102 replies to this topic

[cpman]

 

A It'll be cool to have a colony that isn't invasive lol. 

That'll be quite difficult, as Hawaii has no native ants. You might be able to find some less ubiquitous species like Strumigenys.

 

 

Strumigenys might be tricky to take care of, but they shouldn't be too hard to find. If you can take care of them, you should try to find Leptogenys falcigera, which is also an import to Hawaii.

[SMILEforAnts]

 

 

A It'll be cool to have a colony that isn't invasive lol. 

That'll be quite difficult, as Hawaii has no native ants. You might be able to find some less ubiquitous species like Strumigenys.

 

 

Strumigenys might be tricky to take care of, but they shouldn't be too hard to find. If you can take care of them, you should try to find Leptogenys falcigera, which is also an import to Hawaii.

 

 

Those ants are definitely harder to find, so I'll have to really look around the island for those species. I found a Leptogenys falcigera worker before, so I know where that species is located. I also want to try to find a Pseudomyrmex gracilis colony. But still my main goal is to find a fertile Camponotus variegatus queen since the first one I found wasn't and ended up dead. Maybe I'll look this summer since that's when my family and friends drive around the island and have BBQs. Then I can look around for those species.

 

Anyway, this is a pretty short video update. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to give a snack to my colony and make a video of it. It has been raining the past couple days, and today termites are kind of coming out to fly. I found some live termites in a bucket of water and yeah, here's the video.

 

 

Their alarm response is pretty quick and cool to watch!

 

And then this past Sunday I caught 8 more queens, so current queen count is 64. (:

 

The colony is exploding in numbers now too. It looks like they're gonna outgrow the nest in the next two weeks. I'll have a picture update hopefully this weekend, so for now enjoy the video!

[Tpro4]

awesome sundtack and nice video, what's the song? And that termite that tried to crawl into the nest lol!

[dspdrew]

Nice video. I love feeding large Pheidole colonies.

[Jonathan21700]

Amazing video!

[Vendayn]

SMILEforAnts...I don't think I mentioned it.

 

But, do this if you want. Put a piece of old rotten wood in your ant farm, probably one already eaten up by termites if possible. Or just one with a lot of holes/crevices that is all rottened out and easy to break apart.

 

 

In my ant farm of them, I discovered they make a carton-like material out of it. Exactly the same material Formosan subterranean termites make. 100% the same from what I could tell. Granted, some of your ants will probably move into the wood...but, they'll eventually hollow it out and make "carton" out of it. It is very cool looking. They also I discovered make overground tubes out of soil like termites do.

 

But, my favorite thing they did was they made a sawdust mound (90% sawdust, some sand mixed in and whatever else they put) out of the wood. Which I never seen any ant or termite make a sawdust mound before, it was really interesting. I never got them to do it again, but hopefully my next colony they do the same.

 

I know you don't have any actual substrate for them to dig into, but they still do TONS of stuff to old wood. Its really cool looking.

[SMILEforAnts]

Thank you guys!

 

@Tpro4 I know, the termite that went into the entrance...damn. It's like a blackhole and the termite just gets consumed into the darkness.

 

This is the link to the music  https://www.youtube....h?v=aPuKBArstqc

 

@Vendayn. There was  a tree branch that I placed into the tank that had a very soft sponge-like inner core and the ants chewed through the inside and created termite like tunnels. They did make very fine saw dust out of it, but I took it out because they were using some of the dust to cover the glass inside the nest. And when I mist the foraging area, they do make these cool structures with the wet sand. When it dries it just collapses. Someday I'll add more sand for them to work with and I'll take pictures of it. It really does look cool though!

 

So this is how the nest looks like now compared to almost a week and a half ago. Spring is definitely here and they're exploding drastically. There's more of them hanging out behind the nest too, so maybe this week I'll attach their old nest as a satellite nest to the tank. I think I went overboard with the queen count. I added too much to my plate than I can handle. 64 queens lol. I think I'll stop with adding more queens for now. Seems like every queen I look at, there's always a freshly laid egg at the end of their gaster. They've been getting a lot of protein too. Pieces of chicken and lots more insects. I think I need to cut back before they get out of control.

 

Pictures of the brood.

 

 

 

Macro pictures of when I fed them crickets.

 

 

 

 

And then a picture of when I fed them fruit flies.

 

And also  a quick time-lapse video of when I fed them crickets.

 

 

For the next update I'll be attaching their old nest since I don't have time to make a new nest. Enjoy the pictures and the video!

 

And I need to add this for people who are new to antkeeping. This species of ants (Pheidole megacephala) are very invasive and I do not condone keeping them illegally just because they are exotic and you think it would be cool to keep. If you are in an area that has a lot of native ants, keep native ants only. But if you do live in an area where Pheidole megacephala happen to be in, keep them responsibly. I live in Hawaii and this species of ants are well established here since Hawaii has no native ants. But still they are a problem and they have displaced a lot of native insects. Spread the word about antkeeping, but educate people at the same time!

[drtrmiller]

What's most surprising to me, is how much I like the background wallpaper.  It really comes across well in photographs where the subject (whole tank) can be isolated.

 

Great job on everything.

[Tpro4]

oh man, i wish i had a huge colony with multiple queens, the scariest part was when they started swarming it, great colony, and keep up the good work.

[Myrmicinae]

Great photos and video!

