383 replies to this topic

[Serafine]

Nest pictures from April 2nd. At around that time I plugged in the heating cables and also started to water the nests again as can be seen by the condensation in some places.













Bigger batches of brood and packets of eggs started to appear.













The roach farm was developing nicely as well.



Which was a good thing as the ants started to develop more appetite.



Shrimpies!
They even took some of them home to feed the brood.









Here's a nice shot of a worker guarding the nest entrance next to her rear leg.



The crystallizing definitely got worse...

 

[Serafine]

A rare picture of the queen (April 9th). She's quite hard to find lately and moving a lot between different nest parts.



When taking pictures of some workers in the feeding outworld I noticed that there's an increasing number of very dark workers lately. Many of them have almost black upper thorax sides, I'm not sure if these are the very old workers increasingly darkening over the years or offspring of different males with different coloration.

This major worker has sort of a color shift from black to dark red on it's upper thorax scales.


This major worker's upper side is almost entirely black.


This major is a sort of in-between state with black scale tips and a reddish lower/rear thorax part.


Eating roaches again.



The nest outworld "water" tubes (April 22nd). There's an enormous amount of small larvae at the back end of the tubes.






The tubes covered.



The eggs have turned into piles of small larvae now but there's also new eggs.







The outworlds on the far end of the setup are now occasionally getting some food as well so the ants there don't get completely bored.



Here you can see how they're systematically chewing through the roaches.





Another major, here you can see the hairs quite well.





These are the most recent nest pictures from April 22nd. Yes, that means they're over 2 weeks old by now but hey, I might make another update sooner than usual.





 

[Serafine]

This is what's left of roaches when they're really hungry.





A week ago there was a period of really nice weather and that electric fly swatter came in very handy. Here they're gathering on a roasted fly.



I tried to feed them red sugar water but unfortunately they didn't like it much.



Here's a picture of the complete setup.







I finally fixed the outer tubing bridge, it's now mostly flat which makes it a lot easier to walk through, especially for the older workers and the majors.



"We're going on a journey..." - here's one of the rather rare group recruitings, a small pack of ants moving together frequently waiting for each other while they travel along.







This is what a major worker can do to a mealworm. The minors usually can't cut into the thick mealworm exoskeletons but the majors rip right through them.





They somehow managed to empty this feeder with a single weekend. Usually it lasts for around 7-10 days.

 

[Serafine]

More Shrimpies.





So I decided to clear out my freezer and one of the things that popped were those frozen blocks of red mosquito larvae. Last time I tried those the ants didn't really like them, probably because they turned into a sticky goo rather quickly. So this time I took a tea sieve and some hot water and washed off all the algae, then put them into a small dish. The process is kind of a mess but the result... speaks for itself.











They Myrmica loved them as well.



Another roach for the workers in far far away.



The Myrmica surely love their roaches, too.





They turned their beautiful rock into a garbage dump.



More roaches.









And another load of red mozzy larvae.



The Myrmica got a new load of sugar water



And some cat food (egg sufflé with chicken). They've been sitting on it for 3 days now and I don't think they will leave before every little scrap is gone.



The Camponotus got the same cat food and for the first time in like 5 months they're actually interested. Hopefully there will be more pupae soon.

 

[ANTdrew]

Amazing stuff, Serafine! Can you post the link again to the frames you mentioned for aquariums? Would they ship to America?

[Serafine]

The frames are from antstore, they are available in different sizes.

https://www.antstore...rena-frame-249/

 

I have no idea if they ship to America but I'm fairly sure if you can find someone familiar with working with glass you can probably have them produced for cheaper than the import would cost.

They're essentially just four rectangular glass sheets glued together, I can even give you the measurements if required.

[ANTdrew]

Thanks! Seems like Crematogaster could grip on the seams, though. They can grip anything.

[RushmoreAnts]

Wow. How large do you think the colony is?

[Spazmops]

 

That thief ant colony is MASSIVE!

No it's not. It's actually a pretty tiny colony (Solenopsis fugax can grow to over 100.000 workers although I'm not sure if that's possible with just one queen, they're usually very polygynous). All of my colonies are still very young (the Camponotus colony is maybe 10% of the size it can reach if not less).
I don't wanna sound too niggling but comments like these make me wonder how many people actually keep their colonies beyond the second or third year. I rarely see people posting pictures of adult colonies - yes there are species that only have small colonies but even an adult 2000 worker Formica fusca colony is a rare sight.
If people get impressed by juvenile colonies something with the antkeeping community feels a bit wrong to me.
 

So is the camponotus colony... Any tips on keeping camponotus?

Generally you need a lot of patience, especially at the start they grow really slow. But there are many different species of Camponotus which are all kinda different and this isn't really the place discuss them in all detail. Just open a new topic in general antkeeping and I will comment on that.

