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Great setup, I love this species, yes they are Australian and are very aggressive. I noticed you have a pool of water in the terrarium. Be careful she doesn't drown in it, I have fallen foul of this in the past. I tend to fill water reservoirs with cotton wool. This way the ants can still drink from it as the cotton absorbs the water, it also prevents them from falling in and drowning, Just a tip.... Great pictures.
Lovely, Peter :)
Great setup, I love this species, yes they are Australian and are very aggressive. I noticed you have a pool of water in the terrarium. Be careful she doesn't drown in it, I have fallen foul of this in the past. I tend to fill water reservoirs with cotton wool. This way the ants can still drink from it as the cotton absorbs the water, it also prevents them from falling in and drowning, Just a tip.... Great pictures.
Thankyou ! I put in a few stones in the dish so no problems now. :)
Thankyou for the compliments, and I have some bad and good news to report. The bad news is while the queen was foraging a cricket must have climbed into the nest hole, and seems to have eaten all the eggs. This was a week and a half ago. :(
The good news, she has gotten her revenge on this cricket the next day by killing and eating it. A week and a half later and there are 7 new eggs in the nest. She forages regularily. How long will it take for the eggs to hatch, and once they hatch how long for the larvae to grow until pupal stage, and then how long from pupa to eclosing?
Appreciated,
Antman
Well after 2 long weeks and a mishap with a rogue cricket before that, the queen is finally a mother. Her eggs have begun to hatch this evening. There are currently 2 newly hatched larvae, and 4 developing eggs. At this very early stage of the larvae's development I have decided to feed the queen egg yolk, and as well I threw in a freshly caught fruit fly. She lapped up all the yolk and gave the fruit fly to one of the larva who's happily gorging on it. A new colony is born! I will update as this family progresses and grows.
Cheers,
Antman
Here is a picture of the queen and her larvae (sorry for the bad quality, I'm not using a professional camera just quite yet).
Good good i wish you the best luck ! and try not to give her crickets before she has workers so that your eggs dont get eaten again :D try feeding her with some cockroaches like Blatta lateralis or Blaptica dubia
Good good i wish you the best luck ! and try not to give her crickets before she has workers so that your eggs dont get eaten again :D try feeding her with some cockroaches like Blatta lateralis or Blaptica dubia
Thankyou for the tip DigiSerbia, I must admit the cricket I left in the tank was a subadult, and hadn't eaten for a day and a half.. I feel guilty about that too! I guess (it was a male) he had no choice but to enter ''the dragon's den'' so to speak!
Anywho, 5/6 eggs have now hatched, and the pair of day old larvae have grown quite noticeably in their first 24 hours of life. I am noting that I see a few springtail-like creatures within the nest tube but they seem to not have an effect on the queen nor her young who seem to be eating them. They appeared from the coco fiber/outdoor sediment mulch I obtained (and sterilized in boiling water for 20 min, but they still appear). The queen caught a 1/4 sized baby cricket today and stung it with determined precision to it's head. Excellent to see mother is hunting for the little ones, as the cricket now lays in the tube, dead. (Very much dead DigiSerbia ) 8)
I find it most interesting to note that this species of ant lays eggs that when hatched and left leave behind some sort of egg shell, it would be very interesting to know its compound and potential dependence on atmospheric changes.
The family is doing great!
Cheers
Antman
To update:
Unfortunately, there is only one larva remaining. It is growing everyday, and the queen hunts almost constantly to feed it, but it doesn't seem to like crickets :s . I've got alternatives like mealworms and cockroaches so I'm going to try those. It is quite unfortunate that the larvae are so cannibalistic :(
Cheers
Ohh well that sucks, i hope it will turn out better, i didnt know they are cannibalistic:O is that true?