Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

What is your heater set at right now jack?

It's a heat Mat that sits under the water set at 26 degrees centigrade but for now it's switched off.

Hello Jack, I can only let you know what I do with our colony here at work. All tanks are in a lab that have windows around the room and it's a large room. When it's hot weather, I open windows to allow air flow through the room and this seems to help keep the temp at a reasonable setting. At the moment, the main tank is at 28 degrees C and the ants seem very happy. The humidity is good anyway, as the tanks are all sealed (not hermetically) and there is always a level of moisture on the glass walls and lid. I have not changed the heat pad setting under the fungus garden at all, ever and the new, second fungus is not heated at all. It seems that humidity plays an essential role and I must add that once I turned on the heat pad under an external tank when the colony decided to build a previous second fungus, and they dismantled this second fungus immediately! So...I leave well alone and check on them every day to see what they are doing....never a dull moment!

I hope some of this may help you, good luck.

Oh ok Jackie thanks for the advice, I have to admit I do love your setup and colony. I eventually ended up using 2 fans to circulate the air in the room, I have a feeling that the heat wave as past now, as yesterday and today haven't been as hot, (outside or inside) and the forecast looks promising.

Is there anyway to check to see if the queen is fertile, other than sitting and waiting?

To be honest Jack, I wouldn't know about that, but Andrew and others here I'm sure will too....lots of people away on holiday at the moment I think. Is everything else going OK with your colony?

Jack, an update of progress would be great. Lets hear how they are doing.

Seeing as jack never updates this i figured i would for him.

luckily for me he's just gone off on holiday for a week and needed someone to look after his atta, which i was very excited to hear. although I'm not freaking out I'm tending to them as much as any other new overcautious owner would mainly due to the fact that i don't want to kill a colony in a week of looking after them and also because jack has mentioned many a time he values the survival of the colony more than he values my survival.

as for the colony itself a new soldier has come about after the last one perished around the time jack swapped to a aquarium setup, which is great timing as I'm sure its had an impact on the colony not freaking out during the move. As for the fungus garden it has grown slightly and is looking healthy (although by the end of this week i'm not sure).

last night i gave them a few bramble leaves which they cut and I was hoping would be fed to the fungus however they only used them to block up one entrance to the fungus garden, hopefully tonight when i feed them this changes and all goes back to normal.

I will keep posting throughout the week if things go wrong and as jack doesn't have much WiFi any help will be greatly appreciated.

Well done you, it must be a daunting but exciting task for you. I wish i had a friend i could rely on, actually i wished i had a friend

Andyj wrote:Well done you, it must be a daunting but exciting task for you. I wish i had a friend i could rely on, actually i wished i had a friend

hey i'd happily be your friend if you lent me some leaf cutters from time to time.

Siddle33 wrote:

Andyj wrote:Well done you, it must be a daunting but exciting task for you. I wish i had a friend i could rely on, actually i wished i had a friend

hey i'd happily be your friend if you lent me some leaf cutters from time to time.

And Andy would happily remain your friend until there was a chance to get your queen from you, after which you'd never see him again. You need to watch your step and your atta queens with him about. Dont get sucked in!!