ANTSTORE World of Ants

[AntsNational]

Greetings all,

As of Friday, November 4th, 2011 I am a proud owner of a bicolor Atta cephalotes species. The reason why they are a bicolor is because they have an unusual color pattern consisting of an orange body with black legs and a black thorax. I got them from a personal supplier in Germany and I'm quite excited to attempt this species. For all you out there who don't know me, I'm a 22 year old guy from Canada and I love ants. They've been my passion since I could walk. I currently keep a wide variety of different species, some foreign some local all with proper permissions. If this colony succeeds and grows I will continue to post in this log.

For starters, I went to an arts and crafts store and purchased some acrylic containers which you'll see below, as well as some clear plastic tubing and of course some coco-fibre substrate. PM me for dimensions of the tubes and containers.

I (pressed for time) used a lighter and melted holes into the acrylic containers and when they were soft enough I pushed the tubing through. By keeping the setup relatively small I can easily maintain the humidity and the heat as well as giving the ants space to forage and dump their waste. The setup is made out of three different sized containers. The smallest one is the garbage/waste disposal. The one beside it is the largest and it houses the colony. The next one is the medium sized container which will be the foraging area. Once the ants outgrow this setup I will carefully move them to a bigger setup similar to the one they're in now.

I then boiled water and put in a third of the coco-fiber. Whilst it was disassembling, I stirred it slowly. By boiling the coco-fiber one kills off any harmful mites/eggs, springtail eggs and bacteria that may kill the ants/fungus. I let it boil for a good 10 minutes, then sit for another 15 minutes. I then de-juiced it (while still hot) of the majority of its water. This way the heat and humidity of the substrate will mimic the natural rainforest substrate that these ants sometimes live in (otherwise its natural clay). I also made tiny holes at the tops of each containers. This will release the carbon emitted by the fungus, but keep the humidity in. The walls of the containers are humid and warm.

When I introduced the ants to their set up, I noticed that the fungus was quite deteriorated. From a span of 24 hours I noticed a very big difference as it has become whiter and healthier looking. I placed in half of a raisin for them and they happily have been eating it all day, as well as I noticed they were seemingly regurgitating it up as well to the fungus. I could be wrong, but if I'm correct then that's awesome!

Here are some pictures of the colony and the setup and materials.

Enjoy!

[AntsNational]

So the ants have reassembled their fungus, and also noting they actually do take a strong liking to raspberry leaves! Does anyone know of other leaves that they favour? I've tried a bunch from a list off of different zoo's and exhibits but they really take a favour to raspberry leaves. It's very interesting watching them forage, cut, carry and return leaf cuttings to the nest. I like seeing the teamwork of bringing in the harvest! One can follow my colony online at my youtube channel.

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This colony is going to be documented for educational purposes and in the effort to conserve the natural habitat in which they live. Whilst the colony is still small, its developmental stages will be documented for all to see. The workers have been chewing up the leaves, defecating on them and placing fungal threads onto the pulp. New fungus is being cultured:)

Here are some pictures of the colony!

[Eman]

Everything there looks great! The setup looks really nice!

[AntsNational]

The Atta colony has been tearing up the fungus piece by piece and has been transporting it into the medium chamber where there's more substrate. This was originally the plan that I wanted to come into effect. I wanted the ants to begin building a nest in the chamber furthest from the small garbage chamber. I can see a second fungus garden inside the nest entrance and I noticed they've built a deep large chamber into the soil. It's great to see these ants hard at work constructing a nest like this. They have been gathering raspberry leaves daily and have been feeding the fungus. The humidity and temperature are roughly unchanged as it is still quite humid and quite warm. They have also transported most of the larvae and eggs into the new nest. Unfortunately, the queen is still outside of the nest with the majority of the fungus. The nest entrance is quite small, definitely too small for the queen to get into so I'll closely monitor this and see how the ants sort this out. New eggs have appeared and some pupae have eclosed. It's astonishing to see such creatures work so hard to survive as a unit.

[AntsNational]

I've noticed that over the past few days the Atta colony has moved almost the entire fungus garden+ queen into an underground chamber that they excavated themselves. I've made the decision to want to observe them in a more naturalistic-suited habitat. I'm going to fill a tank 2/3 with the coco-fibre (boiled and strained first). I believe this will be the safest way to allow the ants to do their natural thing and build their garden underneath the soil. I will entice them to dig near a corner of the tank so the chamber will be viewable. Will post pics in a few days,

Cheers.

[mtrein]

Wow. Great videos on your youtube channel. Well done and very entertaining to watch.

[AntsNational]

Wow. Great videos on your youtube channel. Well done and very entertaining to watch.

Thankyou! I'll keep them coming.
Cheers

[Eman]

Yeah your colony and your videos look great!
Keep going with your great job!

When I get a good level of experience I want a colony of those ants! They have such a great behavior.

[AntsNational]

Yeah your colony and your videos look great!
Keep going with your great job!

