First off we have a beautiful Crematogaster sp. I found her on July 1st 2016 at 9pm or so, about 16-20 hours after a storm rolled through. She was hanging onto my kitchen screen (the outside). There is a big light in my backyard that I can't turn off and I decided to look since I found a Camponotus the same night outside my wall. Actually I found a second one near the Crematogaster under the same light a few minutes later as well, but those will be in a different journal of course.
The night I caught her! All I had at the time was Tupperware and have since received some test tubes from my mother who is a chemist. Didn't have cotton or anything either so I used a qtip to provide water for a few days. Don't worry, the test tubes and qtips were new.
This was the night before I got the test tubes. She ditched half of her wings and layed some eggs. I transferred them with her into a test tube the next day. I have no idea if they survived or if she just laid more, but she did immediately go over to them and start cleaning them.
This was today. Looks like a decent amount of eggs and larvae! I'm getting excited!
And this is her water getting low in her original test tube. So I originally taped the new one to her old one, but she left her eggs and seemed to be defensive where the tubes met. Idk if she didn't like the smell of the tape or what, so I set them in yet another Tupperware container and covered the new one. Hopefully she will move her brood into the one that has more water and darkness.
That's all I have for now. I've been researching all the different homemade formicarium and need to decide on something soon. I have no problem spending a little dough on a commercial one, but like diy stuff so I'll try that.
If you see something I've done that doesn't make sense, you've tried and the ants didn't react well, or have overall advice please comment and share your knowledge. I'm here to learn as well as show off my lovely ladies.
Edited by floam90s13, July 22 2016 - 10:25 AM.
