10 replies to this topic

[Michiganter]

Howdy yall…

Updated my C. pennsylvanicus journal and have a question that is may be time-sensitive and important to the ant’s safety; my queen has 3 nanitics and a large brood pile in a test tube set-up attached to a small outworld for feeding. Over the past few days the queen and workers have begun digging at the cotton ball that provides their moisture. They’ve created a small alcove at the “bottom” of the test tube and I’m concerned bc they are continuing to try and tunnel deeper toward the water, and may eventually flood their tube. I have an extra Tarheel minihearth laying around…you know…as one does….should I dump the colony in for their own safety or just ride this out?


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[ANTdrew]

Dump them. No harm will come to the colony. This species does great in mini-hearths.

[Michiganter]

Dump them. No harm will come to the colony. This species does great in mini-hearths.

thanks man. Will dump them. And probably document the experience, because reasons. Thanks for the input!


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[RushmoreAnts]

This species does great in mini-hearths.

Emphasis on "This species". Mini Hearths are much too large for most founding colonies other than Camponotus sized ants. 

Edited by RushmoreAnts, July 28 2025 - 7:59 AM.

[Michiganter]

This species does great in mini-hearths.

Emphasis on "This species". Mini Hearths are much too large for most founding colonies other than Camponotus sized ants.

Definitely clear on this aspect, I would’ve preferred to leave this queen in her tube for the first year too but the amount of tunneling toward water going on is alarming


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[Michiganter]

Well, the dump is complete and it went smoother than a greased porpoise. I’m not sure what they were doing with their tube setup but once I got them moved the extent of the hole they dug and the risk it posed became clear as water began actively leaking out of the test tube. I imagine if they continued to dig at it for another day or two, they’d have flooded their setup. They had an outworld to escape to but still a disaster. Watching them move the brood that didn’t tumble out with the queen, it was interesting seeing how stuck and waterlogged two of the pupae were.


I think my take-aways here are trying sponge instead of cotton ball, I had seen it on the interwebs and in addition to some of the other positives, this is another compelling case for it. The other I am already ahead of, and that's trying inserts/bamboo tubes/etc. thanks again for the input ANTdrew!



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[Ants_Dakota]

Another solution is getting jumbo cotton balls and trying to fit more into the test tube. More mass of cotton makes leaks rarer and deters ants from tunneling. It's a lot cheaper than pva sponges too.

[ANTdrew]

Determined ants can chew through PVA sponges, too. I've had Monomorium do it, so big Camponotus should have no trouble chewing them up. This is a prime example of Myrmy's Law: all things being equal, ants will always do what you don't want or expect them to do. 

[shAnt]

I know ants supposedly only eat liquid forms of food, but the water tube i put in my harvester's outworld resulted in blue specks of the pva sponge all over the place. They eat seeds, could they be eating the sponge particles? I've had a ton of dead harvesters which i initially attributed to bad fruit fly container contamination. My Camponotus's didn't get the fruit flies because of that, but they also aren't dusting their outworld with pieces of sponge and didn't have a die off. I dunno

[Michiganter]

I know ants supposedly only eat liquid forms of food, but the water tube i put in my harvester's outworld resulted in blue specks of the pva sponge all over the place. They eat seeds, could they be eating the sponge particles? I've had a ton of dead harvesters which i initially attributed to bad fruit fly container contamination. My Camponotus's didn't get the fruit flies because of that, but they also aren't dusting their outworld with pieces of sponge and didn't have a die off. I dunno

My harvesters went thru a weird mass die-off too. Went from 40ish to 9 plus the queen. I’ve seen several ppl have the same experience. It may not be related to the pva sponge directly. My harvesters bounced back (up to 30 again) with introduction of sunburst ant nectar feeder, regular fruit flies, and +3 degrees across their heat gradient


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[shAnt]

Unfortunately my harvesters were doomed from the start... no queen. I got about 50 of them before i got my Camponotus queens and really knew anything about ants, but they're at about 20 left now. The die off event killed about 15-20 of them within days though so it was way more than a usual slow dying. I still think it was probably the fruit flies i had gotten. I don't want to kill them off but because they are 'doomed' without a queen they get to have any new food sources whether they 'need' protein or not, before i risk my founding colonies. My harvesters are basically my guinea pigs. Because of the way they chew up the pva sponge in their outworld's water tube i went back to regular cotton for my camponotus colonies water tubes though. So far the Pennsylvanicus queen and her 2 workers haven't tried to tunnel into the water reservoir but I'll be watching for that now. That queen has been a struggle for months and is way behind on workers so any loss now would be the end for her most likely.