Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

Well guys y'know what I'm like things were just going too well, and as life dictates I can never be happy.

Funny how you spend a large portion of your time trying to create a setup that reaches a high enough temperature, you don't take into account the 1 day a year where outside it gets too hot.

So today ladies and gentlemen my atta reached 31 degrees Celsius. Never happened before and I didn't even think about it until it was too late, and I've heard that rumor about the 30 degrees infertile queen thingy so is this it for mine? Should I just flush them now?

They were at that temperature for about 24 hours.

Morning Jack, just wait and see how they are. If the queen is not dead I'd imagine you will be ok. You need to think how you will notice/ combat it should it happen again.

Hi deansie, I was up late last night rubbing the tank with cold water and I was out all day doing ecology coursework so to combat the heat I filled the surrounding moat with ice cubes, it still got hot but no where near a hot as yesterday.

As for the queen she seems perfectly normal, she's on the fungus, and the workers are still cutting so I don't know what to expect.

Having the same problem with my setup here too, does anybody have any ideas of how to actually LOWER the temperature in a setup?!

Check the temperature of the aquarium water, you may need to turn it down a few degrees. An aquarium heat set at 30 degs might produce an ambient air temp of 25 dogs on average but in the summer the air is warmer but the heater doesn't recognise this, it only cares about the water temp.

I'm assuming non of your tanks are getting heat from being near windows etc?

none of them are being heated this is purely ambient room temperature

I found that ice packs help on the lid

Shamual wrote:none of them are being heated this is purely ambient room temperature

I found that ice packs help on the lid

Ok, so your not using an aquarium heater? That's a hot room, I remember having to use these http://www.lakeland.co.uk/3498/Ice-Pack ... 18204421:s in my garage a few times on the hottest days. Probably what your describing Jack.

Oh they have a heater, and 99% of the time it's on.
But the problem is that recently the temperatures in Essex have been so high that, dispite using fans and opening windows it still super heats the house. And now I'm finding that if you use ice packs it dramatically drops the humidity levels. There is no where cooler in the house so if I'm honest the only solution I can think of is just waiting the heat wave out. But why the hell is it suddenly so hot!? It's Britain for christs sake.

The only other solution is to bury the tank in the ground outside, but that seems a bit impractical

Oh and I had a sneak peak around today and all the brood is still there along with an impressive soldier pupae, so hopefully that's a good sign.

Just checked the weather forcast and they might as well be condemned, how the hell are you supposed to keep the temperatures down and humidity up in this!? It's just plain unfair! Im so frustrated, I put so much though into this settup and I generally feel helpless.