18 replies to this topic

[Antkeeper014]

I've actually had this colony for several weeks now, but I never had the initiative to make a journal featuring them until now. So here you go I guess.

First, a little info on the species. M. viridium is primarily found in pine barrens and pine scrubs in the eastern United states. In the Northeast, they often replace the rather common M. emarginatum and M. minimum in areas with pure sand, while the less picky monos are willing to nest in less ideal soil conditions. They are predominantly found frequently throughout southeastern Massachusetts, Long Island to coastal NJ, and throughout the Florida pine scrubs. Albeit they are most commonly populated in these select disjunctive locations, they have been collected sparsely throughout most of the United States, excluding the northern/western areas. I found these gals in my local pine barren (same place as the P. pilifera) in Central Massachusetts, which is odd since they rarely make it that far inland this far north.

Anyways, they pretty much dominate the entire barren, and it's been suggested by a friend that they aren't actually composed of multiple individual colonies, but one super colony cooperating across the entire territory with hundreds of egg-laying queens. This would explain how during the collection process I combined several colonies without any conflict. 

I ended up collecting 6 queens, and god knows how many workers. However many I got, they have doubled in population by now, and show signs of doubling once more in a month or two. I'd guesstimate they are at 800-1200 workers as of now? I'm not entirely sure, they are hard to count and I'm horrible at counting large numbers of ants . They currently occupy a THA Mini-hearth, which I doubt will contain them for more than a couple months, maybe 3-4 max. The brood pile is the largest I've ever had with any species I've kept, and the queens are laying a ridiculous amount to keep up, and they are eating a ridiculous amount of food in proportion. I've had to start breeding banded crickets as they exhausted my fruit fly cultures in 2 weeks. 

So no pictures yet, hopefully I'll take some tomorrow if I'm not too busy, but that's all for now.

Edited by Antkeeper014, May 27 2021 - 6:47 PM.

[ANTdrew]

Awesome! Finally a bit of Monomorium resurgence on here!

[Antkeeper014]

Update 06/14/21

They are doing great, no complaints. They eat like champs, and grow like weeds. They’ve easily doubled in size since my original post, and continue to grow at a rapid rate.




Sorry for the poor quality, there were taken at 1600 ISO since I can’t use my flash while photographing minihearths.

Imgur link for some video of the colony:
https://imgur.com/gallery/dBQIkbq
Anyways, gonna keep this one to a short n sweet update, that’s all for now.

[MinigunL5]

How much do you feed them every day?

[Antkeeper014]

How much do you feed them every day?

2 adult crickets every other day, with a sugar water droplet about the size of an m&m every 3-4 days.

[ANTdrew]

I’d highly recommend THA or byFormica liquid feeders to prevent drownings and the need to renew sugars frequently.

[MinigunL5]

I’d highly recommend THA or byFormica liquid feeders to prevent drownings and the need to renew sugars frequently.

I also have Monomorium viridum and I tried byFormica feeder with them and they didn't seem to use it.

[yibsi]

I've never seen a monomorium viridium queen before, she kind of reminds me of a solonopsis queen with her body shape, they look really happy, congrats!   

[ANTdrew]

I’d highly recommend THA or byFormica liquid feeders to prevent drownings and the need to renew sugars frequently.

I also have Monomorium viridum and I tried byFormica feeder with them and they didn't seem to use it.

The THA style with mesh may be best, but my M. minimum use byFormica feeders with gusto.

[Antkeeper014]

Update 08/01/21

 

Unfortunately I am not able to take any new pictures due to their habit of making large smears of feces across the glass, a similar behavior that most Pogonomyrmex tend to exhibit. Nearly the entire glass is a white smudge of crap now...

On a different note, they are doing incredible. Their brood pile continues to grow to insane proportions, and they have since exceeded 2k in numbers. Soon they will require new housing accommodations albeit I have no clue what I'll move them into. I'm slightly disappointed they didn't produce any alates this year, I was really hoping they would potentially make some ergatoid queens and inbreed. I have high hopes they will next year though.

[Antkeeper014]

This is just a quick video I made of the colony, as well as some footage of the wild population were I collected them.

[Antkeeper014]

Update September 11th
 
This colony has surpassed my greatest expectations for their assumed growth, and they continue to consistently grow at a stupidly fast rate. I'm not sure when this colony is going to plateau in size but it is absolutely not anywhere in the near future. Just from the last update this colony has easily grown in size by 20-35%, within a two week time span   

I'd estimate this colony to be around 2.6-2.8k workers now? I'm not even sure at this point...

Their growth has caused some unexpected problems. Just two days ago they decided to start storing their extra larvae in the outworld of their mini hearth... I suppose I should have expanded their formicarium long ago but never took action on the situation. I finally connected a second mini hearth which they instantly expanded into without any hesitation. I'm somewhat concerned to how much larger they will continue to grow, as they currently have 5 queens and are capable of inbreeding.

[ANTdrew]

Monomorium don’t play!

[Antkeeper014]

[That_one_ant_guy]

Update?

Edited by That_one_ant_guy, October 6 2021 - 6:24 AM.

[Antkeeper014]

Update?

Update coming tomorrow, and it sure is a big one!

[Antkeeper014]

Update 11/4/21

Sorry for the lack of updates, school has been keeping me VERY busy for the past few weeks. Although despite this my Monomorium have persisted to grow at insane rates, to such an extent that I've needed to move them into a tubs and tubes setup. Their previous connected mini-hearth system was becoming a bit too cramped, in addition to the fact that they were absolutely trashing them. Both hearths have since been thoroughly washed to my best effort but the glass remains to be covered in excrement and other yucky stuff  

So on to their new and improved set up. I had been lucky enough to make a trip to the container store last month, and got several small clear acrylic containers. So, equipped with my new stock of outworlds, I constructed a tubs and tubes set up to accommodate their massive growth spike. I really love the look of these setups and they are extremely affordable and easy to make. Just a thin layer of white sand (or any color, I prefer white, IMO the Australian red sand looks pretty cool too.), add the test tubes, and you're done.

So now for their growth report. I actually wanted to make a graph representing their size over the time I've had them because I want to show y'all how much they've grown. As of now, November 4th 2021, they are hovering around 3.1-3.3k. Now let's go all the way back to April 10th, when they we're at 500-600 individuals. that's an increase in growth by about 6x over the past 7 months. Crazy to think about.

Anyways I'll have some pictures to follow top with sometime later today, but for now that's all I have. Just want to give a big thanks to anyone that's still here today reading these updates on my viridium! Makes me happy to see you guys enjoying this.

[Antkeeper01]

Update 11/4/21

Sorry for the lack of updates, school has been keeping me VERY busy for the past few weeks. Although despite this my Monomorium have persisted to grow at insane rates, to such an extent that I've needed to move them into a tubs and tubes setup. Their previous connected mini-hearth system was becoming a bit too cramped, in addition to the fact that they were absolutely trashing them. Both hearths have since been thoroughly washed to my best effort but the glass remains to be covered in excrement and other yucky stuff  

So on to their new and improved set up. I had been lucky enough to make a trip to the container store last month, and got several small clear acrylic containers. So, equipped with my new stock of outworlds, I constructed a tubs and tubes set up to accommodate their massive growth spike. I really love the look of these setups and they are extremely affordable and easy to make. Just a thin layer of white sand (or any color, I prefer white, IMO the Australian red sand looks pretty cool too.), add the test tubes, and you're done.

So now for their growth report. I actually wanted to make a graph representing their size over the time I've had them because I want to show y'all how much they've grown. As of now, November 4th 2021, they are hovering around 3.1-3.3k. Now let's go all the way back to April 10th, when they we're at 500-600 individuals. that's an increase in growth by about 6x over the past 7 months. Crazy to think about.

Anyways I'll have some pictures to follow top with sometime later today, but for now that's all I have. Just want to give a big thanks to anyone that's still here today reading these updates on my viridium! Makes me happy to see you guys enjoying this.

pics?

[Antkeeper014]

Pictures & video of this colony below:

This is a chart I wanted to make displaying their growth, with the X axis being the month (3 is March, 4 is April, etc.), and the Y Axis being the total population.



Just thought It’d be cool to visualize how much they’ve grown over the time we’ve cared for them.

I also took some video of them, which you can check out below.

https://imgur.com/a/Ck7zPV8

https://imgur.com/a/ph7CHDw