7 replies to this topic

[Tangerine]

Hello, i am new to this forum and fairly new to keeping ants past the founding stage. I have tried a few years ago with a few solenopsis queens i caught but they never got past the founding stage. Well 1-2 months ago i got a technomyrmex queen with 3 workers from a keeper here. Although he kept them with not too much water and now most of it has evaporated. I have connected them to a new test tube with water but they are not having it.
I covered the new one and let light in the old one but they only checked out the other one for a bit and came back to the old one.
I also tried that with a combination with a bit of warmth of a heat mat on the new one and they are in an air conditioned room thinking they might get chilly
I tried the opposite thinking they like the cold and tried no ac no heat.
What should i try next? The water is almost completely dry now.

[AntsMaryland]

Personally, I dump my colonies into new test tubes. However, if you don't want to do that, you can take a slightly damp q-tip and manually coax the workers into a new test tube. For the brood, make a rolling motion (lightly) over each brood entity and it should stick, to get it off, roll it the other way.

[voylin]

My advice: Just wait, ants can be very stuborn and take a loooonnnngggg time to move. If they don't move than it's because they don't feel it's necessary yet.

[Zeiss]

If you're comfortable with it, you can just dump them.  Ants won't usually be hurt by it unless you're extremely aggressive.  Another thing that can help is if you have a metal/glass funnel and coat it with fluon.  Ants will just slide anywhere you want them, haha.

[Kaelwizard]

If you're comfortable with it, you can just dump them. Ants won't usually be hurt by it unless you're extremely aggressive. Another thing that can help is if you have a metal/glass funnel and coat it with fluon. Ants will just slide anywhere you want them, haha.

I can picture it lol.

[Tangerine]

Alright ill make sure to wait for a bit since i noticed the queen stopped laying after coming to me, but has started again i didn’t wanna disturb them too much.

[cocdeshijie]

dumping worked best for me no matter the colony size

[Formiga]

Here are some hints on moving ants between test tubes:

 

 

I don't use glass test tubes because I couldn't find any in shops around, so I'm using plastic 20ml syringes, just its tube and it's working enough. My biggest complaint is their size, it's around 1/3 of a test tube, so it holds little water and I've had already tried to move them into fresh ones (I had a queen without eggs, so I've dumped her) and in other tubes I've added some more water from the back of the syringe but it stresses them (and me!) and it's risky as you can easily drown the brood, so I prefer moving them.

 

From my noob ants knowledge and experience   it seems they know what's better for themselves.

I've had my 2 colonies with nanitics placed into outworlds with both of them having moved out of the syringe into the new setups I've given them (a formicarium and a small syringe with water and a rubber tube as home). Both colonies moved the next night without me doing nothing.

 

I still have 5 Formica Fusca queens in syringes, yet without nanitics. In my noob curiosity I was checking them once or twice a week and that stressed them to the point of eating their brood. Only months later I found out they could behave this way...

I've tried moving 2 of them into a fresh new syringe with water and I've even left the old syringes with the needle hole open so the water from the cotton would evaporate faster. I've checked them a while ago and none of them has moved into their new homes even after more than one week and I'm guessing the humidity on the old syringes must be low. There again, it seems they know what's better for themselves. I'll just wait until they move or the 1st nanitics are born and then move them into a new place with an outworld.

 

So, the life of someone starting a new colony, the main word: waaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiit.......

(or just f****ng dump them!)

Edited by Formiga, August 28 2021 - 12:39 PM.