Pheidologeton spec (possibly affinis)

[miszt]

No i dont think so, they where sitting on the glass above the heat mat, they've gone back in this morning, so i hope they are ok, its very strange

[miszt]

o no the colony is dead I think, my sister (AGAIN!) moved their water bottle to high, and the farm flooded, I removed the heat mat from the side and can see their tunnels are full of water

[Ant mad]

for your sake and their sake i hope they surive, and for moneys worth LOL

[badman]

why does your sister keep interfering with them? Did you ask her to check on the water levels and she made a error of judgement? or can she just not leave things alone?

[JimmyVe]

Sorry to hear that miszt, i sure hope they are okay.

[SteveUK28]

i think its time to start having a little chat with ya sister john.. sorry to hear it mate.. just hope they had time to fill the tunnels in before it got to the queen :s

[miszt]

well some news, I dug a little bit in the hope i culd find the queen, and i left some tissue to soak up as much water as possible, when i came back a few mintues later, the remaining workers and soliders where diging away in the hole I had made, they have now pulled out a big pile of brood no sign of the queen tho, hopefully she has survived, I know some species can survive some hours in water, and as these come from rainforest areas, she may, just may have survived! fingers crossed, really theres no way i can know, unless she comes out of the nest, which is possible....or they pull her out dead...

[JimmyVe]

Fingers crossed... keep us updated miszt.

[miszt]

why does your sister keep interfering with them? Did you ask her to check on the water levels and she made a error of judgement? or can she just not leave things alone?

shes one of those people that just loves to move things around I think shes got the message now!!

Partly my fault, the setup I am using is not very good, it consists of 2 canistors, which i vary the height of every day, so that the water in the base of the nest is changed every day, to try and prevent bacteria growth in the water if it stays in the nest for too long......as it goes, this isnt working anyway, I spent a while absorbing some of the excess water from the farm, and it smelt very bad! definitly need a bigger tank, which i will be setting up tomorrow, hopefully the queen has survived, I am hopefully, as some of the pup's that the workers removed from the nest a few hours ago have now started to move around so its possible the queen is still alive, and now the nest is drained enough i think for her to survive...fingers crossed still, but i am not very hopefully tbh

[miszt]

my queen is dead the workers just pulled her out of the nest

but i've ordered a new one, so hopefully the colony will be ok, although theres only about 30 workers and majors left now

[JimmyVe]

Very sorry to hear that miszt, these are very nice ants.

[miszt]

I've been testing some electric fences for these ants, unfortunetly they dont work very well, I tested it on 5 ants, 4 workers and 1 soldier, initially the workers fell off the fence, but after a few attempts, 3 of the workers fell and appeared to be paralyised, and eventually died, the other one was able to run accross easily, the solider spent a few minutes on the fence, in a very bad mood, constantly biteing at the air....so this isnt going to work!"

On top of this, I have smashed the lid for the farm! OMG. so now I have a major problem, there is no way i can make a secure lid for the farm, so my colony is doomed no point getting a new queen as I wont be able to secure them, so I'm going to go for a diffrent species, a big aggresive ant from south america, as I will be able to make a simple lid to secure the setup

will give these Pheidologeton another go later in the year i think

very sad this worked out the way it did, they where luvly ants I'm really not having much luck this year!!!!

[kashmir79]

man im sorry to hear that

but i read somewhere that some specie's of Pheidologeton can accept new queens into the colony if one dies.

[miszt]

Yeah, unfortunetly the lid broke aswell, so it was impossible to secure the nest, and I really didnt want them running all over the house lol

I got Pachycondyla apicalis instead