306 replies to this topic

[ANTdrew]

El fungi es grande.

I think you’d say, el hongo esta grande.

[RushmoreAnts]

El fungi es grande.

I think you’d say, el hongo esta grande.

No. Las hormigas y el hongo son grandes.

[Kaelwizard]

fungus 是很大。

[CheetoLord02]

Update 1/30

Since last time you saw them, the fungus has once again fallen over. Granted, not to it's current position, I did move it a bit to centralize it some more, but it fell. They have now stopped clearing fungus from the bottom, but that's what made it collapse in the first place; they removed the base and it became unstable and fell. Still, as always, the colony is totally fine, and are growing their fungus just like they always have before.
 

One somewhat interesting thing they're doing is that they seem to be holding chunks of fungus on the walls, and feeding those chunks. I have no idea where this came from or why they're doing it, but it's kinda cool to see. I'm very interested to see what comes of it.
 

[Manitobant]

I would honestly keep the fungus on its side and let the ants expand outward.

[CheetoLord02]

Update 3/2

We're back!

Fear not, Formiculture, the Atta are still going strong. Or, more accurately I should say going strong again. Not too long after I posted the last update, I began feeding my Atta a new food source; white rose petals. They really loved the new food and it was very easy to get a large number of it, so I just kept feeding it to them. Then, all of a sudden one day, they started killing off huge amounts of their fungus and stopped cutting almost entirely. Essentially the entire garden except for the new growths was discarded. They were still left with a sizeable chunk, but it was extremely concerning. I figured the issue may have been the new food, so I stopped offering it as soon as I realized it may have been the issue and went back to feeding them good food like R. indica flowers, clovers, oranges, and Oxalis sp. Since then, they've started to recover, and are now cutting quite a lot and growing the fungus very quickly once again. They've got quite a way to go before reaching where they were before, but I think this roadblock isn't the end of the world. I've also started growing my own plants for them (Oxalis sp.), but the process is pretty slow, so I still have to go out and collect plants basically every day.
 

 

 

A great sight to see once again is piles of food that they've collected just waiting to be processed. It never gets old.
 

 

 

One good thing is that the queen seemed to be pretty unphased by the whole thing, and the colony has quite a lot of brood. Even when the fungus was small there was so much brood that it was exploding out of basically all sides. With the new boost in cutting activity I hope to also see a pretty big boost in worker numbers as well.
 

Edited by CheetoLord02, March 2 2021 - 9:35 AM.

[antsandmore]

큰 곰팡이 (Big fungus)

[Antkeeper01]

Beautiful as usual Cheeto

[BADANT]

Very useful information, thanks for sharing as usual

[Canadant]

Such a fantastic journal. Do you keep the garden covered at all or are they not bothered by the light?

[CheetoLord02]

Update 3/6

Until I went to Organ Pipe and saw this species in the wild, my appreciation for how much food they can really go through was pretty limited. While I was feeding them enough before, it was far from what I would have considered "powerfeeding" now. However, as of a few days ago I found a type of large leaf that the ants just love, and it's allowed me to gather large amounts so much more quickly. Since then, I've really been able to appreciate their growth on a level that I'd never really seen before.
 

 

 

All of the black/dark green fungus is from this new type of leaf getting used up. I don't think I've ever seen this much fungus covered in food before.
 

I think at this point it's possible that the fungus will exceed it's previous max size in only a few more days, which is crazy because it's only been strongly bouncing back for a few days.

 

Edited by CheetoLord02, March 6 2021 - 1:51 PM.

[ANTdrew]

Simply amazing.

[NicholasP]

They’re looking good Cheeto!

Edited by NicholasP, April 6 2021 - 3:05 PM.

[CheetoLord02]

Since the last update I didn't really appreciate their growth, since they seem to have finally learned their lesson. Instead of growing only upwards, they've learned to expand out horizontally! So while the fungus has retained a similar shape, it's gotten much larger.
 

 

 

Do you notice it? I gave them a new, clean setup! 
 

 

 

This new setup is made with Ultracal 30, which is much, much tougher than Plaster of Paris which I used previously. Hopefully this new material will be much more resistant to the Atta chewing it to shreds, unlike the last setup.

I also provided a new outworld with a sand-coated Ultracal base, which makes the foraging pictures look a lot better.
 

 

 

Since yesterday's move, they've been pretty busy gathering plant material for the fungus.
 

 

The queen also has a new hole in the fungus that she likes to hide in, although she does come out from time to time to say hi.
 

 

[NPLT]

You could say they finally learned antchitecture 

[NicholasP]

They look so good in that new setup!

[Canadant]

Love the new outworld. The greens really pop.

[CheetoLord02]

Since last update, a surprising amount has happened.

First off, just a few days after last update, I kinda... knocked the setup off my desk.

The ants were totally fine, and the container was pretty much undamaged, but the fungus was... shaken. And relocated to a totally weird position.

This was before the fall
 

And after
 

Now, while nothing was damaged, I really didn't like this position much. The fungus looked sloppy and it was blocking the tube to the trash chamber. So, I took it upon myself to do a bit of rearranging. 

I had always wanted to try this, fungus spread out in a nice layer across the container. I personally think it looks amazing.
 

In doing this I uncovered a significant number of brood chambers, and needless to say I was very surprised at the amount they had. This queen can definitely put in work, as expected. There was even some larvae and pupae that are almost certainly larger than my current largest workers, which is awesome.

Since the rearrangement the colony has been hard at work growing the fungus and rearranging the details to be just how they like. They've also been growing incredibly quickly; this picture was taken today, just 3 days after the last fungus picture here.
 

 

One incredible thing as well is that they've made a huge number of their brood chambers up against the container wall, which allows me to see it for the first time in a long time. Super awesome stuff.
 

[TennesseeAnts]

Great job!

[ZTYguy]

Nice!