ANTSTORE World of Ants

[SNiDE]

Hi all, pictures of my new Polyrhachis dives colony. The setup is 1 foot long by 2 feet wide, with about 2cm of red sand and lots of lichen & moss. The lid is cut from perspex, the opaque right hand side of the lid is glued in, I'm hoping they will eventually nest under this, the other 2 thirds of the lid is removable perspex, but when in place almost airtight. The heatmat is situated under the opaque section where I'm hoping they will move to. Additional heat is provided by a lamp, and the humidity is just from water I've misted in with a sprayer, and increased by the mirror that's behind the formicarium that causes alot of condensation- theres a sheet of cardboard i slide imbetween the mirror and the wall of the basin to reduce the humidity if necessary.
They arived today and I moved them in about an hour ago, so the plastic containers are still in until they take all the eggs from the top of it, I'm trying to let them adjust as gradually as possible- hopefully the setup will look much better without the massive plastic containers in there
I'm also crap at taking photos.

[donbilbo]

Wow that nest looks huge, i wonder how many queens are in there? maybe 20, maybe 200.... Have fun!

[SNiDE]

Yeah not sure how many at the moment, waiting for them to settle in. Going to get some new feeders as at the moment they concentrating on sticking corpses to any fruit, honey and/or cotton with water on it and eating only crickets am ordering some new feeding dishes (these ones have worked for other species but my polyrhachis seem to view any feeder more than 1mm deep as waste disposal

[JimmyVe]

Very nice colony, have fun with them.

[SNiDE]

Thanks jimmy
They've settled in nicely now, and are well underway moving the nest to where I wanted it- in the corner behind the wooden tunnel against the glass, and they've started eating honey solution aswell as crickets in decent numbers so everythings on track! Even seen a couple of queens being hurded towards the new nest
As they've settled in I've been able to take out some of the packaging- I didn't want to disturb them unless totally necessary so I left all of their packaging in the basin for the first 2 days so they could adjust, until they left it. Been able to get a few half-decent photos too:

[JimmyVe]

I think there is something wrong with your pictures.

[SNiDE]

Will resize them!

[SNiDE]

Sorry all, can't seem to find the edit button.. I have some recent pics of the setup as it is now with an added arena.
The pics aren't great, neither is the camera. I estimate there are over 1000 workers at the moment.. haven't seen any pupae, either they're still in chambers in the old nest waiting to be moved or the generation was eaten whilst it was being delivered. The cover was taken off their nesting area just for the photo, usually it's pitch dark. Everything seems healthy + happy in the colony

[SteveUK28]

must admit i cant wait to get these ants.. they are proper nice

[donbilbo]

Hi SNiDE, if you had to assume or quickly count the ants foraging at any given time, what would be your guesstimation? Your colony seems to be more than 1000 ants, isnt your main basin too small?

[insanebe]

Hi SNiDE, if you had to assume or quickly count the ants foraging at any given time, what would be your guesstimation? Your colony seems to be more than 1000 ants, isnt your main basin too small?

i think the small one is the arena ?
when you buy these ants you can get a queen +1000 workers, how many did you get SNIDE ?

[JimmyVe]

You can if you buy it from a private seller. Yes i think he is using the upper basin only to feed the ants.

[SNiDE]

Hi SNiDE, if you had to assume or quickly count the ants foraging at any given time, what would be your guesstimation? Your colony seems to be more than 1000 ants, isnt your main basin too small?

As Jimmy says, the upper basin is just for feeding them as taking the lid off the main basin lid to feed them can cause alot of hassle for them and me. The main basin is about 2ft x 1ft, which seems to be large enough for them. Assuming this species forages with roughly 10% of its population i would guestimate the pop. of the colony to be 1200-1400 workers, but I think this will decrease over the next few weeks as older workers die off and the next generations emerge, as the brood obviously suffered from the journey, before increasing again.
p.s thanks for sorting my pics out Jimmy

[Skippy]

I tried an experiment with Polyrhachis and I made nest like this , from 2 CD-pack joined together , and I put pieces of paper into (one wet , other dry). They moved to that very quickly (in one hour) , so they probably love it. Then they started to make nest inside , they are getting soil to box and making chambers from paper. Looks to be funny , I have not seen any problems yet. On top of box are small holes for fresh air.
All i put into arena.

[SNiDE]

Looks nice Skippy, I want to see what the paper nest will look like.
As you can see comparing this picture to the one above (taken thursday evening) my ants have been busy; they are starting to create chambers for the queens, and are expanding out sideways aswell as upwards.