8 replies to this topic

[Mr.Fish]

Hi all!

I've been keeping this (my first) colony of L.Niger for basically 10 months now. Recently I made them a new test tube as the previous one's cotton was starting to get dark and moldy.

I sadly decided to force them into their new home after basically a week of waiting and everything was looking nice and perfect for a while after that. And, in my enthusiasm, I failed to notice all the condensation that formed on the "deepest" section of my test tube.

   

 

Last week I had to go on a little trip so I fed my colony abundantly and I left home on the 3rd.
Yesterday I finally got home and a terrifying sight was awaiting me.

   

 

 

As you all can see there is now a lot of water on the second portion of the tube, the brood is all scattered, the queen retreated to the dryer section of the nest, some pupae seem to be definitely too wet and it seems like one portion of the extremely wet cotton is covered in ant excrement. I'm afraid some of the pupare are already rotting.

 

What should I do now? I'm afraid relocating the colony again this quickly could cause too much stress and kill the queen but it's also clear that if left in there the entire colony won't last long.

Thank you all in advance for your attention and sorry again for the quality of my pictures and my lack of experience.

[IdioticMouse26]

I think the only way would be relocate your ants. The risk of them dying of stress here is bigger than dying of stress because of moving. Also, the rotting brood will cause mold infections. Definetly move them as fast as you can and I'm sure they'll move quickly because of the condition in their nest and when they move, try to keep them in the calmest enviroment you could find. 

[Mr.Fish]

I'll do that as soon as I can.

Quick (and probably dumb) question though: how much of the cotton should actually be behind the water line when making a new test tube?

[IdioticMouse26]

I would suggest you do a decent amount, as ants are prone to digging into cottons. Also, when I set up a testube setup, I push in the cotton until the water line is just below the face of the cotton. Don't drench the whole thing too much when your first putting them in, water will seep in later and this helps prevent future leaks. 

When your moving them, to give them the least amount of stress, put two testubes(one with the ants in and one that's empty) in a containor of choice, place them, unplug the testubes and put the containor somewhere dark. This will be the most stress-free method as it does not force the ants to move but can do so by their own choice. The downside is that they might not move at all or take a long time. If it takes too long, you can always shine lights on the testube with ants and keep the other one dark. If the leaking situation gets critical and they don't move, you'll have to do forced allocation by dumping the ants out. Ants will try to find cover as soon as they can when their colony is exposed so they'll move in to any testube they see.

 

Helpful video about testube setups: 

 

Feel free to ask more questions!

[Mr.Fish]

Ok, so, I was able to finally make them move, it took them a long time and it probably was too late tho, as they refused to take half of the pupae (the wet and probably already dead ones) into their new setup. And when I did it for them they treated them as if they were trash that needed to be disposed of.
Now the queen has laid a new small pile of eggs but her abdomen is pretty thin and the colony seems to be eating even less than they were before.

 

I don't know if I should be concerned or not.

I mean, I know young colonies have strange eating habits and it's hard to see when the food has actually been eaten, but I'm pretty sure they're seriously not touching their food and I even changed it a couple of times when it got too dry or oxidized.

Edited by Mr.Fish, June 22 2024 - 3:42 AM.

[NotAxo]

They should be fine, they'll eat the food when they need.just keep changing the food whenever you feel right. They should always be given sugar water, and protein should be given sometimes. I have a founding colony like that too. It has 5 nanitics now, and they are all tugging at the cotton like crazy. When I let them out, they covered the entire opening with the largest grains of sand they could get.

[NotAxo]

For a colony that small, I would recommend sugar water ever 3 days, and protein once every week, but you should wait for more experienced people to answer that as lasius Niger isn't found near me

[IdioticMouse26]

From what I see, I think it's because there are no larvae. Ants can't eat solid food, only their larvae can, and full grown ants require less food then developing ones. Because the colony recently lost a lot of their brood, their need for food also went down. 

[Mr.Fish]

Phew! Thank you all for the advice!