372 replies to this topic

[Antking117]

Force move them into new outworld and formicarium, what did you do to the outworld? UPDATE!

[Serafine]

Force move them into new outworld and formicarium, what did you do to the outworld? UPDATE!

First of all, the Lazy Horde will NEVER be forced to do ANYTHING unless their very survival is threatened. Forcing ant colonies into a new setup usually is very bad for the colony and can severely stall it's development. The nest is attached and if they see need they can move at any time although I'm pretty sure that at their current size they will prefer the other (new) tube over the nest if their current nest tube should dry out.
Second, if you want more frequent updates you should just join the Discord ant chat (link in my signature). I'm often posting pictures there between journal updates (usually because the pictures aren't that good or not enough has happened to fill a journal post).
Third, I was on a 6 day trip to Vienna (as you would have known if you had joined the Discord ant chat ) and just got home from a THIRTEEN HOUR train odyssey because NOTHING worked out as planed (except for the Austrian trains because the ÖBB is actually competent, they even have actually working lifts in their trains).
 

 

That said, within the 6 days I was gone the ants did... not exactly much.
They didn't touch the big spider I gave them, they didn't touch the smaller spider and they barely (if at all) touched the dried red mosquito larvae. I assume it was a bit too cold for them despite their formicarium being at 25°C when I finally arrived home this evening - this or they're just very picky eaters and won't touch anything that's not super tasty unless they really need to.
They do however have a ton of brood again, especially pupae (at least three of them look dark and should hatch very soon).
 








 
They just got a bee pupae though (which essentially turned out liquid when I tried to cut it into pieces) and they seem to be very interested into it - a worker is constantly working on it, first it slurped up the liquids and now it's munching on the head.

 

 

For the small outworld - I haven't decided how to decorate it yet (miniature houses seem like a fun idea though), in fact it's not even attached to the setup as I probably need a tri-connector and a plug with mesh because otherwise the air flow in the large arena will really suffer. Gonna look into that in the coming days.

Edited by Serafine, June 19 2017 - 4:07 PM.

[Antking117]

I'm only on this site at work, so sadly i can't join discord XD

[Leo]

AWESOME JOURNAL

[Serafine]

NEW LAZY TUBE RECORD!
Three ants outside at the same time on Tuesday!



A friend of mine who's keeping bees had to cut a part of their brood off, that means tasty bee pupae (and some larvae) for Lazy Tube.
Here's a worker inspecting one (the other stuff on the dish is the remnants of the first one they got).



They also managed to drag two of these medium-sized spiders into the tube over night which means they must have cleared out the entire entrance area and then piled it back up again. I also tried to feed them small crickets but they're not touching them. The grasshopper parts seem to spark some interest though.




There's a ton of brood again and I feel they've developed way more in the week since I'm back than in the week I was away, most likely due to the difference in temperature (currently the arena is mostly between 28 and 30°C which they seem to like).
The front end of the tube is starting to look a bit messy, I wonder when these little buggers will start to take out all their trash or if they're just gonna be lazy and move out when they've piled up enough garbage. It's amazing though how clean the rear part of the tube still is after them living in it for more than half a year.
Also note how most of the new workers have a more reddish thorax compared to the first workers which were almost entirely black.

Edited by Serafine, June 24 2017 - 2:32 PM.

[Antking117]

This is my favorite journal, very cool and well done! I can not wait until they get large and start to eat tons fast. Do these get majors?

[Hikari]

The front end of the tube is starting to look a bit messy, I wonder when these little buggers will start to take out all their trash or if they're just gonna be lazy and move out when they've piled up enough garbage.

Living up to their name, lol.

Love reading this journal though. Makes me look forward to the shenanigans my ants might get up to once workers start to arrive.

[Serafine]

This is my favorite journal, very cool and well done! I can not wait until they get large and start to eat tons fast. Do these get majors?

Of course they do get majors, in fact they're one of the biggest ant species in Europe with supermajors growing up to almost 2cm.
 

Living up to their name, lol.

 

Love reading this journal though. Makes me look forward to the shenanigans my ants might get up to once workers start to arrive.

Well, despite being probably around a year old this is still a very young colony, so the real fun is still coming (like testing barriers, rebuilding the outworld, dragging cotton off water tubes which causes them to leak into the outworld, majors chewing on tubing, etc.) - fortunately they're not Messor as those can really mess up your setup. I'm not sure how much these girls here are into digging but I assume they won't hit their setup with an army of tiny wrecking balls leaving no stone unturned like Messor barbarus colonies like to do.

[Hikari]

 

 

 

This is my favorite journal, very cool and well done! I can not wait until they get large and start to eat tons fast. Do these get majors?

Of course they do get majors, in fact they're one of the biggest ant species in Europe with supermajors growing up to almost 2cm.
 

Living up to their name, lol.

 

Love reading this journal though. Makes me look forward to the shenanigans my ants might get up to once workers start to arrive.

Well, despite being probably around a year old this is still a very young colony, so the real fun is still coming (like testing barriers, rebuilding the outworld, dragging cotton off water tubes which causes them to leak into the outworld, majors chewing on tubing, etc.) - fortunately they're not Messor as those can really mess up your setup. I'm not sure how much these girls here are into digging but I assume they won't hit their setup with an army of tiny wrecking balls leaving no stone unturned like Messor barbarus colonies like to do.