When I get a good level of experience I want a colony of those ants! They have such a great behavior.

Thankyou!

Currently the fungus has grown from a bunch of fragments during shipping to almost the size of a clementine. I upgraded the set up which I will post pictures and a new video for on my channel within the week!

Cheers

[AntsNational]

Update:

A bunch of new pupae have appeared as well as quite a large number of eggs. The first worker eclosed yesterday and I'm quite pleased about it. Development happens each day. The fungus continues to grow upwards.

Cheers

[AntsNational]

Update:

Alright so a few things to update on..

Firstoff, I expanded their foraging setup and added a taller container packed with the same pre-boiled substrate. I'm hoping that the ants will move their entire nest there because there's lots more room for the fungus to grow in. I feel like I've restricted its size but we'll see about that.

Second, the fungus wasn't looking all too hot and the refuse pile was growing a bit. There's these tiny that I feed to my mite-specialist ants (Myrmecina americana & Ponera pennsylvanica) but they don't give the leafcutter ants much interest nor the ants to them. The mites stick to the refuse pile and I haven't found any in or around the living fungus or the nest chamber itself which is good. I'm not too worried. Nonetheless today I plan on cleaning out the foraging container after work. The fungus itself wasn't growing and was actually shrinking, and the only thing I could calculate was that the moisture was running a bit under the ants' regulations meter so I re-moisturised the substrate (little by little to avoid any potential floods). This morning, 12 hours later, I noticed that the ants had already begun to rebuild it upwards

Third, I've discovered this "trick" to getting your leafcutters to cut more foliage when you want them to--especially if you're concerned that they haven't been cutting much lately. I was sensing that my leafcutters weren't cutting as much leaves as they usually do, so an idea popped in my head. Bait the leaves. In an experiment to record difference in cutting normal leaves vs. baited leaves, I collected a rose stem from outside with a few leaves on it. The difference is this time I sprayed the little stem with a concentrated mix (well mixed) of water, sugar, and apple juice (~100 mL of water, 1/3 more apple juice, 1/3 sugar). I skewed it to a toothpick as I always did, and left it in the foraging container. Within an hour of returning, I noticed there were about 10 foragers out constantly and those leaving to the nest were replaced by those leaving the nest as if they were on work shifts. They were very attracted to the coating that I put on the leaves. I returned about an hour later and I noticed that 4 ants were cutting on one leaf at the same time, whilst many others were cleaning other leaves on the stem! There was a pile of leaves left in the nest by the fungus, as the ants were already working on turning them into pulp.

By this morning, there was a noticeable increase in the size and height of the fungus, and it was peppered with dark pulpy leaf-fertilizer. This is a trick that I hope any other leafcutter ant owners give a try.

I have to report on is that there has been a disappearance of the eggs, larvae and pupae. The ants have moved them into the garden. Although I'm confident in my ants knowing what's best, I must admit I feel a slight concern with their "disappearance." They do emerge being carried by the workers periodically.

The last thing I'd like to note is that I've noticed that the smallest workers actually clean the larger ones from head to toe periodically. Really cool to watch.

Anyway here's a quick picture that I took before I set off to work of the ants this morning.

Thats all for now,
Cheers

Vas

[AntsNational]

Update:

The colony is doing fairly well. They have been cutting fresh leaves nearly every day. I noticed that sometimes they don't cut leaves though, and this worried me. I decided to buy two small indoor rose bushes, and although the care for these roses will be difficult--it's not impossible.

The ants took liking to these minature rose leaves overnight. I place only a small branch in every other day. At one point since my last post the queen had moved away from the fungus garden--I think that the heat was too high inside the nest so I moved the lamp further from the nest. This improved things.

About 10 new workers have eclosed in the last week which is great news. The total population is probably around 50 workers now.

[AntsNational]

New workers have eclosed and the fungus has been growing. The colony is doing very well. Here is a shot of inside the nest, keeping it as naturalistic as possible. One can visit my entire album on the facebook group 'International World of Ants.'

Cheers

[AntsNational]

Continuing the growth of an Atta cephalotes colony, entering and leaving the 12th month of the year of 2012, the queen and colony have been doing well. Many new workers have hatched and many new eggs have been laid. The colony is growing and in good conditioning entering the new year. First documented AntsNational footage filmed in 1080p HD !
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[AntsNational]

Update:

I've been keeping an eye on my leafcutters and I've noticed that tons of new larvae have suddenly appeared. I also caught a few glimpses of the queen in the act of laying an egg. It's remarkable to witness. Anyways the colony is doing well still and larger workers have eclosed. Only one ant has perished and that was two days ago where the ants brought it outside away from the nest. The fungus has grown to the ceiling of their chamber and has now toppled over. At first I was a bit worried as perhaps maybe larvae may have been trapped underneath but it seems that the ants took care of this. Now a large pile of larvae and pupae of many sizes rest near the 'back window' to the nest. The fungus has begun to grow taller after falling on its side as well.