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My ant house arrived
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2020-04-26 at 8:55 PM UTCMy formicarium arrived Saturday.
It arrived while I was on LSD, so I spent ages playing with the sand and not being happy with how it was set up. The sand is 20% clay, so sets hard when it is wetted. I kept wetting it and trying to mold it. Eventually I just mixed it all up, poured it in and gave up.
The queen is in the test tube in the foraging area. She is one of those ants who eats seeds, apparently they're a real pest in Spain, which is where I ordered this from. She has about 5 little workers right now and a bunch of eggs. Apparently she can have around 200 workers when the colony gets going.
There are some seeds in the tube, and I dropped a grain of rice and a droplet of honey in to her. Also here you can see the water tube thingy. I also drop some water in occasionally.
Apparently it can take a few months for her to decide to relocate the colony to the sand, so we'll see how that goes. An alternative is to dump out the test tube, but that seems a little harsh.
The ant house is on a windowsill in this pic, but I moved it to sit on my old laptop (which is banjaxed, but still works, so I use it to drive a screen). It is warmer for her, I try to keep it about 25°C. -
2020-04-26 at 8:58 PM UTCWhat if the Queen somehow gets loose. How will you find her?
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2020-04-26 at 9 PM UTC
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2020-04-27 at 2:20 AM UTC
Originally posted by Cathay Coof It arrived while I was on LSD, so I spent ages playing with the sand and not being happy with how it was set up. The sand is 20% clay, so sets hard when it is wetted. I kept wetting it and trying to mold it. Eventually I just mixed it all up, poured it in and gave up.
Lol this is relatable. I remember once I was folding laundry on LSD and I mixed up the kitchen hand towels with the bath hand towels and I couldn't tell them apart anymore so I had to disassemble my stacks of folded towels and rearrange them. This took forever and I had to walk away from doing laundry to go eat a fruit. I did eventually figure out the towels but I'm still butthurt over it.
All that said...
Originally posted by Cathay Coof The queen is in the test tube in the foraging area. She is one of those ants who eats seeds, apparently they're a real pest in Spain, which is where I ordered this from. She has about 5 little workers right now and a bunch of eggs. Apparently she can have around 200 workers when the colony gets going.
There are some seeds in the tube, and I dropped a grain of rice and a droplet of honey in to her. Also here you can see the water tube thingy. I also drop some water in occasionally.
Apparently it can take a few months for her to decide to relocate the colony to the sand, so we'll see how that goes. An alternative is to dump out the test tube, but that seems a little harsh.
The ant house is on a windowsill in this pic, but I moved it to sit on my old laptop (which is banjaxed, but still works, so I use it to drive a screen). It is warmer for her, I try to keep it about 25°C.
This is cool. You can just order queens from anywhere in the EU? You can't even send them across state lines here.
Hope you post pics when they get going. I've always wanted ants but nobody around me has ever wanted me to have ants, so I have no ants.
Also just dump the tube the queen isn't going to give a fuck. She's not gonna get sad or anything. Probably. -
2020-04-27 at 2:27 AM UTChow do they get from the big box to the ant farm box?
I watch a lot of ant videos on youtube for some reason
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2020-04-27 at 2:29 AM UTCwhat happens to their shit? Ants do shit right?
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2020-04-27 at 2:45 AM UTCYeah you have to change the dirt every now and again I think.
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2020-04-27 at 3:08 AM UTCAnt farms always make me think of that outer limits episode
Good Job Mr. Coof, glad you're nurturing an essential insect -
2020-04-27 at 3:09 AM UTC
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2020-04-27 at 3:10 AM UTCCan you train them to kill a man
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2020-04-27 at 3:32 AM UTCHey this is cool. I once bought some baby Praying Mantis but they all died.
Shit. -
2020-04-27 at 4:05 AM UTCOne time I was trusted with the value of taking home the class pet which was a hermit crab when I was in first grade and I wanted to give it a new shell...I didn't know I was hurting him at the time but he ended up dying when I removed him.
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2020-04-27 at 4:09 AM UTC
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2020-04-27 at 4:23 AM UTC
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2020-04-27 at 4:29 AM UTC
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2020-04-27 at 4:30 AM UTC
Originally posted by the man who put it in my hood Can you train them to kill a man
I think you could. If you could train them to concentrate themselves into a tight, giant ball on the ceiling, and they all simultaneously dropped down on you when you entered the room, and the combined weight of them was 500+ pounds, that would be enough to do you in right there. -
2020-04-27 at 4:37 AM UTCOr if they were trained to march a mile long line into your mouth while you were sleeping, and then once they were all inside, they all started biting and nipping at your internal organs and stuff by the thousands, chewing their way through to your spleen and liver and heart.
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2020-04-27 at 4:39 AM UTCIf
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2020-04-27 at 4:40 AM UTCIf is good
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2020-04-27 at 4:41 AM UTCThey're Fire Ants, remember. Not just your regular, run-of-the-mill, mediocre ant.