Aceeey the Ant Noob!
Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 4:03 am
Good day/evening everyone,
My name is Ace and I'm really new to keeping Ants. I was watching a few (a lot) of the AntsCanada videos on youtube and totally got into AntKeeping. I wanted to challenge myself to create an ant colony from one queen and to attempt to make it grow and stay healthy. I watched the tutorial video on how to identify a queen ant, then I watched Mikeys last vlog while he was out looking for queens. It was about 1:30AM when I decided to look for a queen. It's pretty warm out here in Los Angeles at the moment so I ended up capturing two queens. I separated both into different tube set ups...
I didn't think they'd survive without food, but when I checked on the queens the next morning, they looked great and were still gnawing at the cotton. I wrapped the tubes up in foil to keep light out, and put it in the coolest part of the house. It's hot in Los Angeles right now and I live in an apartment with no air conditioning. Insulation sucks so it's warm here. I don't want to let the ants over heat, so I put them in the coolest part of the apartment. Again, it's still pretty warm in that area.
I left on August 6 around 8:30AM for a short trip to Santa Barbara for my girlfriends birthday. I just got home around 12:30AM (August 10) and I decided to check on my queen ants. It looks like they have laid eggs!!! Mikey has a sick camera with awesome macro footage so I'm used to seeing ant eggs a little bigger. In my test tubes, the eggs look smaller than a pin hole. Here are some potato quality pictures from my iPotato 6 Plus:
Are those indeed eggs? Can I be on my way to helping these queens start their colonies? Should I put them together? They appear to be from the same colony to begin with. I'll leave the ants alone for another three days and check up on them later. I'm still trying to figure out what species these ants are. I don't think anyone would be able to tell what species these ants are by my low quality pictures. Please comment any advice on how I can help this colony get on its feet and thrive. My biggest questions are, when do I know when to move them to a bigger home? How big should this new home be? Should it be sand? Soil? Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for replying with any advice or answers to any of my questions. I have lots to learn and I hope I can make good friends here on the forums and possibly in person! I hope you enjoy this thread.
My name is Ace and I'm really new to keeping Ants. I was watching a few (a lot) of the AntsCanada videos on youtube and totally got into AntKeeping. I wanted to challenge myself to create an ant colony from one queen and to attempt to make it grow and stay healthy. I watched the tutorial video on how to identify a queen ant, then I watched Mikeys last vlog while he was out looking for queens. It was about 1:30AM when I decided to look for a queen. It's pretty warm out here in Los Angeles at the moment so I ended up capturing two queens. I separated both into different tube set ups...
I didn't think they'd survive without food, but when I checked on the queens the next morning, they looked great and were still gnawing at the cotton. I wrapped the tubes up in foil to keep light out, and put it in the coolest part of the house. It's hot in Los Angeles right now and I live in an apartment with no air conditioning. Insulation sucks so it's warm here. I don't want to let the ants over heat, so I put them in the coolest part of the apartment. Again, it's still pretty warm in that area.
I left on August 6 around 8:30AM for a short trip to Santa Barbara for my girlfriends birthday. I just got home around 12:30AM (August 10) and I decided to check on my queen ants. It looks like they have laid eggs!!! Mikey has a sick camera with awesome macro footage so I'm used to seeing ant eggs a little bigger. In my test tubes, the eggs look smaller than a pin hole. Here are some potato quality pictures from my iPotato 6 Plus:
Are those indeed eggs? Can I be on my way to helping these queens start their colonies? Should I put them together? They appear to be from the same colony to begin with. I'll leave the ants alone for another three days and check up on them later. I'm still trying to figure out what species these ants are. I don't think anyone would be able to tell what species these ants are by my low quality pictures. Please comment any advice on how I can help this colony get on its feet and thrive. My biggest questions are, when do I know when to move them to a bigger home? How big should this new home be? Should it be sand? Soil? Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for replying with any advice or answers to any of my questions. I have lots to learn and I hope I can make good friends here on the forums and possibly in person! I hope you enjoy this thread.