 

I recently caught a Formica fusca queen, and I intend on keeping the colony until the queen passes. I started my journal on it yesterday

[Spazmops]

 

Phone glitched and posted what I said twice 

Edited by Spazmops, July 27 2020 - 9:33 AM.

[Serafine]

Wow. How large do you think the colony is?

Probably something around 15k workers - maybe a bit less, maybe a lot more.
It's really hard to tell, they hide well, dug chambers into the second large tank and are hiding brood and workers where I can't see them (like inside the hollow rock of the second large tank).
 

I recently caught a Formica fusca queen, and I intend on keeping the colony until the queen passes. I started my journal on it yesterday

I wish you luck and hope your queen lives a long and fruitful life

We really need more big colony ant cities. They are entirely different beasts compared to 1-2 year old founding settlements.

[Serafine]

Buckle up dear readers - this one is going to be a real biggy.

 

 

Okay... so this happened. Yes, they made their feeder leak.

You can see where the ground is soaked with water as the wet substrate is darker than the dry areas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, so I cleaned it, refilled it, put it back in... and they actually made it worse.

 

 

 

 

Then they started to remove the substrates around obstacles like rocks and the shrimp tubes.

 

 

 

I added some seramis to soak up the water which, well, didn't really work.

 

 

 

They just built on top if it.

 

 

 

Even the ground around the artificial plants got soaked.

 

 

 

It looks dry but that's just the surface layer.

 

 

 

They removed everything down to the glass...

 

 

 

...and created some nice hole and chambers.

 

 

 

 

There's even tiny brood there now.

 

 

 

 

Substrate pebbles everywhere.

 

 

[Serafine]

Yes, they made a real mess.

 

 

 

Thankfully the part of the tank closest to the window wasn't affected at all.

 

 

 

Here you can see their work in all it's glory.

 

 

 

They really love to group around their new "buildings" though.

 

 

 

Looks like they left some of the substrate below the shrimp tubes so they can still crawl under it.

 

 

 

 

Eggs!

 

 

 

More brood. They re-stocked.

 

 

 

More eggs!

 

 

 

On to the 2nd outworld...

 

 

Tasty roach.

 

10

 

 

Long time no urea, always has them tripping over each other.

 

 

 

Freshly molted male roach for dinner today.

 

 

 

The sugar cube experiment wasn't exactly successful. They ignored it while it was dry and when I put water on it it was too much and half the cube collapsed.

 

 

 

A few years ago these wasps started to pop up here. They're invasives from southern Europe that build small nesting tubes made from clay to house one larva and a bunch of dead spiders as food. I caught a few of them that were particularly annoying but left the rest unharmed. The are actually super skilled navigators that can fly in and out of houses through tiny gaps like open angled windows and they love to nest on shelves between stuff where it's safe and not so hot.

 

 

 

More roaches to chew. I have so many of them by now they make up most of the ants' diet.

 

 

 

I needed an additional feeder as they large byformica feeder started to get crowded but couldn't really get any stuff due to Covid so I made a makeshift feeder out of small glass bottles I had lying around anyway.

It works. Even the huge majors can use this one.

 

 

 

 

 

Only downside was they started to put debris on some of the openings and it started to leak.

Putting it into a small dish helped.

 

 

 

The rock gets quite crowded at night.

 

 

 

 

 

[Serafine]

More roaches to eat.

Somehow they don't like the big ones that much. I guess the exoskeleton is too hard, should probably cut them up.

 

 

 

Few weeks later, another load of urea water. Usual crowd, less deaths.

Gonna continue tests with very low concentrations.

 

 

 

Worker bringing home the loot!

 

 

 

So... um. They started to carry all the Seramis into the feeding outworld and threw it on the trashpile.

 

 

 

Sunbathing ants.

If you look closely at the background you can see what they were up to next...

 

 

 

White roach - they really LOVE the ones that just freshly molted. They are so soft and easy to cut up.

They're basically gone within a couple of hours.

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, they brought all the substrate they didn't want into the feeding outworld and spread it all over the place.

Oh, and they're eating waxworms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tasty desert locust. That major had to put in quite some effort to get that leg off.

 

 

 

 

 

And a few crickets for more diversity. We're very diverse here, everyone gets a chance to get eaten.

 

 

 

 

Same locust, next day.

 

 

 

More white (well, more like greyish) roach.

 

 

Edited by Serafine, August 1 2020 - 9:18 AM.

[Serafine]

Got lucky and found two at the same time.

 

 

 

They really didn't like this one much.

 

 

 

White mosquito larvae in a cup. Quite popular but also really disgusting.

Need to find a better way to palette this kind of food.

 

 

 

Major standing guard on the shell outpost.

 

 

 

Another big major. Those are so cute!

 

5

 

 

Picture taken after a 2 hour cleaning session. They had made a new trash pile (actually they built this one up for quite some time) by pushing garbage under that rock. Like, under all of it.

