173 replies to this topic

[YsTheAnt]

You cannot ship ants over borders to the US, @Rstheant and since you live in CA you won't be able go catch them anyway. Just a heads up .

Edited by YsTheAnt, October 22 2018 - 8:32 PM.

[nurbs]

Don't ever want to hear Aussies complain they don't have interesting ants. You guys have the best ants.

[DaveJay]

Don't ever want to hear Aussies complain they don't have interesting ants. You guys have the best ants.

I'm only just realising now how diverse the ant population around us is. Sure I've taken note of an interesting ant here and there over the years but only in the last few months have I looked properly and really noticed how many species are around me at any given time.

[DaveJay]

You cannot ship ants over borders to the US, @Rstheant and since you live in CA you won't be able go catch them anyway. Just a heads up .

Yes, it's a bit different in Australia, for the most part it is better if people keep inverts from another state as the conditions won't be suitable for them if they escape or are released. Western Australia and Tasmania have restrictions but most states and territories don't.

[DaveJay]

I put an adult female cricket into my Rhytidoponera metallica formicarium (basically a lunchbox half full of dirt) the other night to see what the reaction would be. Well unlike when a small cricket is added the workers did nothing to defend their territory, they just ignored the cricket and went about their business. They are a stinging species so I had expected them to mob the cricket and kill it fairly quickly but they just did their best to get out of its way really. It ate the catfood out of their dish then bits and pieces of something coated with sand it found and has been laying eggs in the substrate all day. I'll take it out of course but I'll be interested to see if the ants find the eggs or if I'll have a swarm of baby crickets, either way there'll be extra protein for the colony.

[DaveJay]

Here's some pictures of two ants I caught the other day, one is larger than the other at about 10mm, the other is around 7mm. At first I thought they were Rhytidoponera as the smaller one in particular (on the right when both are pictured) has a very humped thorax. Looking at the pictures I still can't tell if maybe they are Iridomyrmex, but they don't seem to look quite the same as the obvious Iridomyrmex I caught a week or so before, the petiole in the left doesn't look the same, and the ant on the right looks even less like the others to me. 

[CoolColJ]

They all look like Iridomyrmex to me

[DaveJay]

They all look like Iridomyrmex to me

Me too, but I can easily pick which is which between these two without a size reference or other clues, and they are not the same as the 7 I caught previously, 6 of which are identical. I guess they are all just different Iridomyrmex species, I was hoping for a different genus. I suppose it's just that time of the year but you seem to be finding a variety! I'm looking everywhere I go but only doing dedicated searches in the one general area, it does offer several different habitats though. There is one small species there that have really shiny gasters, hopefully I can find a queen of that species. There's also a Camponotus species I see workers of in one area, similar to the C. consobrinus but not quite the same, duller orange and no band on the gaster. Unfortunately I think the actual nest is in a back yard adjoining the hospital grounds.
But oh well, I'll keep looking, hopefully I'll be in a new region before Christmas and that will be very exciting and hopefully yield a wide range of species. We've even applied for a three bedroom house so we can have a "bug room".

[DaveJay]

24th October 2018

Update on the Pheidole colony from CoolColJ.
Initially because I ran out of vented tubs I put food into a fresh test tube and taped it onto their test tube. A few days ago I put them into a rather large tub I prepared, 23 × 17 × 12 cm, I laid the tube they came in across the back, the new tube along the side, the two openings close, then put a light layer of sand on the bottom, less than 1cm once dampened and compressed and added food dishes. For the first two days they did nothing basically, I didn't even see them forage although when I first opened their tube the Queen ran out and went into the new tube, later she was back in the old one again. Then I moved them to the bedroom where the temperature is more stable. The nights are still cold here so the heater is still on. It keeps the room stable at 19/20C but with the warmer days it is rising above that, the door is always shut though and there is only dappled morning sun that hits the window so the temperature fluctuates very slowly. Well I woke up and both tubes are empty! The cotton dam in the old tube seems to have grown a layer of slime over the blackness which wasn't there yesterday, and they have plugged it with sand. I'll replace it with a fresh tube and use the old one for ants I'll send to Col, that way he gets his long glass tubes back, I'll probably end up buying more plastic ones for myself so it's not a fair trade to swap cheap plastic tubes for long glass ones.
Picking up the tub I can see that they have made a small tunnel and chamber in the sand between the two tubes, I doubt it will last long, the sand is only a centimeter deep and will dry out quickly as I added a fair bit of ventilation to the tub so I guess they'll be forced into moving into a tube sooner or later.

[CoolColJ]

The test tubes don't cost much

Although, yeah I would prefer the Melophorus oclony in a long test tube just for more water storage

Edited by CoolColJ, October 24 2018 - 12:33 AM.

[DaveJay]

Yes, that would be better than what I have at the moment. I'll get them off to you next week, hopefully I find something else to interest you by then.

[Rstheant]

Well in my experience, when a nanitic is about to die from age, she will know, and separate herself from the colony by going outside a few days before it happens

Not always..
One of my C Laevigatus workers stayed in the Outworlds for 1 week but remained alive and eventually rejoined the queen and colony etc.

[Rstheant]

Where did you get that orange substrate? Haven’t seen it before...

[Rstheant]

I get my test tubes from LCM labs..
16x150 milliliter or 20x150 for bigger species
Costs like 40 bucks for 100-200

[DaveJay]

Where did you get that orange substrate? Haven’t seen it before...

Hi, the orange sand is what most of South Australia is made of! , you can buy it for $20 for a 5kg bag at the petshop or about $40 for 1000kg at the landscape yard, guess where I buy mine!!! I have collected it myself from the bush and I honestly couldn't tell which buckets I bought and which I collected, but at $3 to $4 for 100kg you might as well just buy it I think.

As to test tubes, most of the time the shipping to Australia makes most online sources not worth it, eBay .au generally have free shipping so I've just been looking on there, it just takes a while for things to arrive.
I hadn't planned on having many ants when I started so I just ordered 10 20mm tubes and 10 12mm tubes, obviously now I need more! The local "cheap import" shop has small 10mm test tubes so I bought a few dozen of them for small ants, I'm rapidly filling them up, unfortunately just with the common genus atm.

[FSTP]

When ever I see Aussie ant keepers and that beautiful ochre colored sand and substrate I tend to get slightly jealous. 

[DaveJay]

When ever I see Aussie ant keepers and that beautiful

ochre colored sand and substrate I tend to get slightly jealous.

The strange thing (to me) is that the rocks in the Mallee are white limestone mostly, they really stand out in the red sand.

[CoolColJ]

You can buy that red sand from pet shops. It's called reptile sand

Locally, I have clay dirt here which has a slightly different tone, but similarly red

[DaveJay]

You can buy that red sand from pet shops. It's called reptile sand
Locally, I have clay dirt here which has a slightly different tone, but similarly red

Yeah, I have to laugh at people paying that much for the same sand landscape places sell by the tonne, what a scam! Same for people buying coir peat in pet shops when a brick is about $2 in a garden centre or even the supermarket (woolworths stocks it). I will say that the large coir bricks are usually coarser and contain clumps of "hair" though, but the small bricks are exactly the same stuff.

[CoolColJ]

Well I got no room for a 1 tonne of dirt!
The 20kg bag I bought, I've only used less than 20% of it...

Edited by CoolColJ, October 25 2018 - 8:20 PM.