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Post by timl on Feb 22, 2017 23:10:46 GMT
Just another quick peak while I am still making finishing touches to their future location. I'm assuming the yellow is the contents of their stomachs I.e. the insides of the locust I fed them..... should be.... hope so... I would say in this pic again that there are a solid 35 workers + another 10 or so that you can't see + the ones outside. Some workers do seem to be different sizes.... maybe.... They also collected even more soil that I sprinkled into the outworld and created a bunker of soil which is leaching the water out of the cotton. You can also see a nice clutch of eggs and a line up of ants getting ready to eclose once they've darkened a bit more. Exciting times \o/
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Post by timl on Feb 24, 2017 23:31:53 GMT
Couldn't capture it well due to where it was last time but here is a good shot of what appears to be a nice big head
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Post by timl on Feb 26, 2017 19:10:38 GMT
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Post by Wood~Ant on Feb 26, 2017 21:37:26 GMT
That's what I like to see in a healthy colony, a prolific egg layer.
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Post by timl on Feb 27, 2017 19:11:18 GMT
Because of where the test tube is I couldn't get the lens close enough for it to be in focus so I had to take a blind pic of the under side that I never see. Was a glorious moment when I saw what I had snapped Makes me feel I must be doing something right!
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Post by timl on Mar 3, 2017 16:50:38 GMT
I love the way they pulled apart the cotton and combined it with the substrates to create a carpet mesh floor
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Post by timl on Mar 4, 2017 10:14:21 GMT
So in typical ant keeping fashion, this morning as I dropped in some crickets I saw that my beloved giant pupae. I quickly went to get my phone to take a pic and as per the norm I saw a second giant ant walking about...... so apparently I've had two giant larva/pupae sat in there......... sorry for bad pic I couldn't get it to focus it was determined to focus on the seeds at the top. the first is just under the queen on the right and the second is parallel to the cotton on the left
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Post by timl on Mar 8, 2017 21:59:22 GMT
Here is a better pic of the two
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Post by Wood~Ant on Mar 9, 2017 8:55:30 GMT
Those 2 look like giants compared to their little sisters. Hard to believe that such big ants (almost like Pheidole majors) can come from the same queen which produced the other Solenopsis workers, but then that's ants for you.
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Post by timl on Mar 11, 2017 12:28:43 GMT
There is a good little swarm of about 20 ants running around in the outworld getting food throughout now + what is in the test tube! \o/ *will try and leave them be for another week before trying to take anymore closeup pictures.
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Post by timl on Mar 13, 2017 21:08:49 GMT
Feel like the colony is at a really good point. There are now enough workers foraging to strip a super mealworm down to about 90% of its insides in about 3 hours. Considering they get fed almost everyday several crickets / locusts. Might need to start stocking up on super mealworms and try some other grubs. The test tube they are in is about 75% packed with little room left for expansion. Will need to add another test tube soon \o/
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Post by timl on Mar 15, 2017 20:56:41 GMT
Well the plan was to add another test tube... but of course they decided to drain the honey water test tube and move into that... guess I was a day late on executing my plan but never mind. I also enjoy the fact that every time I sprinkle 10 - 15 chia seeds the next day they are gone, I'm not sure where they are putting them all but I guess they are in the test tubes and since it seems a lot of people online predominantly offer insects to this species I feel I am offering them something special especially since they are a big seed eating species
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Post by timl on Mar 16, 2017 22:11:29 GMT
Did a thing, couldn't resist
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Post by timl on Mar 31, 2017 22:07:12 GMT
Uploading a video
Mass colony growth still from what I can tell, very hard to keep a track on numbers but there seems to be more. They eat 1 super mealworm a day but I have also been giving them a lot of seeds (although I don't know how much of them they have been eating). They have stored a lot of them and are very keen to collect them up whenever I drop some in.
There appears to be at least 4 different casts of workers, 2 different sized workers and a possible smaller major cast then what they produced earlier this month. There are now quite a few of the major now wondering around.
They seem determined to live in the outworld and still haven't moved into the nest. The water is looking a bit iffy now but I guess it's just a waiting game at this point.
I dropped in a small culture of springtails to try and add a little eco system........... oh how I was wrong, they were quickly hunted down. But at least they now have some more substrate to play around with. Soon I don't think I will be able to take the outworlds lid off....
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Post by timl on Apr 15, 2017 14:13:20 GMT
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