The colony has been in the fridge for a month and two weeks now.

At one point I had accidentally set the fridgerator temperature too low. It dropped close to freezing (0,5 °C), oops
This didn't seem to harm the colony and hibernation is still going smoothly.

Death:
The colony is dumping dead workers in their small hibernation-outworld. A lot of these workers were probably already old or weak when the colony went into hibernation. Many succumb to the cold. The shriveled dark yellow things are dead larvae:



In hibernation, workers stack the larvae into huge (1.5cm - 2cm tall) piles. Probably to help them with moisture?:

Edited by Wegmier, December 4 2020 - 6:04 PM.

[Antkeeper01]

amazing

[Ants_Dakota]

WOW! that is a ton of growth! how much does that colony eat!!!

[RushmoreAnts]

At one point I had accidentally set the fridgerator temperature too low. It dropped close to freezing (0,5 °C), oops
This didn't seem to harm the colony and hibernation is still going smoothly.

Yes, temperate ants are very resilient in the cold. I myself feel comfortable in keeping my ants only a few degrees (couple degrees C) above freezing all the time.
 

[Ants_Dakota]

 

At one point I had accidentally set the fridgerator temperature too low. It dropped close to freezing (0,5 °C), oops
This didn't seem to harm the colony and hibernation is still going smoothly.

Yes, temperate ants are very resilient in the cold. I myself feel comfortable in keeping my ants only a few degrees (couple degrees C) above freezing all the time.
 

 

mine range from 38F to 55F(trying not to let them get to 55F right now)

[RushmoreAnts]

Yeah, to me 35-39 is preferable. Anything above that and they're still fairly active and even in their outworlds.

[Ants_Dakota]

Yeah, to me 35-39 is preferable. Anything above that and they're still fairly active and even in their outworlds.

yup. mine are active right now. i need to get them that heating pad so they can hibernate outside.

[RushmoreAnts]

My garage is insulated, so it stays warm enough for their good health, and besides I have them in a cooler.