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Hi Ashton,
1. This could be one of the reasons, probably is.
2. If you like your ants to move into a y-tong (ore other nest) don't give them any other options to move in to. If there is only one place they can move they will move there with a little patient. I now plants and stuff look very nice in a farm but for some reasons it is not good. ;)
3. lol that is true. ;)
sorry but what is a y-tong :shock:
Its the European name for Breeze Block or Areated Concrete block, a great way to make an ants nest, do a search and you will find a tutorial on here with pics that will tell you everything you need to know to make one :)
They arent suitable for all ants tho, so check before you spend time making on for a colony
In deed, sorry i always forget the English name. ;)
It is in my experience the best product to make a nest. ;)
Hello again,
Lots has happened again since last time,
In another attempt to get the colony to settle in my Y-tong I added a little soil to the chambers, and then sealed it back to the glass inside my tank. after uprooting the nest again i scooped up the queen placed her outside the y-tong (she quickly hurried inside) and then, in my wisdom, I placed a stone in the nest entrance.The gap around the stone was small enough for the workers and soldiers to access but too small for the queen to escape.
Bwahaahaha!, at last victory was mine;)
As planned the other ants followed the queen into the nest and finally made it their home. I felt very smug at apparently defeating this cunning opponant in our little battle of wits:)
At this point the ants had carried lots of seeds and a partly devoured meal worm into their nest but I thought that they would only benefit from a more varied diet.
With that though still clear in my head I scoured the garden to se if I could find anything suitable. Before long I had found myself a delicious looking spider for the colony to try. not wanting the creature to harm my colony numbers i squished it a bit first and then dropped it near to the nest entrance.
The ants seemed grateful for the new dish on the menu and quickly set about dragging the spider into the nest:)
After a couple of days I noticed a few of the seeds had sprouted little shoots within the nesting chamber. I hoped the ants would find time to clear them out as they would, no doubt, die and rot in the dark, damp environment of the nest.
Over the next few days the ants didn`t seem as active as usual, the various foodstuffs I was leaving out for them were not being scavanged and even when I lifted the cover on the outside of my tank so that I could peer inside the nest, the ants had moved the soil from the chamber they were inhabiting against the glass so you could not see in.
By this point the before mentioned seedlings were indeed starting to rot looking a differant shade of green and definatly showing signs of decomposition. I didn`t like this I was also starting to notice little pin head sized white bugs in the inhabited chamber. never more than one visable at any one time but I still didn`t like it....
There was allways still 3 or 4 workers visable outside of the nest, then one day I came home to find a soldier outside of the nest wandering around unacommpanied. I thought this was a little strange and this coupled with the little bugs and the rotting seedling panicked me a bit.
I decide I was going to insert a thin plastic straw, bent at the end, into the nest entrance. The seedlings had sprouted against the glass in the stacked soil I mentioned before. So i concluded that by inserting this straw i could scoop out the rotting greenery, along with the soil that was obscuring my view and also seemed to be housing the small bugs. I hoped that i would be able to to inspect the soil more closely and I also expected that the intrusion would would upset the colony enough that I could monitor a reaction to show the the ants were actually still in there in a relatively stable number..
And so began my little experiment, i deftly inserted the straw and all seemed to be going well as I extracted the nuisance plants and soil, there was also reaction from the ants, dozens of them sprang into view, biting the straw and shoo-ing away the disturbance.
I disposed of the seedlings and sifted through the soil. thankfully there was no bug infestation, I failed to find a single specimen. re-assured I happily left the ants to their own devices. I concluded that the ants were mearly settling in to their new home and must have allready stored enough food for the time being:)
Later that night I decided to check up on the ants.... On looking through the glass side of the tank I noticed the Colony had again became very avtive so i opened the lid to take a closer look, to my surprise it seemed my intrusion had caused the ants to up sticks again:(
There before my eyes was a procession of ants scurrying towards their new home, the colony seemed to be doing fine with at least as many workers as before maybe more. Some were carrying eggs and larva but near the back I noticed a large clump of ants maneuvering what looked like a shiney dark pebble towards the new nest.
I had never seen so many of these ants working together to move an object so I leaned in for a closer look...
What was this black shiney thing the ants were so interested in? On closer inspection the detail looked familiar, It wasn`t a stone, it was part iof a once living insect....
Bo***cks, It was my queens gastor:( No doubt about it, my queen was dead.
