Pheidologeton spec (possibly affinis)

[miszt]

lol well yeah... actually thats not doing anything there, just waiting around to be used in the big tank

[Antlord]

Very nice miszt! I really like this species, hopefully they become a nice big and strong colony for you. Good luck!

[JimmyVe]

Well i'm also thinking these species don't like y-tong, mine are not doing that great lately, i'm thinking of moving them to a sand nest to. Nice farm you have there.




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Thanks !

[miszt]

mite be a good idea dood, when I connected them to the ytong, they where interested at first, but then they pretty much left it alone, but when i put the test tube in the sand nest, they started digging there home straight away

[miszt]

some more pics, one of my Lasius niger queens died, so i froze the workers to kill them off and gave them to this colony for a feed, they'r certainlly enjoying the fat larva! didnt even get a chance to photograph them before they'd all been carried off into the nest lol

heres a few of them taking the queen back to be eaten...

[Kale^^]

Nice pictures. It is indeed a choice to give a dead queen's colony to another one as food.

[SteveUK28]

sorry to hear you lost a queen John, How old was she?

[JimmyVe]

Very nice, your colony looks to be doing well, better than mine, i'm also thinking sand nest are better for this species.

[miszt]

She was one i collected last year, not to bothered really, its a shame, but i already have 2 colonies of Lasius niger lol

Yeah Jimmy, i've been reading about Ants with less functional metapleural glands, Atta being one them, and they have a hard time living in certain enviroments because they are unable to preotect themselves well against infection, I dont know if P diversus/affinis have an under developed gland, i'm still trying to find, if they do, it may explain the problem, they are certainly very active diggers, it may be that they need to be able to move old/dirty substrate from the nest reguly to keep it clean and infection free, which of course is not possible for Ytongs, will definitly mean they will need to be able to 'move home 'reguly, as we discussed the other night, so i'm going to have to come up with a way to do this, although the tank they will be in is very large, and may be ok

[miszt]

Another thing that may be a factor, is mycelium, the strands that form the body of Fungus, many ants use this as a food source, Tropical areas, like Australia and SE Asia, have huge amounts of this growing in the soil, I wonder if the Pheid kept in captivity may be missing an important part of their diet.

Unfortunetly I've not been able to find many tropical fungus spores to try planting some in the tank, except illegal ones (psilocybin species), which I dont really want to resort to, anyone every seen tropical fungus spores for sale?

[miszt]

On closer inspection, i do not believe that they where actually eating the Hamster food, rather they where using it as a substrate, so now I have bought a mix of seeds...

Linseed
Black rape
Hemp seed
Canary seed

these may prove to be more to their liking, the black rape seeds have already started to be moved into the nest, i'll post more info on what they take from the selection they have tonight


Later in the week I will try a few diffrent fruits, including Pineapple, Peach (maybe not, out of season), Plum & Dates, which are all high protien fruits, aswell as having plenty of Fructose & various vitamins

[miszt]

I nearly had a heart attack a week ago! my sister moved my heat lamp and thermostat, the temp rocketed to 30C+ eek! then for the last week they where very inactive, i was worried but today, i fed them, and was pleased to see one new, much larger soldier and plenty of workers! so its all good

Pineapple goes down well with these ants, i've taken to crushing the seeds up, because they tend to carry them all into the nest, and then they grow lol which is a bit of a pain, but crushed seeds seem to do ok, and they seem to like all of them, i'll post pis once i have the net back again, i'm building their final home aswell as soon as our new oven is installed and i can sterilize everything

[miszt]

Having done a bit of research into various Seeds and their uses amongst diffrent Ants, I've descovered that they are mostly likly not eating the entire seed, and this would explain why they grow in the nest, many of the seeds in the Asian jungle have a tiny fatty node on the tip, and this is what the ants like to eat (except species for eg like Messor), it seems that many plants use these fatty nodes, so that the ants will carry the seeds into the saftey of their nest, where htey wont be eaten by birds and other seed eaters, and in return the ants get a little package of fat based energy

I'm going to do a little more research into this and try and find out exactly what the fats in these nodes are to see if theres another source for them, as this will be where they get a large majority of their energy from aswell as fruits

[derameisige]

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[miszt]

another great link thanks!