ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Creature]

Sorry for the bad english !


Hello folks from the british forum ;D

I want to share all i got about my Pheidologeton diversus with everyone here,
like i do it with the people on the german forum.

You can write down your comments in this thread viewtopic.php?f=218&t=13827


The Setup is a Basin 30x20x20 cm.

Its filled with seramis and sand loam mixture. To keep it moist , i placed a Ytong block in the center with
a tube to fill it with water. Around the ytong betweend then sand/loam mixture and the seramis is a
insect net to provide that they cant get the seramis out of there.

What else can i say?.... i bought them from unexisted. Took about 4 days to arrive here.

I attached a fan on the lid for a better air circulation. And there is a comination sensor (temperature and humidity)
above the surface and a temperature sensor under the ground.

Ground temperature: ~26 °C
Air temperature: ~28°C
Humidity: ~60%

I also put a good layer of PTFE on the top.


THEY HAVE ARRIVED


Test tube gets into the basin


The first lonely night

[Creature]

Feeding live insects

[Creature]

They moved into the ground!

The whole colony has moved into the sand/loam mixture.
Right now the have about 6 nest entrances and have
highways between each hole. There is a constant "flow"
of small workers between all those holes.

The net couldnt hold them back

The metal net i placed between the sand/loam mixture
and the seramis couldnt hold them back. Yesterday i
looked into the basin and saw the little buggers crawling
over the small seramis rocks.

But thats not realy a problem. They dont get flushed
away when i refill the ytong watertank. The ytong
is doing its job perfectly.

Food food food

Yes they love to eat and eat and eat. They take every
insect i put in the basin. But the millet seed i had been
stored in a tiny amount.

[Creature]

[Creature]

Everyday is a new adventure

When i arrived at home yesterday the ants prepared a little surprise for me.
They moved a lot of the sand/loam mixture to the surface and made 3 new
nest entrances. But the real surprise was to see the trenches they made. Its
just awesome to look at those threnches between every nest entrance.

And its much better when there is a current of ants between those entrances
in the trenches.

I will make some pictures today

[Creature]

Here again the pictures how i build the basin. I only posted
the pictures on the german forum.


The Ytong has a size of 10x10x10cm. The "walls" are 1cm thick.
So the volume is 0,9 liter.


I placed the Ytong in the center of the basin ontop of a layer of
seramis. The prevent that the ants dig the seramis and take it
to the surface i made an insect net around the ytong.


After that , i filled the basin with the sand/loam mixture

[Creature]

3D Model of my basin

Unexisted brought me to the idea to make a 3D model of my basin. I made it with "Google Sketchup7" its a freeware.

[Creature]

For the people who asked about my YTONG water reservoir

This is my step by step guide to build one

viewtopic.php?f=172&t=13975&p=119772#p119772

[Creature]

MITE INFESTATION!!!!

Hello everyone. I have bad news. My ants seem to have mites. I think they caught them
from all the live food i gave them. Thats what u get for being so naive

Now i need all the help i can get. Does somebody have experience into killing those mites ?

I love my Pheidologeton diversus , i dont want to lose them after not even a month

[Creature]

The Colony is almost dead!

There are were no small workers in the basin when i looked yesterday after i came back from some days in the hospital. So today i dug out the whole nest , looking for brood workers etc.

I only found a lot of soldiers but after i almost had the whole nest out , i found......... THE QUEEN. I seperated her and cleaned a bit of the mites off her with a brush. I will repeat this everyday until all the mites are gone. I hope i can rescue the queen this way.

stay tuned

[Creature]

The Liquid "VITA BIOSA" is working!!

Vita Biosa is some natural drink for your guts of you if problems with digestion. Somebody on the forum told me to use it. It didn't work at all in the whole basin , but after i took the queen out yesterday and put her into a test tube, i used some of the liquid again. A few hours later i took a look into the tube and almost 90% of the mites were gone from her body. So i repeated this procedure in new test tubes until there were no more visible mites.

Shes now in a new test tube with a little bit of sand/loam mixture to make her comfortable

If it wasn't about Pheidologeton , the liquid might be able to rescue a whole colony. The problem with my colony was/is that the basin is filled with sand/loam so the mites have some places without the liquid around them where they can "stay" and Pheidologeton usually don't drink. Some other keepers used this stuff in their water dispenser and it worked. Or to water their YTONG

[Creature]

My new workers have arrived

Today i recieved about 50-100 workers. I set the queen with her test tube in a new prepared small basin.
Step by step i set the workers into the basin. They accepted her as their new queen within seconds.

After about 20 minutes and half of the workers i put their testtube into the basin. They rushed out to the
queen protected her and guided her into the tube where she was before.

Now she "ONLY" has to lay eggs. Lets hope that she will make it

[Creature]

Sadly...... the queen died on the 7th of July.

But i will keep exotic ants again. Right now i am deciding between Pheidologeton diversus again and Harpegnathos venator.

I only know for sure , that i will build an YTONG nest to get a better look onto the colony and a better access for VITA BIOSA to defeat
freakin mites if they every appear again

[aka ant]

Great colony but sorry for your loss. I can't wait to see your next new colony!

[bugsy]

sorry to hear it, I'm thinking about getting some in the near future. If you do decide to try again with this species keep us posted. It will be good to see what you do different. We can all learn from it.