Oh well, how embarrasing to prove Kiam right after a little short of a month spent with these creatures. I was hoping the queen would be the most resilliant of the colony with the workers at least giving me a clue that I was doing something wrong:(
Saying that, I did uproot the nest more than once. And then there`s the seedlings and the little bugs... I know the heat and humidity weren`t to blame...
Can anyone shed any light on what they think may have happened?
Besides that I am still left with a small, queenless colony numbering 100+ workers 5/6 soldiers and brood. I have transfered them to a smaller ant farm for now so I can clean my tank and hopefully start again.
If i manage to buy another queen/ small colony I hope I will be able to gradually introduce my remaining colony to them.
Oh well, I am gutted but I feel I have learnt a lot and will hopefully do better next time....
Ashton
ufff.... I read it all (my eyes slowly closing down :lol: ) ,very interesting Ashon! Later would be fantastic to get here some photos ,sometimes is better to look on photo like reading long texts like this ... it is hard to write also ,but very good work ,nice blog.
Sry have not time to make answers on your questions :( ,but I´ll looking here on questions of other keepers :) ;)
Skippy
the little bugs are probably tiny food mites, not to much to worry about
sorry to hear your queen died :( but yep, you really do need to avoid the temptation of forcing them to move, the stress can cause them to attack one another sumtimes, and its possible they killed the queen
Edit Antstore
posting from 00:28 - @miszt, please use the edit-function! :)
btw you have no hope of introducing your current workers to a new colony, they will fight to the death
Thanks for the reply Skippy, I find it comforting to spread my pain around:)
Im afraid my camera is rubbish and wont pick up the ants at all, I am looking at getting a new one was thinking a canon s3 if anyone can recommend or discorage on the subject.
The remaining ants are doing fine by the way. I have housed them in an antstore, glass farm and arena setup. They have burrowed a small nest hole were the eggs larva and workers can be seen clearly:)
Thanks aswell Miszt, I`ll take your comments on board. At this time it does seem that my interferance could well have drove my pets to cannibalism:(
Are you sure the workers would not be accepted into a new colony? I thought PH. D. were one of the few species that displayed this type of behavior...
Hey guys,
I now have a new colony of Ph. D. They seem to be doing pretty well so I thought I`d start posting some pictures and updating my diary again:)
This is a picture of my Setup:
http://www3.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/c37deeeef083182ca2179f97b3d7055b5g.jpg
I`ve kept it simple this time. At the back is the Y-tong nest, covered with glass and with a yellow water reservoir protuding from its`s bottom left hand corner.
This is linked to a small acrylic tank via some antstore clear plastic tubing. Inside the tank is a thermometer, a test tube water reservoir for the ants to drink from and a 1kg weight just to make the tank easier to handle. At the top f the tank you can see my escape security, an ant proof mesh kept in place by the yellow tank lid.
The red heat lamp you can see in the picture is controlled by a thermostat and the black wire you can see on the left hand side of the y-tong is the temp sensor for the thermostat. This sensor goes inside the nest through a bored hole which I have plugged with cotton wool. The hope is that the thermostat will keep the temp. inside the nest at a constant 26 degrees.
This is my colony shortly after they moved into their new nest.
http://www2.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/855328c6009cf90202c98e3b985d90535g.jpg
And this is the colony now 3 weeks later.
http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/36fd05980650ac489be47ab8e09e916e5g.jpg
I think the amount of brood looks the have declined in this time, however its not all bad news because in this zoomed shot of the same picture there seems to be new eggs just below the queens gastor:)
http://www4.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/fb164571db177114de78d12315796a996g.jpg
I do seem to be having a high worker mortality rate though. I would estimate as high as 5 a day although I have had no soldier deaths as yet(there are between 6 and 10 in the colony). I would guess the deaths are due to maybe lack of moisture in the nest or possibly i have not fed them often enough. (although there are definatly seeds allways avaliable just not crickets or other insects)
I have added another Y-tong nest to the setup with a bigger damp area and have increased the amount of food i`m offering in an attempt to reduce the deaths. The ants do not seem to have discovered the new nest yet but are accepting the extra insect food greedily.
http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1a94d8a7b79e938203415f606fea681c5g.jpg
http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/18c82e3cef4b2d89c4fbe1af505b6b0e5g.jpg
hope you like. any advice, tips or input appreiciated,
thanks,
Ashton
Thanks Jimmy, good luck to you too mate:)