Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
Powered by phpBB Social Network © phpBB SN Group
Deutsche Übersetzung durch phpBB.de
Time : 0.013s | 43 Queries | GZIP : On
neat.
that ought to look nice in your livingroom.
:)
Cheers mate , it actually sits along a shelf above my bed lol :P
Love the set-up man it looks fantastic! I noticed that my A. cephalotes colony does extremely well under no heating at all. They seem to do just fine in room temperature & their gardens are growing at an exponential rate. Just putting my two cents into this and I think that after the initial founding stage (when you have 1-3 nicely sized fungus gardens), there is almost no way for this colony to fail. I've seen your attempts at a large number of different species and I'm so happy to see such great success! Great job dude!
Cheers,
Vasi
Hey Vasile , cheers mate , It really depends on the set up and where your colony is kept , some places are too cold for Atta and not many people can sustain a nice room temperature all the time.
My colony wouldn't do well at room temperature because of there nest design, there is no substrate in the setup so the warmth of the fungus gardens adding to the fact the moist air inside would condense on the walls of the spheres due to the temperature difference, over time this will cause puddling and this would quickly rot and kill the gardens. The heat stops this :grin:
Cheers for your two cents dude , hows your colony doing ?
Adam
Hello Guys , its been awhile and you will have to forgive my lack of updating as I have been really busy with work , other pets etc due to the weather.
Here's a Quick update on my leaf cutters , sorry no pictures or a video will get some taken in the next few weeks and do a proper update then :)
The colony is doing exceptionally well , too well in fact as leaves are being consumed at a increasing rate. I stocked up on willow leaves and hawthorn and bagged these all up in time for autumn and the falling of the leaves. The colony so far is still growing in size. The queen is healthy and I see her most days either sitting on top or to the side of the fungus that's in the sphere she resides in.
I have a lot of privet available thanks to my friendly neighbours in the village that use the privet as there hedging but this lasts me a few days until the ants get bored and a swop is needed. Quickly my frozen stock of willow and hawthorn is going down. I may of underestimated the amount I needed.
The colony has another fungus garden that at the moment is taken priority of the rest , it always gets the first leaves and as a result is growing quickly. I have had a few problems with excess condensation which has meant water build up in the connected tubes which has made movement between each sphere hard on the ants. I am going to be working on a solution to this over the coming weeks and think I slight change in design is in order.
I increased the temperature a little in my setup to combat the problem and this worked but as soon as temperature dropped outside the setup so did the temperature around the spheres and this was enough the cause a build up of water again which is over come by cleaning out the tubes. My colony isn't so small anymore and has a healthy amount of major soldiers so would very much like to avoid this process again :wink:
Will keep you posted and hope all your colonies are doing great this time of year
Adam
Hey Adam, what a great thread mate. I'm just starting with my Acromyrmex but I found your thread really interesting and definitely inspires me to think out of the box. Ill defo be trying different idea's when expanding.
Did you first set up have any heating/ thermostat control?
Jamie
Hello mate , when I first kept atta I heated my room but this became expensive lol , in the winter my room gets cold so have found soil warming cables and a thermostats great heating. I use vivarium fans to circulate the warm air :D
Regards
Adam
Hey guys , Hope you all had a great new year and time over the holidays.
Well my Leaf cutting ant colony are doing great , the population now spans over 5 fungus gardens and now contains several thousand workers .
Due to wanting to maximize space in my heat box I transferred away from the acrylic spheres and managed to relocate the gardens into acrylic boxes. This gave maximum room for the gardens and allowed for much more expansion. :D
IMG_2676.jpg
Transferring gardens full of angry biting workers and major soldiers was a task upon itself and I must admit I got bitten a fair few times.
IMG_2679.jpg
All done, the boxes were lined up and reconnected so that the colony could get back to repairing and growing the gardens. :P
IMG_2881.jpg
Due to the colony's large size it has been rather ravenous and I am finding it hard to gather the privet required, My three bushes outside are now cut back to the ground so have managed to persuade some nice neighbours down the road to let me use there hedge :grin:
The colony are now very active foraging and forage all day and most the night , here's a video I have just uploaded to you YouTube channel.
4dwfIGQTcmc&feature=c4-overview&list=UU60javMmgejklEkoEXfGpZQ
Sorry for the lack of updates guys, been extremely hectic. Will try update when and if I can.
Adam :mrgreen:
Amazing update Adam, colony looks awesome-that's some romantic music ;) lol
Ha ha lol , cheers mate , was a Celtic album I downloaded so liked the music lol :D