372 replies to this topic

[Serafine]

Some close-up nest pictures.












There's huge piles of tiny brood in the nest test tubes (and more in the primary outworld tubes).








Some more close-up pictures from the primary outworld next to the nest. From these angles you can really get a proper impression if justr how many ants there are (they're also storing brood in te open there).













Remember these guys? They have a colony running now. I'll probably have to add some isopods in the future though to do something about the massive population of springtails in the tank.







The Myrmica colony is also still going. When my girlfriend's colony got a fresh tube they got a new one as well (and since she has an actual journal going I won't make a dedicated one for mine).

I've already seen workers walking into the new tube but they haven't moved the colony yet.

Edited by Serafine, November 8 2019 - 3:32 AM.

[TennesseeAnts]

You have as many ants in your outworld as I do in my entire colony!

[Serafine]

Your colony is probably a lot younger though. They're going to get there

[Antennal_Scrobe]

That's a lot of ants...

[TennesseeAnts]

Your colony is probably a lot younger though. They're going to get there

Yeah. Mine has about 1,000.

[Serafine]

Well, since the last status report is from November I guess it's finally time for an update. Wanted to get one out before the end of last year but it didn't work out.

 

 

First some pictures of ants eating stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This happens when the water feeder runs dry and you don't notice. Seems to be a common thing across all ants small and big.

 

 

 

Look who I found outside. It's probably another virgin queen.

 

 

 

More pictures of ants eating stuff.

They really love crickets lately. Unfortunately they don't want to eat a lot of roaches so the Blattarium might soon face some overpopulation issues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "end of the world" tube still has quite some brood in it. Apparently this has something to do with the colony smells (the pheromones on the eggs make the workers not lay their own eggs), at least that's what my ant books say.

 

 

 

This is the nest at the end of November. Lots of lavae and quite a lot of pupae.

 

 

 

 

Had to replace the first nest water tube as it ran dry and took the chance to replace the tubing as well. Clear vinyl tubing tends to look really ugly after being exposed to high humdity and condesation (and probably formic acid or whatever chemicals the ants use to keep their nest clean) for over a year.

 

 

 

[Serafine]

So while cleaning the feeding outworld I accidently dropped the cup with all the trash and spilled insect parts and sand all over the cupboard.

Subsequently I had to temporarily disconnect and relocate parts of the setup to clean the table. The ants didn't like that at all. If I ever have to move house that's going to be fun.

 

 

 

 

The nest outworld and some ants chewing on shrimps.

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure if this is one of the virgin queens or the main egglaying queen - can't find any queen in the main nest but then it's fairly difficult to find a queen in a populated nest.

Considering though that they are storing more and more brood in the outworld next to the nest and the amount of brood in the nests seems to have went down a bit it sounds at least plausible.

 

 

 

 

 

Some pictures of the feeding outworld. It's interesting how at first glance it doesn't look like anything has changed from like half a year ago but then on a closer look you start realizing that now there are ants everywhere - underground (under the plants and the striped stone), inside all of the shrimp tubes (plus the backside is usually covered in a carpet of ants), inside the test tubes, inside that altar-like resin stone, inside the wooden root..

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I noticed that every time they get water with urea they shortly after begin to siege the sugar feeder, so I started to mix some sugar into the urea water and it actually works. They still show an increased sugar consumption but it's not as bad a sit used to be. They literally walk over each other to get some of that sugar-urea-water mix though.

 

 

 

 

These nest pics were taken just a few minutes ago. They have less brood in the nests - not sure if they have less brood in general as they seem to pile a lot of it in the outworld now (they did this during last year's "hibernation", too) - and only some few pupae left.

As mentioned earlier I couldn't find a queen but that doesn't mean there's none, she could be in one of the connectors between the nests or maybe just covered under a blob of workers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Serafine]

 

 

 

That's pretty much all the pupae they have left.

 

 

 

There's still quite a lot of tiny larvae in the nests but those are mostly stored in the water tubes where it's moist and humid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's some update on the Myrmica.

