Ant population not growing too well?

[Vendayn]

I've had my colony of Imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) for about 7 months, since August. I live in USA, California, San Diego. The weather has been cold since October, but I've read several sites that a colony will get 1000s of ants after 6 months. I only have a few hundred and thats after 7 months.

The colony is in a ten gallon aquarium and is pretty big for them...but in the wild they have tons of room and still get 1000s of ants after 6 months.

Could the queen have died since then? I've been keeping a close eye in the tank and I've never seen them carrying any signs of the queens body part or the queen itself around, so I assume she is alive.

Anyways, hopefully this well change since I now have 2-3 fire ant queens in my tank. (one queen I put in might have been killed by the workers, but I'm not sure.)

I do not really know why my colony would be growing so slow, unless its because of the cold weather (being 40s and usually high 50s/60s. Although today and this week its suppose to be 70+ degrees in high temp.)

[Wood~Ant]

I would not worry unduly Vendayn, as I have kept colonies of ants with several queens (3+ in one colony); and they have only have produced a few hundred workers

Ant colonies in wild nests seem to grow to quite large proportions, producing many queens and several thousands of workers; but although this should theoretically happen in a captive colony with more than 1 queen, it most often does not for some odd reason, even if they have plenty of room and food available.

If you think the nest is a bit too dry, then adding a drop more water to increase humidity may help

[Vendayn]

well, we had a lot of warm days last week and have seen many new newborn ants exploring around the ant farm. They are easy to tell because they are much smaller than the original ants that I caught.

Glad to see newborn ants being born Well, I can't see them but just the ones on top.

[Formicalondon]

You may find this helpfull wood lsweb.la.asu.edu/sirg/pogonomyrmex/culturingPogonomymrexqueens.htm

[Wood~Ant]

Very good link FormicaLondon which may prove helpful, I will also link it under the profiles later

Thanks

[Formicalondon]

I was actually ment to post that in a different topic the one started by you wood called my next queen opps.

[Vendayn]

Since I noticed this topic was still alive...


I posted this somewhere before and can't seem to find the name of it. They got a disease from a parastic spore that kills them.