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My colony is doing fantastically. I managed to take two (fairly blurry) pictures of the insides of the nest and the feeding area (while they were out feeding en masse) immediately one after the other, and then using Photoshop to "mark" the ants (bright pink paintbrush
) I did a vague headcount... I am now up to between 150-170 ants. There are lots of newly hatched/baby ants (they are much lighter in colour when newly born - almost yellow/orange) in the nest area and a huge number of eggs at different stages.
Maintenance wise, Waxworm chrysalises (chrysali?), sliced in two down the middle (as in "from head to toe") remain the favourite food - they absolutely devour the soft insides of these, and prefer it to the waxworms themselves or the moths. I have also purchased a Thermostat ("Reptile ThermoControl PRO II Thermostat /CoolerStat"), which I have connected to a very low power heat lamp. I keep this heat lamp about 1.5 feet (45cm or so) away from the nest area, and it is aimed at the black-velvet cover that keeps the ytong "in the dark". The thermostat switches the lamp on/off as necessary, maintaining the nest at a constant 23 degrees celsius during the day, and off at night. I will use this for hibernation too when they go out to the shed, and set it to 5 degrees celsius to help ensure it does not drop below freezing.
Here are a few more photos taken over the last few days. The one with the tomato was interesting - they weren't very interested in the tomato slice, but they did spend a little time placing grains of white sand on to it - the tomato was "clean" when it went in, it is the ants that covered it in sand one grain at a time! Sorry about the flash reflection on the nest photos. Comments above each picture explain/point out anything interesting, and remember to click to see them fullsize (a couple are huge even after I cropped them, so be sure to zoom them in on your browser too, rather than let your browser shrink them down to fit in the window).
... lol )