 

I wanted to mention that, although more queens allow for a greater maximum colony size, they usually slow colony growth in the short-term.  This is because a workforce can only care for so many eggs and, in most species, a single queen has a high enough reproductive output to meet quite a massive demand.  Up until a certain stage, adding more queens simply reduces efficiency.  I doubt that it will make much of a difference in this case, but I thought you might be interested to hear that.

 

My P. megacephala colony has been attempting to build covered pathways in the foraging arena - I think similar to what you describe.  This only works well when the humidity is high.

Edited by Myrmicinae, April 12 2015 - 9:08 PM.

[SMILEforAnts]

What's most surprising to me, is how much I like the background wallpaper.  It really comes across well in photographs where the subject (whole tank) can be isolated.

 

Great job on everything.

 

Thank you! Yeah the depth of field is awesome when shooting with a DSLR. I love it!

 

oh man, i wish i had a huge colony with multiple queens, the scariest part was when they started swarming it, great colony, and keep up the good work.

 

Thanks! I'll have more videos in the future when feeding them so look out for those!

 

Great photos and video!

 

I wanted to mention that, although more queens allow for a greater maximum colony size, they usually slow colony growth in the short-term.  This is because a workforce can only care for so many eggs and, in most species, a single queen has a high enough reproductive output to meet quite a massive demand.  Up until a certain stage, adding more queens simply reduces efficiency.  I doubt that it will make much of a difference in this case, but I thought you might be interested to hear that.

 

My P. megacephala colony has been attempting to build covered pathways in the foraging arena - I think similar to what you describe.  This only works well when the humidity is high.

 

Thanks for that extra knowledge! That's great to know!

 

Yeah mines is basically an open setup so water quickly evaporates. I wanna try to attach an enclosed container filled with sand or something but they might all move into it. We'll see.
 

[Vendayn]

I think that might be why I like this species so much. Is they are pretty much like termites, except they are ants. The tubes, and wood style nests they make are very formosan termite-like. Which, that is actually very unique as far as ants go. I'm not aware of any other ant species that does the same things out of wood. I know Camponotus nest can nest in wood and stuff, but it isn't the same. They don't make paper-like materials or sawdust mounds (well, I haven't seen termites do that) or overground tubes like termites do.

 

But, your colony is already really huge.  Maybe its a good thing my colony probably only has two queens!

Edited by Vendayn, April 13 2015 - 7:16 AM.

[Jonathan21700]

Amazing photos and video! Great work!

[Vendayn]

Oh. To let you know. My colony completely ignores those dried insects I got. Kind of a shame as it be a great food source. They definitely like walnuts though, so that is good. I tried walnut before and they ignored it, but maybe it was because it was winter.

[antmaniac]

At this rate, soon the daily consumption of meat would be equivalent to feeding a pet dog.

[Crystals]

I simply canot believe how much they grew.  In a way it is hilarious. 

They must go from egg to worker in record time. 

 

The video was neat.  Interesting way to feed them on a raised platform.

I can't believe they got most of the crickets down without dropping them.  I wish my colonies were that easy to feed.

 

I look very forward to seeing how this colony does in the next year.  Or even the next month. 

[Nexus]

wohhh ! This species looks so cool ! I hope you live in an area already infested ! Because if you don't, you're a .

 

And I have a question for you : Don't you moist your nest ? Because I don't see any waterer...

Edited by Nexus, April 14 2015 - 11:03 AM.

[Tpro4]

update soon?

[SMILEforAnts]

Thanks guys! I know it's been a while, but I've just been super busy with other things the past month. I'm on now, so here's a quick timeline update.  

 

Three weeks ago I connected their old nest to the tank, but then within a couple of days they chewed through a weakened part of the nest where the water reservoir is closely located and some got out. So I took that out. Still haven't made a new nest, so basically they occupy the whole tank lol. There's alot of them covering the foraging area and the back of the nest. There's also a trail of ants circling the top part of the tank looking for a way out.

 

Then about a week and a half ago, I woke up one morning, and there was a trail of ants marching down the side of the tank. A lot of them escaped! The fluon on this one area of the rim wore out and the workers were able to walk upside and cross over. There was a lot of them, so I had to vacuum most of them up because before that I tried collecting some of them, but they just swarmed all over my hands and started biting. So I fixed that by adding two more coats of fluon on the rim, and they haven't escaped since.

 

So yeah those are the two most significant updates that happened the past month. Here's a recent picture of the nest, and of the foraging area/back of the nest that I took with my iPhone. I don't have my DSLR camera right now, so my phone will do.

 

 

 

@Nexus I just take a syringe full of water and squirt the back of the nest. But recently I hot glued a plastic cover/container to the back of the nest. I just fill that up with water, and the nest absorbs it. You can see a part of it in the picture. I use to cover the hole with cotton where I add the water, but there's just too much ants that they crawl in, so I just kept it open. So now they use it as a chamber lol.

 

Oh and @drtrmiller If you happen to read this, thanks again for the Blue100 sample. I haven't made it yet, but I plan to maybe in the next couple of weeks.

 

And yeah that's pretty much it. I hope to make a satellite nest soon, but if not, I'll make sure to just update you guys on the colony when I can.

Edited by SMILEforAnts, May 12 2015 - 9:47 PM.

[Myrmicinae]

Have you noticed any alate brood yet?