Hello!

Meet and Greet for New Members

Moderator: ooper01

Post Reply
covert
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2021 2:17 am

Hello!

Post: # 78588Post covert
Wed Jun 16, 2021 5:31 am

Hey there! I've been watching AntsCanada for a few months now. I discovered the channel through the series showing the Phoenix Empire and became quite interested in the world of ant keeping. I asked my husband if I could have my own ant colony someday and he gave me a pretty firm no, so I decided I would just get my fill from the channel and kept watching. I keep snakes and isopods already, so adding another creature would probably overwhelm my husband in our small apartment.

Well, apparently nature found a loophole to my husband's response. I collected some wood at a friend's apartment, intending to use it for my wild-caught local isopods when I split the culture in the coming months, since we don't have a good source at our apartment and the wild caught isopods are quite okay with local flora and fauna so I don't need to worry about treating the wood as much. I took a look at the wood and it looked free of any bugs so I just set it on my bookshelf in my closet on top of a ball python snake skin that I intended to feed the isopods later.

Fast forward a few weeks and I was showing our roommate some of my snakes skins. I lifted up the wood to show him the larger skin and I found ants. Lots and lots of ants. I'd noticed them in the apartment from time to time but never thought anything of it since we're ground floor and foragers are common indoors. This was different. There were a lot of them all in one spot, and there were eggs. In our old place I had seen collections of eggs under stones as they moved them around (we had several colonies in the backyard), but I knew this couldn't be the case with this one because there was no way there was a colony that far into my apartment with no suitable area for a nest. These ones were using the snake skin like tunnels. Between the tunneling, the eggs, the lack of any local colony, and the presence of waste piles, I realized I probably had a brand new colony on my hands.

There was probably a new queen somewhere inside the wood, and she ended up coming home with me that day without me ever realizing it. The black ants in my area (Oregon, USA) are quite small, so even the larger queen could have hidden. I suspect they are the common odorous house ant (Tapinoma sessile) which are commonly found indoors in my area, though I can't be sure since I know nothing about ant species other than the fact that most indoor ants here are that species haha. I've ordered a home for them from the Antscanda store, but in the meantime they are living in a tupperware container with some food I've provided them and water in the form of a cotton ball lightly dampened. I think I may have seen the queen, but they are so small its hard to say.

I've come to the forum for future help in my adventure. I don't plan on keeping this colony long term, but I would like to see how things go over time. It's likely they're a native species from what I've read, so I will probably release them in a better area once they start to really grow. Hopefully I can give them a good life since I accidentally gave them a bit of a rough start in a rather inhospitable area - after surviving starting out on a bookshelf in a snakeskin I feel like they deserve a chance at life, even though most people I know would have just obliterated the colony after finding them indoors (in fact, I brought out my ant poison when I initially saw them because I thought they were just swarming the skin thinking it was food, and I didn't want to risk them infiltrating a snake tank since they can be harmful).

So hello! I'm Ashley and I accidentally started an ant colony in my closet.

AntsLuxembourg
Posts: 1578
Joined: Sun Jun 24, 2018 7:17 am
Location: Luxembourg
Contact:

Re: Hello!

Post: # 85307Post AntsLuxembourg
Mon Nov 22, 2021 6:18 am

covert wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 5:31 am
So hello! I'm Ashley and I accidentally started an ant colony in my closet.
So. How is the closet colony going? ;)
Doing some proper research is the best way to start an antcolony.

Need help or want to help? https://forum.AntsCanada.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=18153#p70566

Currently not keeping any ants anymore.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests