Hello All,

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I have a thread with some questions in the general forum but figure this might get more attention here.

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I am currently living in Peru, and like everyone else we are stuck in quarantine...much more strict here than anywhere else. But over the last couple weeks I've managed to find 2 Atta sexdens queens from last Novembers flights.

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Colony 1 has a fungus garden the about the size of a tennis ball, and has produced it's first soldiers. They currently live in an icecream bucket filled with sand, charcoal, and soil surrounded by a water moat to keep them from roaming all over the room. I basically dug them a starter chamber, dumped everyone in, and then covered the chamber with a plastic tupper lid and some soil. I've had them for several weeks now, and I think the garden has grown by at least a third since I collected them. When the weather is warm they get leaves, of everything I've tried aroid leaves(probably Syngonium sp,) is their favorite. They will also take paper moistened with sweat or urine.

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Colony 2 is a queen, a few dozen workers, and a fungus garden the size of a smooshed grape. They are living in a plastic deli container with a petri dish ontop, and all this is inside another plastic container filled with sand to maintain humidity. I hope to maintain this colony so I can watch the queen for as long as possible. I've had them for a few days and they have fixed up their fungus garden. I've tried putting little bits of aroid leaves and toilet paper moistened with urine around the fungus gardens, but so far they seem content working with what they've got and have put the offerings aside. 

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I've attached a photo of the first colony, since today I replaced the foggy plastic lid they had built their garden under with a clearerpetri dish window.

Will be following this closely. Interesting to see the hybrid approach with both containers and sand. I'd be interested to see more pictures of that second setup.

Photo1:

Queen of small colony

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Photo 2

big colony workers processing a leaf fragment. They hold it between a bunch of ants and jigsaw it into pieces, which are later worked into the fungus. 

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Photo 3

small colony setup. Basically big plastic container filled with wet sand, smaller plastic container with a thin layer of soil, covered with a petri dish.

Very cool! The paper soaked it sweat or urine... (never something I would have thought to try  ) 

The big colony has grown a bit I believe. They now can make a whole syngonium leaf dissapear in a few hours. I'm hoping they don't outgrow that little bucket for the time being...hope is to make them a big glass terraria. 

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I took some video of the tiny colony

https://www.instagra.../p/CBWJpFNgomX/

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A combination of warmer temperatures and me poking them I think made the health of the fungus suffer on the small colony the last few days ...it turned a lighter color which apparently is due to the ants not feeding it enough(old/not growing fungus turns a light brown, healthy fungus is a grey green). The number of workers also seems either the same or slightly less. I decided to move them into a smaller version of the big colonies setup, but with a piece of bark instead of a petri dish window and in a larger bucket filled with moist sawdust. We've started getting dry season weather(30's during the day) so I think these small colonies will need all the help they can get to thermoregulate effectively. I don't think a classic lab setup will be possible here due to this.