ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Frogger1]

I recieved my Hypoaspis today and put them straight into the setup. I'm not sure how long until they start consuming other mites but they're very active, covering alot of space and I'm hoping the mites will 'cling' onto the ants or the ants keep rubbing the parasites off of their bodies and get picked off by the Hypoaspis. Also during feeding time, I saw a soldier hiding in the entrance of the nest which looked twice as big compared to the soldiers I see every night, maybe it's a newly born one? I was hoping it would come out of the nest but instead it turned around. :p I also saw another soldier with a 'dented' abdomen, maybe the parasites are causing this as I can't imagine it being anything else. Nothing much has happened today but I shall update soon....

[Frogger1]

The Hypoaspis seemed to have had an effect but not on the parasitic mites. Obviously I expected the foraging mites to get picked off but I'm wondering if the Hypoaspis can actaully get to the parasites with how much the ants move about. The ants have moved the bits of substrate the Hypoaspis come with into the entrance of the nest to build it up more so I'm hoping some go deeper into the nest and find the queen as I still have no idea if she's doing ok. Some more ants are bound to hatch soon though, a sign of this is two workers were carrying two other workers that looked as though they have just come out of the cocoon. Anyone know why they do this? It was just the two workers wondering aimlessley with these two new ants and I also remember them doing this when I first got the ants, the seller didn't even know why.

[Frogger1]

I am about to lose some more ants due to the parasites, starting to consider removing the queen but I'm not sure about it. Has anyone tried to raise a colony from just one queen and no other ants? I would try to get some brood aswell but I'm not sure whether the parasites would feed from the brood. Any advice appreciated, I think the colony one day soon may just collapse because of the parasites.

[MajorSpud]

Hi Frogger,

to raise a colony from just a queen is almost impossible.

The bottleneck is here the hatched first generation of workers will probably not be enough to feed the queen and to care about the next generation of workers at the same time.

[Frogger1]

Hey MajorSpud,

I'm not quite sure what to do then, I feel trying to raise the queen on her own may be the best thing to do as ALOT of my ants are now infested and it seems to be only a matter of time until the colony dies off. What if I were to remove the queen but maybe save alot of the eggs? Also If I were to remove her and she was infested, do you have any advice for removing parasites from the queen? Before I got the colony unfortunately I didn't know of the parasites, if I did I would've tried a more sterile setup but then I guess it wouldn't make a difference if the ants were already infested. I'll leave them for tonight anyway and see what happens tomorrow...

[adam james]

Hello Frogger

I too agree with Major, Rasing a queen by herself even with alot of eggs and brood is extremly hard to do. I am going through this and my queen is struggling to found anouther colony. She is so stressed and the strain is too much that instead of rasing normal workers my queen has produced nantics again

If you wanted to save the queen then you would need aload of workers. The best you could do if you have to go down that route is collecting as many unifested workers as possible and the queen and as much brood you can. It would proberly take hours to do this and with the move it will take awhile for the colony to settle down again and will then have to go through the 4 weeks criticle period again so it wouldent be easy and i feel the very last resort. dont take the option lightly.

Hope what ever happens your colony survive.

Goodluck and keep us updated.

Adam

[Frogger1]

Hey Adam,

Thanks for this, I don't think I will move the queen now, I think the Hypoaspis working may just be a case of waiting longer and the colony still seems to be going ok so I guess it's not neccesary at the moment. There are alot more infested ants but maybe the Hypoaspis will pick the parasites off as they drop off the ants and move to something else. Good luck with what ever happens with your colony too!

Thanks,
Harley

[Frogger1]

I haven't been on in a while but the ants still aren't looking good, infact the numbers of my colony look like they've gone down alot, not that I'm suprised by that. I'm in contact with the seller at the moment and awaiting a reply about the situation. I'm 100% sure the mites have not come from my end, also done little 'experiments' by leaving different live foods (crickets, locusts, fruit flies etc.) in the setup to see if the mites would feed off of them and after 2 weeks all the live foods are still free of mites so I know they're ant specific and this is my only ant colony.

[AntsNational]

The cut up raisins didn't work?

[Frogger1]

Sorry for the late reply Vasile, I'm afraid the raisins didn't seem to have much of an effect. I think my Hypoaspis have helped though, about a week ago a new generation of workers hatched out, which looked alot better compared to the last generation due to not as many parasites infesting them and fingers crossed it keeps going that way. I noticed earlier around the entrance of the nest the soil looked a bit loose, as if they had been digging and this is what I found when I lifted up the card board on the front of the tank,







Terrible pic quality I know :p The chamber is about 3"-4" tall and about an inch wide, I hadn't looked behind the board for over a month as I wasn't seeing much but was excited to find this.

[Andie]

Good to see your getting good results, well done for persevering, this thread will help many in the future I'm sure.
First thing an ant keeper should buy though,,is a macro lense

[Frogger1]

Thanks Andie for the kind words! I'll see about getting a new camera haha

Also I forgot to add to my earlier post that I saw the queen for the first time, heavily infested but looks healthy so I'm not too worried, the only worry is how long she can last with all the parasites on her. Does anybody have any idea when alates would be produced in a colony of Pheidologeton diversus?


Edit Uta

[MajorSpud]

In my colony they started to produce Alates after roughly one year, they had some beofre, but I think these were from the breeding before in the mother colony.

[Frogger1]

Thanks for the reply, I hope my colony can make it that far, I'm hoping the parasites on the queen will die of old age, I'm not sure how long these parasites can live but I wouldn't think they have a very long life span?

[Frogger1]

Just another quick update, I saw the queen a couple days ago and she looked to have less mites on her, maybe they're starting to die of old age? The colony also seems alot more active and more voracious, I would think that's because of the growth of the colony since the newest workers hatched out.

I've also been told the occurence of the parasites shows the colony is not being kept right and that my setup is not a 'suitable environment'. Just to note I don't believe that, from what I had found out this species is very sensitive to the conditions and I'm sure they wouldn't have lasted this long if they were stressed from wrong conditions.