 2CM?! Geez...my C.pennsylvanicus queens aren't even that big, and they're one of the biggest US species. Y'all got some big ants across the pond! And yeah, I've heard year 2 is where things really get interesting with Camponotus species. Didn't realize yours had the potential to wreak so much havoc, lol. I do hope mine aren't as destructive though but, if they are, I plan on making them a glass outworld with the formicarium inside...I don't think they can chew through glass. I think with this being their founding year, they probably won't get into too much trouble before it's hibernation time.

Edited by Hikari, June 25 2017 - 3:33 PM.

[Serafine]

Well, I've read a long term journal about Camponotus barbaricus (the ONLY one I could find) and they don't seem to have that much destructive potential. But then the ants in that journal only started to aggressively attack prey items and spraying formic acid at them after they had reached a size of several hundreds - mine did that right from the beginning.

 

Messor barbarus seems to be a lot worse though, they can really utterly destroy any pre-decoration and even grind out the grout from an entire outworld easily. I've read journals where they mixed sand-clay, earth and floral foam from several arena basins together with water to produce a mixture they could use to build tunnels and hills, allowing them to create satellite nests within the outworld basins. If I'm ever gonna get a second ant colony it's gonna be these little wrecking balls.

Edited by Serafine, June 26 2017 - 12:38 AM.

[Antking117]

I've read journals where they mixed sand-clay, earth and floral foam from several arena basins together with water to produce a mixture they could use to build tunnels and hills, allowing them to create satellite nests within the outworld basins.

I might manually do this in a way to allow satellite nests once i get a colony that does that. very cool id like to see that, do you know a source?

[Serafine]

Quick update because, well, look at all those larvae.





 

I might manually do this in a way to allow satellite nests once i get a colony that does that. very cool id like to see that, do you know a source?

The only one i can currently find is a german one with only a few pictures. In the last picture you can get a glimpse of what they did when you look closely.
https://www.ameisenf...sch-t55655.html

Edited by Serafine, June 28 2017 - 1:28 AM.

[Hikari]

Population boom incoming! 

[Serafine]

Today I made my regular morning outworld check, as it is tradition, and saw this:


Lazy Tube has it's first dead worker. She worked hard, discovered the entire outworld, was always the first on foraging duty and finally gave her life for the colony.

It has been a sad day for Lazy Tube and therefore the world.



That allowed for some usually impossible close-ups though.






Interestingly the nanitics have the same reddish middle segment coloration as the larger workers, just not as visible.





The colony's growth over the last days has been amazing, probably due to the warm weather.
As you can see they move the pupae into the straw at the front end of the tube (that's why they disappear from the later pictures).
I have no idea how many cocoons they have but that straw must be pretty full - and there's still more eggs.

June 30th


July 1st


July 2nd


July 3rd


July 4th


July 5th

Edited by Serafine, July 14 2017 - 11:22 AM.

[Leo]

whoa there

[Serafine]

Well, I've been away for a few days and not much has happened. They still have larvae and eggs well as some pupae in the rear part of the tube and I'm pretty sure that the straw is now completely full from behind the dead spider they're using as a road block to where it reaches into the tube. In the last two pictures you can see the back end of the straw where one worker has grabbed a cocoon.
Currently they're even too lazy to come out and take some food. There's gonna be a lot of ants soon though, I guess the great eclosing will start in about a week, maybe two.
 

 

 

Edited by Serafine, July 9 2017 - 11:48 AM.

[Antking117]

very cool! I can not wait to see the huge majors shredding cockroaches!

[Serafine]

Hehe, I don't think they're gonna breed majors this year. So far they have a single media worker which is quite a monstrosity compared to the other workers although even she is probably just a very small media considering how huge the majors can become (they can grow up to almost 2cm, even larger than the queen).

Edited by Serafine, July 10 2017 - 1:07 AM.

[Antking117]

Crazy thought to have! Can't wait for majors!

[Serafine]

Moar ants!
 
I wouldn't exactly say that they are exploding but it seems the colony slowly starts rolling.
There's at least 40+ ants, maybe they've already breached 50 workers (can't say how many ants and pupae are in the straw).





 
 
Today I went out and caught some grasshoppers - it was a bit hard to catch them first but once you realize you can just stomp them and then catch them it's actually pretty easy (and no stomping usually doesn't kill them as grass is an incredibly good buffer, out of 6 grasshoppers I caught that way only one died immediately, the rest was just disorientated so I could pick them up although some got away still).
Other than the ones from the pet shop they really seem to like these. The wild grasshoppers are much more juicy that the dried-out versions you can buy at the pet store. Bee pupae are still very popular though and small spiders that can be dragged into the nest easily are still preferred above everything else.

 
 
Here are a few more close-ups of these pretty girls. Note the large cocoon on the last picture. Also on that same picture you can actually see a worker feeding a larva, and just below that a slightly pale yellowish looking worker that may just have eclosed.

Edited by Serafine, July 14 2017 - 1:37 AM.