Fyrburn.com

22/09/09 – Day 36 – 23:33

I found my ants have been much, much more active since I changed he tank setup. There are currently three dishes in it now.

The first is about 4cm in diameter and 1cm deep. It has a soaked cotton ball in it. The second is a much shallower dish with about one teaspoon of normal sugar granules in it. And the third is a flat plastic surface that contains a mixture of “real” foods. Today they dine on chicken and banana. They haven’t found it yet, sadly.

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26/08/09 – Day 9 – 01:00

I’ve optimized my conduct overall a bit today. The farm came with two little round dishes, 4 centimetres in diameter. One shallow and the other deeper. I have used the deep one to keep a cotton ball with moist honey water solution since day one, however the other one was left largely unused. I have now decided to use it as a dish for storing locusts and other assorted protein food, so that if they go off, the filth wont spread and extraction will be as simple as cleaning the little dish.

Cleanliness isn’t a huge issue at the moment as I can just open up the tank and give it a scrub with a moist sponge followed by a dry cloth, with minimal annoyance to the ants. However once the colony reaches into the hundreds, or even thousands, I expect this will be an issue. As such, I have cleaned out any mess and placed in the dishes.

I have also ‘emptied’ a lucozade sport bottle to use as storage for my honey water solution. I found dropping some honey followed by water directly into the dish was inconvenient as I had to stir it around for a while before it would actually mix. With the bottle however I can add some ingredients into the bottle, close the lid, and give them a good shake. It also means less effort overall as the bottle can store quite a lot of fluid.

My specific recipe, if you’re interested, is the following in order:

• 4 teaspoons of sugar (a funnel is required not to make a mess)
• About 30ml of pure honey from a squeezy bottle (the runny variety) with no additives.
• 250ml of water. (Half fill the 500ml bottle)

Place on lid, and shake until nothing is left clinging to the bottom. The bottle has been sitting here for about 4 hours now and doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of residue reemerging at the bottom. This is good because when placed into the tank, the sweet stuff won’t  sink to the bottom leaving the ants with mostly water.

I gave them another locust. They don’t seem to be paying any attention at all to the locusts. I was hoping for some swarming and gradual picking away, but alas nothing.

I ordered some dried mealworms today. A litre, to be precise, from petstuffgalore.co.uk

We’ll see how they react to those. At the very least it means I have a reasonably long lasting and cheap protein source for a while once they finally do decide to eat.

25/08/09 – Day 8 – 00:29

Yesterday I gave the ants a fairly large sized locust. I killed it and boiled it for 20 seconds first, incase of any parasites. I don’t want to put my colony at risk at this tender stage.

The ants seem to be alive and well. One scurries over to the locust every now and then, changes its mind, and wanders off again. I’m sure the queen will have enough food stored for the first week, but one can never be too careful.

There’s still very little to report at this stage, not until the new pupae hatch I expect. Assuming they all hatch, I expect I’ll go from 6 or 7 ants to around 30 overnight.

I find a few of them – just a few – are able to get past the vaseline on the sides of the tank. Luckily however the specific brand, “alpha ants”, has been thoughtfully prepared to make escape difficult, as the top of the lid is lined with that waxy foam sponge stuff.

I doubt they’ll be going anywhere.

19/08/2009 – Day 2 – 18:15

I put some peanut butter into the enclosure to replace the chicken, which was uneaten.

The workers however appear to be holed up int he test tube with no intention of going anywhere, except for the odd occasion when they bring some poop (is it poop?) to the entrance to their lair, before quickly scurrying away again.

I see one ant every now and then leaves to search for food. They all seem to know where the honey sponge is, but have paid no attention whatsover to the peanut butter despite being the closest to their entrance.

The only reason I know the queen isn’t dead yet is because her antennae twitch every now and then.

18/08/2009 – Day 1 – 18:45pm

My Lasius Niger ants and starter set from store.edu-sci.com arrived today. it’s a starter set C, which comes with both a large basin and a slim farm. They are joined by, at least I assume, the included plastic tube.

I set up the basin and farm, and wiped some vaseline round the edges. I also sealed off the areas I should never need to open with black tape, just to make sure.

The test tube with the ants would not fit into the farm, so I placed it in the basin along with some honey water and little piece of chicken. I have no idea what they’ll think of the chicken, but it’s worth a try until I can acquire some meal worms in a couple of days. I might try making ant jelly later. Recipe at www.antnest.co.uk/diet2.html if you’re interested.

As I write this, I see a little ant already crawling on the lid, past the vaseline.
Where did I put that tape?

There’s not much else to say really. Now I guess it’s all about patience, waiting for the ants to somehow realize how to move from the basin to the farm. I hope, at least.

Fyrburn` out.