They inheritated the tiny antstore glass outworld my Lasius niger once had (their queen died last spring and they're down to a few remaining workers now after several adoption attempts have failed rather spectacularly).

The entire outworld got a proper cleaning (thankfully sand-clay mix can be removed entirely with just hot water), a new layer of substrate and some nice decorations.

 

 

 

 

They're not very picky and eat about anything they can grab with their tiny mandibles. Interestingly my colony prefers fruit flies and crickets over everything else while my girlfriend's colony absolutely adores raw shrimp.

Different colonies are different I guess (we're also not sure if they are actually the same species of Mymrica as they were found 3 weeks apart and IDing Myrmica on the species level is a nightmare of it's own).

 

 

 

 

This is the colony in early December...

 

 

 

... mid December...

 

 

 

 

...and today. They just moved from their dry tube (in which they stayed for almost four weeks) to the fresh tube and now it's so cramped that you can barely see anything.

 

 

 

 

 

There's still a few workers in the old tube, once they are out I'm gonna remove the old tube and put the new tube into it's place.

 

 

 

Some of the workers have already populated the larger tube in the new outworld, maybe they're going to move over there at some point.

 

Edited by Serafine, January 5 2020 - 2:31 PM.

[Kaelwizard]

This is the first time I have actually been able to read your newest post without all of the old pictures loading in and pushing the post down lol

[AntsDakota]

True, true. But you can never have too many pictures.

[Serafine]

Update time!

 

They are slowly coming out of their winter sluggishness, there's first new pupae and a lot of new small larvae (they didn't really stop laying eggs but the larvae barely developed beyond their 2nd instar).

Food intake is also on te rise, they've eaten through quite a few roaches over the last 2 weeks.

 

 

Setup overview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nest outworld

 

 

 

 

Now that's a trash pile. They threw most of their garbage into the outworld, only the last two nests still have filled garbage chambers.

 

 

And they managed to empty the big water feeder. Took them a few weeks actually.

 

 

The "major rock" in front of the nest entrance.

 

 

 

The queen did indeed move into the outworld test tube.

 

[Serafine]

Feeding outworld

 

 

This is a very special major. She has a dislocated mandible, presumably from a fight with a mealworm or a cricket a few moths ago. She's frequently sitting in the feeding outworld doing guard duty and sometimes even tries to chew on food even though with limited success (obviously).

 

 

 

 

This picture was taken when I used the heat lamp for the first time this year and it looked funny how all the ants both on the wood pillar and the artifical plant where moving to the side closer to the lamp.

 

 

As mentioned before they are eating a lot of roaches. They also had some jelly which they liked surprisingly well (I think it was strawberry) and minced meat (they licked it dry mostly).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They managed it, they collapsed the cave in the corner afet I accidentally spilled water on it while trying to get out an almost empty feeder.

 

 

 

 

Also replaced one of the test tubes. The other two will have to be replaced at some point as well but right now there's too many ants inside.

 

 

The shrimp hotel tell is fuller than ever. By now it's basically a Tokyo cube hotel.

 

 

 

Looks like my ants now have a border patrol. The worker probably accidentally escaped during a cleaning session and the spider was able to catch her when she tried to find back home. At least it has the basic decency to leave the brood alone.

 

 

Edited by Serafine, February 27 2020 - 8:55 AM.

[Serafine]

Nest pictures

 

 

Things still look a bit empty but queen just moved back into the nest and there's clumps of tiny larvae in the water tubes and some chambers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some close-ups

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Serafine]

The Myrmica are still doing fine (take a look at my girlfriend's journal for a more comprehensive Myrmica coverage of her own colony)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Made a new mealworm farm with much better ventilation. There's already some tiny mealworms in it.

 

 

 

 

 

The roach farm is really taking off. Lots of tiny baby roaches! They love carrots.

 

 

 

Edited by Serafine, February 27 2020 - 9:02 AM.