They couldn't even walk through the tunnel anymore.

It started to smell so it had to go. The ants were not amused and eh, they didn't give up their trash that easily this time. It was quite an annoying endeavour.

 

 

 

The dish really helped a lot. No more throwing dirt at the feeder.

 

 

 

Mediterranean cricket, omnomnom.

 

 

 

They like to walk on the glass sides when it gets colder in the evening.

 

 

 

They recently rejected most of the cat food but seemed to love this one.

Well, they mostly liked the jelly and licked the meaty stuff until it was dry.

 

10

 

 

Food exchange across a canyon.

 

 

 

More of that tasty cat food.

 

 

 

There's definitely some underground chamber network here.

That whole waxworm disappeared into the tunnel.

 

 

 

 

This cheap makeshift feeder is growing increasingly popular.

 

15

 

 

There are often less ants at it but it still empties a lot faster than the large byformica one.

I guess it's because the really huge majors can't access the tower and when they come they soak up truckloads of sugar water.

 

 

 

Got lucky and caught one of those huge blue meat flies.

The ants love those. They're very meaty.

 

 

 

 

Just gave them a waxworm and one of the majors came out to see what the fuss was about.

 

 

 

More roaches to eat. Look at all those legs the ants cut off.

 

[Serafine]

Some really nice close-ups of workers filled with sugary sweets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lucky shot of the majesty herself.

 

 

 

Oh, this can't be good...

 

 

 

Well, turns out it wasn't an outbreak. It was actually an attempted inbreak.

One of the workers got outside, probably during the long cleaning session, and tried to get back to the colony.

It ended up in the nest hydration chamber where it tried to dig back into the nest for hours by removing the seramis.

 

 

This is the culprit, the worker in the middle below the two others.

They gave her a really good licking after I put her back in.

 

 

 

 

A princess!

Not sure if it's the one from last year or a new one. I never found a dead queen so who knows.

 

 

10

 

 

 

And now for something really new...

 

First male!

 

 

 

 

15

 

 

They look so different from all the workers, more like a gnat that an actual ant with their super long legs, slim bodies and agile movements.

You can really see that those are built for flying more than for walking. They can run pretty fast though.

 

 

 

 

 

Nest pics!

 

Interestingly they only use about a third of the available space to store brood, no idea why.

There's also tons of brood in the outworld so this isn't all of it.

 

 

[Serafine]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Queen getting fed (it's actually the first time ever I caught that on camera).

 

 

 

From this angle you can really see the typical Camponotus thorax shape even on the queen.

 

 

 

 

More brood in the nest test tubes.

 

 

10

 

 

 

Nest outworld tubes early June.

 

 

 

 

 

Nest outworld tubes a few days ago.

They put a mountain of pebbles on top of the cardboard sheet and weren't really happy when i removed it. So possibly no more pictures of this in the near future (yes, they rebuilt the mountain).

 

15

 

 

Feeding outworld (second large outworld) tubes. Only one has brood and most of it seems to be pupae .

 

 

 

The Dubia roaches are doing great. Possibly a bit too great.

They are really starting to outgrow the ants' appetite, although lately the ants have stepped up their game and are currently eating 5-6 big roaches per night (not the super big adult ones though).

 

 

 

 

The IKEA Godmorgon boxes finally arrived - took them just over 2 months.

The smaller ones have now been converted into waxworm breeding tanks (currently there's 3 with different food mixes and one with only wax and a small bit of cellulose sponge).

Let's hope they don't start to mold.

 

[Serafine]

And here's the big ones, prepared with substrate.

 

 

 

Had to remove one of the tubes after putting it in because the tubing part turned out too short.

This is what the relation between tube size and hole should look like.

Put the end of the vinyl tubing into hot water so it becomes soft and wobbly, then push it in. Once it's cooled down you basically have to cut it off to remove it.

This one was still somewhat warm so I could remove it in one piece.

 

 

 

The "end of the world" box is the end of the world - again.

 

 

 

Put some bark pieces into one of the big boxes, now there's usually 30-40 ants hiding under it during the day.

 

 

 

First workers exploring the new terrain.

 

 

 

 

The other box got some fresh test tubes. There's quite a lot of ants there but I can't see them because they're hiding between the tubes and the room's wall.

 

 

 

 

Now there's two "end of the world" boxes.

 

 

 

 

 

The new one is standing in front of the old one though so it looks a lot nicer.

 

 

 

The complete setup.

 

 

 

 

With directions.

 

 

 

 

FIN!

Edited by Serafine, August 1 2020 - 10:43 AM.

[Serafine]

Full Setup.







February '22.







May '22.

Edited by Serafine, May 10 2022 - 12:55 PM.

[Serafine]

Older '22 pics.

Edited by Serafine, May 10 2022 - 12:53 PM.