ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Phasmid]

Just got a small colony yesterday and thought I should start a little journal.

So, tiny colony, fungus size less than a golf ball, less than onehundred ants and one massive queen, she is REALY big!
Only a few dead ants. The heat pack was cold but the ants seem to be recovering from the cold (the queen was falling over herslef the great big clumsy thing )
There are some mite like animals but I'm not too worried about them, my Acros have done fine with these bugs.

They are in setup like the one I have the Acros in and being kept at constant 24*C (as opposed to the Acros which are a couple of degrees above room temp, so 16-25*C).
When I put them in the setup they did the typical thing of removing most of the brood (as the garden is too small after the journey to feed new ants), which was a shame as there was a huge soldier pupae.
So far they have just finnished rebuilding the fungus garden and taken a tiny bit of eucalyptus, they don't seem too interested in foraging yet, all in good time.

These ants stridulate but no where near as loudly as Acromyrmex e.g. the 1cm Acro queen will make your fingers vibrate but the 3cm Atta queen you can hardly hear.
They have realy long thin legs compared to Acros and are generaly weaker armored (you can pick up an Acro worker without fear of damaging it, infact you sometimes feel the spines on its back go into your skin first, but Atta workers are slender and fragile so you should avoid picking one up between your fingers). I haven't yet decided which bites harder.

With any luck I won't find out why Atta are harder to keep than Acromyrmex (apart from growth rate) .
I'll post some picks this weekend.

[Colin]

Hi Phasmid

Good luck with the Atta, they are great to keep and although they can be a challenge are well worth the effort.

Since you are keeping acromyrmex you should do fine with the atta but i have found that they prefer to be more humid than acros and i dont find them harder but perhaps more demanding for a constant environment.

My colonies dont tend to like eucalypcus at all and do much better with privet, bramble, orange peel and almost any flower blooms... including daffodils

For info, mine sit at a constant 24 - 27 deg C and humidity no lower than 80% and more like 90%.

cheers
Colin

[Phasmid]

Thanks Colin,
Lol, mine leave well alone privet and bramble but absoluetly love eucalyptus, its one of their favorite, the Atta have only taken eucalyptus so far , the garden has started to grow .

I should be fine keeping temp and humidity constant for the Atta, provided they don't copy the Acros. The Acros moved out of their constant warm and humid basin into a small box, that I was using as connection for other tubes, where it is cool and dryer (no medium and the temp varies by about 10*C), so much for them being a sensitive ant . I'm moving them into a slightly airier setup.

[JimmyVe]

Good luck phasmid. Keep us up to date.

[Colin]

Hey, yeah weird right enough about them not liking privet! have you tried the orange peel, the acro really like that too...

i always found acro in much dryer places but as long as you have given them plenty options they will choose what's right for them!

please post some pics
cheers

[Phasmid]

Well the the fungus garden is growing nicely, they are moving off the eucalyptus and are loving rose leaves, they have cut loads of rose . No workers have yet ventured out of the tank to forage.

I put a jar of earth on its side in the tank to give them something where they have more control over the conditions while the colony is small and vulnerable. They have already dug a large chamber in it and filled it with fungus but the queen sits on another pile of fungus outside the jar.
There is always atleast one tiny worker cleaning the queen but she does most of the cleaning herself, which is quite cool to watch as she does all the elaborate moves that you see workers doing, only she is huge and does every thing in slow motion .
I see a worker occasionally carrying an egg and the queen always seems to be chewing on one. There is very little brood at the moment .

At the moment the colony consists of a few dozen 2-4mm workers, a dozen or so 5-7mm workers (they do most of the cutting and other heavy duties) and 3 or so 1cm workers + monster of a queen.

The Beginning (theres a bit more fungus out of shot)



The garden is coming along nicely now



The safe house (start of chamber that stretches all the way to the back of the jar, wider now too)


And finally the setup. Realy simple, realy cheap .
The tube connects to the foraging area, only one ant has seen it. There is a heat mat on a thermostat under the tank.
The lid is simply a peice of PVC with holes in it held down with pipe clips. The pot on top allows me to drop food in and gives me a clear viewing point through the condensation and gives some ventilation. The tank has 10litre capacity.

[Colin]

looks good... I have my colonies in a shed which i have heated for lots of fish so the humidity and temp is easy to maintain for the ants and since they are outside i dont tend to worry about them wandering around to find food either

where did you get your colony by the way?

[Phasmid]

I got both Atta cephalotes and Acromyrmex octospinosus from Educationaldisplays ltd.

[Colin]

ah me too, they will be from Trinidad then...

i worked for them for several years too

This is the first I have had Atta for about 8 years or so and really enjoying having them again, i have 2 colonies of cephalotes and one of octospinosus

cheers
C

[JimmyVe]

Nice pictures man. Good luck with your colony.

[Phasmid]

Bad news, the queen is dead. The workers dragged her out yesterday morning. I am gutted.
I think she starved. There were may too many big workers in this colony when the garden was tiny.
Workers this size belong in much larger colonies and there was not enough fungus to support such big ants as well as the queen and so, as the queen is in the most need of feeding than any other ant in the colony, she starves.

Next time (when ever that is) I will be sure to remove any oversized workers as the fungus will have suffered too much in the post to feed them, the time it takes for the fungus to recover (although quick) is too long too support the queen who's egg laying rate will be set for much more food.
The soldier pupae (they were huge) indicate that the colony was used to being fed from a much greater amount of fungus, and as with many wild caught colonies, the change is too much.

I don't know how big the garden needs to be before ants this size should appear, but there were workers bigger than my biggest Acro workers and it was not before the garden took up over a liter before the first 1cm workers appeared.

I doubt that being chilled in the post was much help ether.

Damn.

[Antlord]

Sorry to hear that , what a pity to lose such nice ants.
Better luck next time!

[McK]

I guess this is a new record then.

[damondeionno]

I don't know much about Atta, but it doesn't seem likely that the queen would starve before workers. There is lot of evolutionary pressure on ants to maintain the health of the queen as a priority. Wild colonies will often have lean times, I don't think ants where the queen starved first, would still be around.

Your suggestion about removing majors does seem sensible, but I would suggest that there is some other explanation for her death. Unfortunately I don't know what that was. Perhaps as you said, the transport simply caused too much stress.

[Phasmid]

I guess this is a record time.

The workers are tiny compared to the queen, it would take very little to sustain ants that will do no growing and are as light as a feather.
The queen however is huge (and remember big insects eat a fair amount) and needs a decent food supply (workers will live off virtually nothing) and her egg laying rate would be comparable to that of a queen in a nest that can produce soldiers (hence there soldier pupae), so with next to no food the first ant to go down is likely to be the one that actually needs it. Evolutionary pressure can't help those without anything to help with, she can't exactly eat the workers.

I also think that the main blame is the stress of a cold journey; the ants can’t recover in time to replace the lost fungus.

I'm still open to suggestions .