Today I received one Oecophylla colony from Australia. It is nice ant ... I used similar tube style, but I have not put it to plastic box as like you , but I put it in Exoterra terrarium , some photos:
PS: there is constantly at night 24-25°C and at day ca 26-28°C. Humidity is tropical , but there is good air circulation because of net what is built on this type of terrarium
Re: Skippy - Australian Oecophylla smaragdina
Geplaatst: 18 okt 2010, 19:42
door Skippy
Now I am a bit confused:
The prepared tube was too big for this colony (I thought it will arrive bigger colony) , so they really not enjoyed it. I put there in my formicary 3 another different types of place to make nest , give them free voice.
1. one classic 14mm diameter long , with water place inside
2. rolled leaf of banana
3. completely dry smaller tube (12x80mm) with no water inside
- to give them any leafs could be waste of time however they have not larvae now
... they choose option "3" ... so they moved from origin hug tube into this small dry tube. I was wondered because I thought that they need bigger humidity in.
BUT let´s check it by another point of view. When you use only tube version of formicary for Oecophylla , there is not good humidity in arena. You can compare it with Mika´s type - same like on Harvard university , just in box.
You need to get them bigger humidity in nest chamber , so you put there cotton with water.
I used well wet terrarium , so they probably have enough humidity in their tube - that is why they prefered their origin dry leaf and now sweat dry test tube.
I would be happy if this theory is good - however they´ve chosen it itself = they must know what is the best for them , when they have chance to choose.
Today I checked inside tube ... there are 3 new workers and some larvae became prepupa. There are some new eggs too , also about 20-30 small larvae. Ants are full of food and queen looks healthy and she is nicely active.
Ants eats one small part of mealworm and <7mm cricket a day. They´re getting all trash out so I have to clean it all everyday.
There is optimal 25°C at night and 27-27.5°C a day. Humidity optimal around 70-80 percent. There is no moisture on glass anywhere , so I think it is ventilated well
My colony looks very well. They closed enter of tube by their net with small hole in hehe.
All members of colony are full of food , queen too.
I recognized that brood of this specie grow ver quickly. I had there small larvae when I received colony and now is tube full of pupae , or prepupa. I managed tube in formicary in position when I can look in without disturb them. They still eat one small insect a day (fly , small cricket).
Tube is still big enought to them , so there is not reason to put second tube yet (they fill just 1/3 of this one)
PS: poor photo from tube , there you can see queen and brood + some workers
Hello , my Oecophylla doing very well. I can see there new 20 uncolored workers , maybe 10 pupae , more than 50 larvae and probably 50-100 new eggs. It looks like they are doing fine , I will probably put there second tube soon I was not thought that keeping will be so easy.
Re: Skippy - Australian Oecophylla smaragdina
Geplaatst: 18 feb 2011, 19:52
door Skippy
Today and yesterday I had a time for testing and HD video recording of ants. However HD video is very huge (pwnd 170MB/1min) , I just converted it to .avi and uploaded it on youtube - so it is not so good there
I wish to make an documentary film about ant-keeping this year in HD , probably done at summer.
There are only two short videos , where I demonstrate recording with Canon SX30 IS (they say that´s bad ultrazoom) with Raynox DCR-250 adapter on it.
Workers walk around ...
Workers lick something inside testtube (I zoomed it into)
Re: Skippy - Australian Oecophylla smaragdina
Geplaatst: 02 mar 2011, 22:17
door Skippy
I have updated my formicary a little bit:
there is a speciel specie of moss inside on ground , it looks very nice I think
A chamber with brood:
There are 2 tubes for nest at the moment , colony grows very well
here is a video of ants , where they drink sugar water
and video of some kind of very very small mite inside the tube:
