Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Discussions about the care and keeping of ants

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Inside what should I house my new dealate for now?

Standard glass test tube.
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No votes
New bamboo test tube.
3
100%
 
Total votes: 3

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95736Post JaydenScheepers
Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:40 am

SYUTEO wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 6:37 am
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 3:51 am
What would be normal behavior for a Tetraponera rufonigra dealate in a out world? Because mine rarely walks on the ground and mostly on the sides or the roof if she could. I have applied a DIY flueon barrier on the roof so I can have breathing holes for her, but now she keeps running around on the top corner just next to the flueon barrier, and she does this continually around and around the out world. I do not know if this is normal behavior or if something is bothering her.
I also don't know when to expect her to start the founding process, I am trying my best to get her to get comfortable to start founding, but I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or what.
They are mostly arboreal
I want to get her and the Cataulacus queen a nice out world filled with sticks and wood, to try and make it feel more at home, and they could climb the sticks and such. I also want to then place the food items in different locations so their forced to forage. I definitely will do that when they've gotten a nice group of workers and they need a out world upgrade, but what do you think, should I do something like that now?

Now my main focus is just to try and get them founding, for me the process of getting your queen to found and the whole founding process are the most scary stage.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

SYUTEO
Posts: 1395
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:58 am
Location: Malaysia

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95738Post SYUTEO
Fri Aug 12, 2022 7:20 pm

JaydenScheepers wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:40 am
SYUTEO wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 6:37 am
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 3:51 am
What would be normal behavior for a Tetraponera rufonigra dealate in a out world? Because mine rarely walks on the ground and mostly on the sides or the roof if she could. I have applied a DIY flueon barrier on the roof so I can have breathing holes for her, but now she keeps running around on the top corner just next to the flueon barrier, and she does this continually around and around the out world. I do not know if this is normal behavior or if something is bothering her.
I also don't know when to expect her to start the founding process, I am trying my best to get her to get comfortable to start founding, but I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or what.
They are mostly arboreal
I want to get her and the Cataulacus queen a nice out world filled with sticks and wood, to try and make it feel more at home, and they could climb the sticks and such. I also want to then place the food items in different locations so their forced to forage. I definitely will do that when they've gotten a nice group of workers and they need a out world upgrade, but what do you think, should I do something like that now?

Now my main focus is just to try and get them founding, for me the process of getting your queen to found and the whole founding process are the most scary stage.
If you want to then go ahead. My Tetraponera queen (not rufonigra) has eggs for MONTHS and no sign of a single a larva.

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95768Post JaydenScheepers
Sun Aug 14, 2022 8:32 am

Compared to my other semi-caulostrial queens, my Tetraponera rufonigra queen forages a lot in the out world, even while I have food products that she knows is there. When I insert new food products into her out world (mostly mealworm and honey, but sometimes a fragment of a superworm) she may sit for a while motionless with her head above it. I don't get the angle to see if she is licking up the substance, and I normally hold completely still until she finishes, because if she was consuming it, I wouldn't want to cause any vibrations or change in light, like my shadow moving and causing her to stop and run to a different location. However I do not know if she is actually getting her full, or if she is just smelling the food or just tasting it.

So like I said she spends WAY more time in the out world than what I have witnessed from my other semi-caulostrial queens. There is a massive colony or maybe multiple colonies of these T. rufonigra ants occupying different trees, I always see them foraging at day and not at night, so I've concluded that their not nocturnal. This might explain why I see her in her out world so often, I know the Odontomachus queens I keep are nocturnal, because I never saw then forage at day, only evidence of their activity so I do not know how often they foraged. While I've only seen one of my Pseudoneoponera queens forge once during the day, my other I seen come out a few times, but went out shortly. But she normally enters the out world after a short while of me checking up on her, my guess as to why is maybe she went out to investigate the reason for the change in light and vibration disturbances. So I think their nocturnal for the most part, and to be fair they all also have started their founding stage so their probably more focused on taking care of their brood. I see my Cataulacus granulatus alate explore her out world maybe an average of twice a day, however the T. rufonigra queen explores hers way more, and sometimes she would sit motionless in the out world in random locations before exploring again after a while (maybe she is taking power naps?).

Today I kept my whole room dark to see if she would still come out to forage, and it seems like she did, maybe she has some internal clock that tells her when it's supposed to be day and when it's supposed to be night. I thought maybe if she would stay in the test tube because it is still dark she would remain there for longer and maybe start founding sooner. What I'll do next is to keep feeding and observing her regularly, but only lift the tinfoil rapping around the test tube once a day to make sure she is ok in it, and hopefully she'll start soon. I would love to see miniature versions of herself wondering around, and their ***** pupae developing inside the test tube.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95786Post JaydenScheepers
Mon Aug 15, 2022 7:21 am

How do I know if she is happy and going to found soon or if she is very unhappy?
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95795Post JaydenScheepers
Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:01 am

Something strange, my smaller Odontomachus queen hunted and killed, then dragged a mealworm about 5 times her size. Meanwhile my Tetraponera rufonigra queen runes from a termite 10 times smaller than her. That's very strange to me, especially because Tetraponera rufonigra are usually very aggressive ants. Maybe the queens have a completely different behavior.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

SYUTEO
Posts: 1395
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:58 am
Location: Malaysia

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95796Post SYUTEO
Tue Aug 16, 2022 7:43 am

JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:01 am
Something strange, my smaller Odontomachus queen hunted and killed, then dragged a mealworm about 5 times her size. Meanwhile my Tetraponera rufonigra queen runes from a termite 10 times smaller than her. That's very strange to me, especially because Tetraponera rufonigra are usually very aggressive ants. Maybe the queens have a completely different behavior.
Maybe it's just because she's in a new environment, it may also be due to the queen's eyesight. From my own findings, Tetraponera seem to be capable of seeing movement.

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95798Post JaydenScheepers
Tue Aug 16, 2022 8:36 am

SYUTEO wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 7:43 am
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:01 am
Something strange, my smaller Odontomachus queen hunted and killed, then dragged a mealworm about 5 times her size. Meanwhile my Tetraponera rufonigra queen runes from a termite 10 times smaller than her. That's very strange to me, especially because Tetraponera rufonigra are usually very aggressive ants. Maybe the queens have a completely different behavior.
Maybe it's just because she's in a new environment, it may also be due to the queen's eyesight. From my own findings, Tetraponera seem to be capable of seeing movement.
New environment? She's been in this setup for more than a week now. Right now I'm just constantly worried about her, because she rarely goes for food items when she discovers them, or at least when I'm watching. However I'm tempted to take a normal test tube and separate it into three chambers using pieces of a box. Today I found a Tetraponera rufonigra drone on the ground, from a top down view they look surprisingly like a wasp, until you get closer and see the weirdly shaped gaster. I did look around for a T. rufonigra dealate, but I did find a worker biting my finger (it was cute) and I found a dealate of Cataulacus granulatus. I did find the location of a nest of one colony of C. granulatus, and I saw a few workers closer to where I found the T. rufonigra drone, and it was also where I found the C. granulatus dealate, finding those colonies was super cool, because it's super hard to locate their colonies, you need to look super carefully. With this second C. granulatus I will try something different than I have with the other one, I have separated her test tube into three chambers, so I'll have to see what happens.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

SolenopsisKeeper
Posts: 2402
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:41 am
Location: United States, Florida

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95805Post SolenopsisKeeper
Tue Aug 16, 2022 10:39 pm

JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 8:36 am
SYUTEO wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 7:43 am
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:01 am
Something strange, my smaller Odontomachus queen hunted and killed, then dragged a mealworm about 5 times her size. Meanwhile my Tetraponera rufonigra queen runes from a termite 10 times smaller than her. That's very strange to me, especially because Tetraponera rufonigra are usually very aggressive ants. Maybe the queens have a completely different behavior.
Maybe it's just because she's in a new environment, it may also be due to the queen's eyesight. From my own findings, Tetraponera seem to be capable of seeing movement.
New environment? She's been in this setup for more than a week now. Right now I'm just constantly worried about her, because she rarely goes for food items when she discovers them, or at least when I'm watching. However I'm tempted to take a normal test tube and separate it into three chambers using pieces of a box. Today I found a Tetraponera rufonigra drone on the ground, from a top down view they look surprisingly like a wasp, until you get closer and see the weirdly shaped gaster. I did look around for a T. rufonigra dealate, but I did find a worker biting my finger (it was cute) and I found a dealate of Cataulacus granulatus. I did find the location of a nest of one colony of C. granulatus, and I saw a few workers closer to where I found the T. rufonigra drone, and it was also where I found the C. granulatus dealate, finding those colonies was super cool, because it's super hard to locate their colonies, you need to look super carefully. With this second C. granulatus I will try something different than I have with the other one, I have separated her test tube into three chambers, so I'll have to see what happens.
You can try freshly killed food. Sometimes queens can be a bit scared of things that move.

Also with your Odontomachus queen you may want to try fish flakes just out of curiosity. All my Odontomachus queens and colonies eat fish food, even though being branded as “picky”
When you accidentally reply to yourself…

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95993Post JaydenScheepers
Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:11 pm

I'm sorry for not providing any updates of my ant colonies for a while and the reason being... well I don't even really know why I didn't, maybe because of guilt. A lot has actually happened. So to start off my list of updates and also why I am making them here in the T. rufonigra post is, because two of my dealates sadly died and it's my fault. These queens were the T. rufonigra queen, and the Odontoponera queen. And the reason I say it's my fault is.. well I'm simply way too inexperienced to keep ants such as these, or at least the T. rufonigra queen, the Odontoponera queen died because of a different mistake of mine. While I'm not sure how my T. rufonigra died, I am almost certain I know why my Odontoponera queen died, and that goes back to when I added the worker. The reason why I blame the worker is, because one she is from a different colony and two when I found the queen motionless in her chamber, I noticed her legs were crooked and bended in areas that is shouldn't have been able to, which suggests an assult. I was very stupid for introducing that worker and if I haven't done so she probably still would have lived, and she had three eggs as well. I have learned a valuable lesson from this experience and will not ever try to take on keeping such hard to keep ants so quickly again, if I managed to successfully raise my C. parius to maturity, then and only then will I try to keep an ant species a bit more difficult to keep.

As for my other ants, I found a Odontomachus queen in my kitchen yesterday, and one of my other Odontomachus queens finally welcomed her first nanitic, more on these ants in their post plus photos.

Yesterday I also counted my C. parius at 50 workers, so I'm very delighted to say that their thriving, and they welcomed their second major witch is very exciting. Of course more on them in their post.

And of course I don't have much to report on my Pheidole, hope their doing well, and not checking up on them is hard, but I know it's for the best.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: Tetraponera rufonigra care assistance required.

Post: # 95994Post JaydenScheepers
Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:24 pm

I also forgot to mention that I will be taking down the Odontoponera post and T. rufonigra post.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

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