ANTSTORE World of Ants

[pierre05]

Hello. I wanted to know and that Atta cephalotes can survive a temperature of 30-35 °?
And that Atta cephalotes eat all the leaves that have them?

[Phasmid]

30-35degrees what?????
Have you got any experiance with keeping ants as these are not nearly for beginners!
30-35C may be OK for the foraging workers ONLY, but if the nest is exposed to such temps the colony will die! The nest should not realy be over 25C to be on the safe side (it is much cooler underground).
I hope you have done alot reading because we can only tell you what is already in other threads.

[SteveUK28]

I was gonna ask this question myself.. Pierre.. Do you have any experience at all.. because Atta are DEFINATLY NOT for a begineer or for someone with JUST european experience.. If you get these ants with no experience.. they WILL die... 100% guarantee... Not to mention the colonys can grow pretty darn big and you'll need a fairly decent bit of room for them. And the tempreture and humidity of the nest where the fungus grows is like pretty hard to control.

[pierre05]

Yes I have the experience but because he is a person who told me her once, and therefore to be sure I asked questions ...
Otherwise voila I have another problem before buying the colony I am testing in a humidity tray, but voila humidity goes up to 85% maximum. you have an idea to raise the humidity?
PS: Sorry for spelling mistakes, I am French

[Phasmid]

All you can do realy is make sure there is as little ventilation as possible if you want higher humidity, evaporating water can only do so much.

[Zagone]

Don't forget that with that much humidity and low ventilation, mold will love it.

[McK]

Not this again... damn I always feel bad for the colonies.

[Phasmid]

Don't forget that with that much humidity and low ventilation, mold will love it.

Which is exactly why leaf-cutter ants want high humidity and little ventilation .They are always blocking up holes in captivity to readuce air flow.

[Zagone]

They need ventilation for the different gases that accumulate too, so they have ventilation tracts much like termites.

But, probably won't matter much in a small colony; however they don't want stray mold to grow, they just grow their specific fungus
and if any mold or so gets to it, it'll ruin their fungus. Atlesat taht's how it wold seem to me, i've never kept these myself.

I do know that that 1000+ Atta Sexdens colony at the local Tropicary where I live have a ventilated nesting basin, but these also nest in soil.

[Phasmid]

The conditions needed for the fungus to grow is perfect for mold and bacteria, the reason why the fungus is not infested and destroyed is because of the ants constantly cleaning and removing contaminated fungus, if you take fungus away from the ants and leave it some where humid, it tends to mold over pretty quick.
The ventilation in massive colonies is only sufficent to remove the carbon dioxide that the masses fungus and ants produce and replace it with fresh air, not to deter mold.
In a ventilated basin the ants will be either under ground or contained in boxes with tiny holes.
So leave the ants to worry about mold and concentrate on keeping the fungus garden warmish and humid.

And most importantly get plenty of experiance with normal ants and then get experiance with Acromyrmex before you consider Atta