ANTSTORE World of Ants

[adam james]

Thankyou Gortello

Well guys todays the day my colony has arrived , they are in a small plastic tub and have a small fungus garden, its about the size of a walnut , There are alot of workers and one Active queen , also there is one soldier . Well i will upload pictures over the weekend but for now i just watch them in there tub , im at work so cannot move them into the setup untill tonight. .

Anyways guys , will add pictures and update soon

Greetings

Adam

[Andie]

Congrats Adam, i'm dead jealous

[adam james]

Hey Andie cheers buddy .

Well Guys i finally managed to get my ants into my setup last night. Took awhile and also took the use of a bent spoon and a fine paint brush. I have changed the queen container setup from four linked containers to just one as i felt due to seeing the actual size of her when i got them the four containers linked were far to roomy and i could lose her if she burrowed into the fungus garden. So i have added one which gives her more then enought room.

On opening the container they were deliverd in the queen curled up in the fungus garden and the workers raced to where the intrusion was ( my fingers lol ) . I used a bent spoon to slide under the fungus garden while sweeping it with the fine brush into the spoon with the queen curled up, i then lowered this into there new home and gently brushed them off. It was then a long hours work off slowly brushing up the many workers onto thebrush and tapping them onto the fungus garden. After a hour all had been done and they were starting to settle down and the queen had already uncurled and stood up.

I put in a few rose leaves last night in the container next to them and found this morning a few cuts had been made out of it . Also a few tiny workers had moved a few fragments of fungus garden into this container and look set on trying to establish a second garden here . Next to this tiny garden are a big bunch of eggs, Atta eggs are so tiny but there looks to be at least 200 in this bunch .

Well thats my update so far , heres a few pictures below.

As you can see a nice sized fungus garden and there are two soldiers in this small colony , a major and media

Heres a better view of the fungus garden size

Her Royal Majesty the Queen

And heres where the fungus garden is , The Queen Container . Your notice the larger container next to it is where i put the leaves at the moment , but you can just make out a few ants , this is where they are trying to establish a second fungus garden

Hope you guys like , Feel free to comment or ask questions

Regards

Adam

[adam james]

Hey guys , Great news the colony has settled in well , They have been cutting a few leaves over the weekend and the queen seems well and is active in stages lol. There has also been a few new worker births as these can be seen slowly walking around the fungus garden. Also the workers are taking good care off the Queen. I have fed them so far , rose , willow and dandilion leaves all have had pieces cut out of them but they seem to prefer the rose alot more. I have also given them a slice of apple and they loved it , that too has been cut up and chunks added to the fungus garden. Im glad to say aswell the fungus garden is now growing so they certainly love my setup

I will add more pictures soon ,

Regards

Adam

[Andie]

Looking good Adam.What Species did you get in the end, or did i miss that somewhere ?

Ive just ordered my tubeing so im going to build something like what youve done or should i say copy

[adam james]

He he , feel free to copy if you like mate.Ive just added some 6 watt strip lights to the top of each shelf , makes viewing alot easyer, will post pictures of that soon . The Species are Atta cephalotes. I look forward to seeing your setup , will you be getting Leaf cutting ants ? What species you aiming for ??

[Andie]

Well Atta cephalotes are available at the moment but i'll probably have to wait until the 2nd week in July after our holiday. I don't want to blame my neice if anything goes wrong while she looks after our pets..but can i wait that long.

One question. when there are 100's of workers foraging and ive put in loads of sprigs of, say bramble. How the hell do you get the old stuff out and the new stuff in without them being all over it? It was bad enough in my stick insect days lol.

[adam james]

Lol , well stick insects live actually on the sprigs of foodplant , so yes i can see it being hard to change the food. I find that once the colony has been provided with leaves they will cut all they need and then they usally stop. They act abit like driver ants in that they go on feeding frenzys once a day they dont collect food all day long. Just wait till they have stoped cutting or there are a few straglers left then clean out the old food.

[SteveUK28]

Awesome dude!!! great stuff looking forward to seeing many more photos from you.. time to upgrade your camera

[adam james]

Cheers thankyou Steve , i know i need to get a good macro one lol

Heres a few more pictures

Regards

Adam

[jbc]

Hi Adam, cool setup and ants.

As some of you may now my Camponotus ligniperdus colony isnt doing well so Im looking maybe for another ant colony. I have seen pics of Atta species and they look pretty cool and their lifestyle is cool too. So are these ants hibernating? In what temp. do you keep them at? What humidity, they need? Can I leave them with no attention for a week?

[adam james]

Hi Jbc , Leaf cutting ants dont hibernate, The Fungus gardens they grow need a fairly warm temperture , i have found them to be ok at a temp from 18c - 27c Never let the temperture drop below 18c or the fungus garden will start to shrink and you must never let the temperture get above 30c because this high temperture will steralise your queen.Humidity needs to be high in the setup but not soaking and the fungus garden shouldent be sitting in water or to wet a substrate otherwise it will rot.

I would Advise maybe trying with a few other species of ants first , these ants are cool and fasinating but are alot more harder to keep then the camponotus. Also during the founding stage while the colony is starting building up you need to tend to them every day , they collect small quantitys of leaves to begin with and this needs replacing and changing to a diffrent type of leaves every few days. They cannot be left for a week without attention.

They can be easy to keep should you get conditions right for the fungus but are a very expensive loss should it go wrong.

Hope that answers your questions. feel free to ask should you need more advice

Adam

[Andie]

Adam, can you tell me what sizes the 2 pipes are in the second pic above please ? cheers

[adam james]

Hello Andie yes of course

(Tube smaller size ) external diameter - 13mm
Internal diameter - 10mm

(Tube larger size ) external diameter - 20mm
Internal diameter - 14mm

Hope that helps

Regards

Adam

[Andie]

Cheers Adam