Post by bowser on Apr 9, 2010 23:52:36 GMT
Hi I am new to the forum, and to keeping ants. My first attempt at keeping ants has unfortunately been a failure, but I am not entirely sure where I’ve gone wrong so was hoping to get some pointers on where I let my ants down before trying again.
I ordered a Formica rubra queen who turned up last summer with about 20 workers and some eggs. My set up was one for the larger foraging tanks which was attached with rubber tubing to a nest tank filled with sand/ loam.
When the ants first arrived, I placed the test tube they came with in the larger tank. For a while I couldn’t get them to eat anything I had bought from various ant stores like suger honey water, protein jelly, cans of dead insects etc. It wasn’t until I started putting live food in there that they started to liven up, and it became apparent they would only eat live prey.
I did find this a bit hard to keep up with, having to go hunting myself then stunning or crippling the prey so they could overpower it and drag it back to the test tube. Their favourite were fruit flies which I made a trap for in the garden. Larger house flies or blue bottles didn’t interest them at all. They did actually seem to be doing well through August and September on this diet with the colony size staying constant and new eggs being laid, although I was a bit concerned they remained in the test tube they came in.
When the long crap winter we’ve had came along in England, I wasn’t able to catch the live prey, again I went to the antstores and tried various things with no luck but just about managed to keep them going with spiders. I was finding but numbers started dwindling. At this stage I may have made a mistake because I am not sure if they hibernated or not because they were kept in my bedroom where the temp rarely went below 10c. Foraging stopped and they did put things to the entrance of the tube as if blocking it up. Through November, December and January not much happened at all, but the odd ant did make an appearance now and again so I stared putting food in again which didn’t get touched apart from the odd stop on a grape or two.
Although eggs remained in the test tube the numbers kept going down and dead ants were being moved and dumped in the sand tank. I did manage to get them to nibble on a couple of insects that I shoved right into the test tube but most were just dragged back out and sadly I found a number of the colony carrying the dead queen around the tank the other day (start of April) just when live prey starts appearing in the garden again. They have now gone back to sit with the remaining eggs, but with the queen gone that will be the end of them.
Areas I think might have gone wrong but need pointers on:
• They never left the test tube and I didn’t want to force them out of it if they felt comfortable there perhaps a ytong nest would have been more to their liking.
• As the water at the back of the test tube obviously ran out perhaps this led to the downfall although I provided dishes of water they rarely went to it and I cannot see how that would benefit the queen or eggs anyway.
• Food was obviously a major issue the black ants in the garden will eat anything that happens to be around but my formica ruba would only eat live prey which became very difficult to keep up with when it got cold. Everything I read suggests they should have gone for at least some of the various sugar honey water solutions I tried
• I didn’t know what I was doing with hibernation and don’t even now if they did hibernate or just stopped eating and foraging.
Any tips on where I went wrong would be much appreciated also what should I do with the remaining 9 ants sitting in the tube with the eggs.
I ordered a Formica rubra queen who turned up last summer with about 20 workers and some eggs. My set up was one for the larger foraging tanks which was attached with rubber tubing to a nest tank filled with sand/ loam.
When the ants first arrived, I placed the test tube they came with in the larger tank. For a while I couldn’t get them to eat anything I had bought from various ant stores like suger honey water, protein jelly, cans of dead insects etc. It wasn’t until I started putting live food in there that they started to liven up, and it became apparent they would only eat live prey.
I did find this a bit hard to keep up with, having to go hunting myself then stunning or crippling the prey so they could overpower it and drag it back to the test tube. Their favourite were fruit flies which I made a trap for in the garden. Larger house flies or blue bottles didn’t interest them at all. They did actually seem to be doing well through August and September on this diet with the colony size staying constant and new eggs being laid, although I was a bit concerned they remained in the test tube they came in.
When the long crap winter we’ve had came along in England, I wasn’t able to catch the live prey, again I went to the antstores and tried various things with no luck but just about managed to keep them going with spiders. I was finding but numbers started dwindling. At this stage I may have made a mistake because I am not sure if they hibernated or not because they were kept in my bedroom where the temp rarely went below 10c. Foraging stopped and they did put things to the entrance of the tube as if blocking it up. Through November, December and January not much happened at all, but the odd ant did make an appearance now and again so I stared putting food in again which didn’t get touched apart from the odd stop on a grape or two.
Although eggs remained in the test tube the numbers kept going down and dead ants were being moved and dumped in the sand tank. I did manage to get them to nibble on a couple of insects that I shoved right into the test tube but most were just dragged back out and sadly I found a number of the colony carrying the dead queen around the tank the other day (start of April) just when live prey starts appearing in the garden again. They have now gone back to sit with the remaining eggs, but with the queen gone that will be the end of them.
Areas I think might have gone wrong but need pointers on:
• They never left the test tube and I didn’t want to force them out of it if they felt comfortable there perhaps a ytong nest would have been more to their liking.
• As the water at the back of the test tube obviously ran out perhaps this led to the downfall although I provided dishes of water they rarely went to it and I cannot see how that would benefit the queen or eggs anyway.
• Food was obviously a major issue the black ants in the garden will eat anything that happens to be around but my formica ruba would only eat live prey which became very difficult to keep up with when it got cold. Everything I read suggests they should have gone for at least some of the various sugar honey water solutions I tried
• I didn’t know what I was doing with hibernation and don’t even now if they did hibernate or just stopped eating and foraging.
Any tips on where I went wrong would be much appreciated also what should I do with the remaining 9 ants sitting in the tube with the eggs.
. I will read up on how to promote hibernation for next time and maybe try a different species to see if they are less fussy eaters. 
I’ve attached it to a fresh test tube and tapped some of the eggs down hoping the ants would follow, sadly they haven’t but I decided to try and take some pics of the eggs. When I did I was surprised how many there were. I didn't expected a dying queen to lay so many, some are tiny eggs as well which has made me wonder 
is there possibly another small queen in this colony? Is it even possible for Myrmica rubra to have more than one queen? I doubt I have one because all of the remaining ants look the same to me and half the size of the one that died. 