[ForestDragon]

you mentioned virgin queens in your Camponotus colony, how many do you assume are in there?

[Serafine]

There's at least one, possibly more. But it's really hard to tell - I've seen one in the second outworld (this was definitely not the original queen, I checked the nest and she was still there) and one in the first outworld (possibly the original queen as she seems to wander between the nests and the first outworld tubes). Problem is they have a lot of places to hide where I can't see them at all and they're very very shy.

Edited by Serafine, February 27 2020 - 9:35 PM.

[joshuarr20]

It's great to see how you manage a colony so large successfully. I look forward to the next update. I have a few questions based on your journals, if you don't mind? I can message you separately if you'd prefer? You seem to be using the acrylic nests rather than the 'traditional' antfarms, do you find these work better? I had never considered using the acrylic ones but you (and many others) seem to be doing so, perhaps I need to reconsider. I currently have this setup for my lasius niger (hopefully links are allowed): https://antsuk.com/p...rter-set-large/. What has been your favourite ant species to keep and why? Thanks again .

[Serafine]

I'm using 3D-printed nests (Simants.de, the Pro M series), the only acrylic nest I have is an antkit size 8 used to create a u-turn on one side of the setup - the ants don't really seem to like that one though as they never brought brood into it.
The smaller outworlds are acrylics and they work just fine as they are kept completely dry with test tubes used as satellite nests. Also a large part of my colony is living in shrimp tubes (there's probably more ants in them than in the nests themselves) and test tubes.
 
Your setup is fine, the only thing I'd really recommend though is getting a frame (Antstore produces them for all tank sizes, here's the one for your tank), you will be thankfull for having it in a year's time. Lasius niger have a reputation as escape artists (big colonies can become challenging to keep) and having a frame with barrier on the underside really really helps with keeping them contained.
 
A new update is in the works, just recorded the last pictures for it. Should arrive within the next days

Edited by Serafine, April 28 2020 - 3:44 AM.

[joshuarr20]

I misinterpreted the printed nests as acrylic (as you do). I was looking at the acrylic nests on Antkit. I will probably go with the messor species starter kit when it comes back to Antstore. I have seen the frames being used on the Antstore videos. I will be sure to buy one, thank you. I have coated the liquid around the sides of the foraging box, but it is probably much better to have the proper frame. I will be sure not to tell my partner that they are keen escape artists as I have only just got him to agree to them in the house . Thanks again Serafine and I look forward to the updates to follow.

[Serafine]

So, it's been a looong time since the last sign of life here but then the colony wasn't very active and brood development down to a minimum.

The pictures following are in roughly chronological order, starting at around early March.



Let's start with a picture of ants on a freshly filled byformica feeder (maple syrup with added glucose).

Here you can see how the workers become transparent when they soak up with sugary sweets.



They got some frozen locusts I still had in the freezer which they ate but not with too much enthusiasm. Took them around three days to gobble them all up.





For some reason the sugar in this feeder sort-of crystalized out of the openings and the ants spread it through the outworld.



These are a nest pics from March 3rd. Some batches of eggs and tiny larvae started to appear but worker numbers in the nest were fairly low.







While taking pictures of the nest tubes I found this absolute monstrosity. She dwarfs even most of the other majors.



Eggs!



Nest pics from March 13th. Here the low worker numbers in the nests are a lot more obvious.







The small shrimp tube pile from the backside. Had to shake some ants off the camera after this shot.



There's a surprisingly high number of brood in the "end of the world" box considering that I never see them carrying eggs there. Camponotus keep their workers from laying eggs by contact with frequent queen eggs so that's why they are there but I have no idea how they get them there. I never see them carrying brood through the tubes in general, they must do it at like 4am in the morning.



The dug some nice chambers at the left side of the feeding outworld.





That's what's left of a roach when they're hungry.



Somehow they manage to shove a fly into the water feeder. I have no idea how.



The Myrmica are doing fine as well, here they are eating a small roach.