Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

Hey everyone, we've finally started the construction of our Atta cephalotes display and its coming along nicely. I thought I would post some pictures as we finish it.

The first of 4 aluminum frames sitting in place.


All 4 frames in place and bolted together. The far left side will house the fungal colonies, the middle will be a foraging trail (Similar to Lakes Aquarium) and the right will be the feeding area. There used to be a wall here and we decided to remove it and replace is with the ant display. The other side of the display will be our insect displays.


Installing the glass on the main area.


Grinding down brackets.


A rough layout of the insect displays.


Very excited to post photos as we finish this. Would love any feedback, questions or concerns, as now would be the time to fix them!

It looks fantastic.. I can't wait to see how it develops...

I'll leave the usual questions of climate control to someone else

As Richard said, very exciting! Can't wait to see how it develops. Looks like its going to be an impressive exhibit.

Looks good, will watch with interest! X

Thanks everyone!

Not much was done over the last couple day but we did get the rope "vine" hanging to see what it looks likes.

Does anyone know if latex is safe for ants? The "vine" is covered in a latex coating and just wanted to double check with everyone.

Looking forward to coming out to see this on Friday. Looks great. The Aluminium gives it clean lines and I think it will look fantastic when finished. The overall exhibit looks well thought out and planned. Nice open bright room. Will it be ready for this weekend for us to put the ants in?

As many have seen from Andrews post, we have finishing construction of this project and the ants are happily cutting away. I'll be uploading some pictures this week for everyone to see.

Would be great to see more pictures of the setup. Very much looking forward to seeing this colony over a period of time.

Hey everyone!

Here are the rest of the pictures of the setup (Photobucket has been a nightmare so I've moved to Flickr)

Carpet is in around the display
Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Finished adding substrate and the rest of the display hardware
Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Two views of the chambers, like Andrew said, this is hard to explain and you really need to see it in real life to appreciate it.
Leaf Cutter Ant Display
Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Temporaily holding the colonies, luckily our gardens are the right temperature and humidity so we didn't have to do anything with them at this point.
Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Andrew putting coco fibre to support the colony.
Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Putting the colony in
Leaf Cutter Ant Display
Leaf Cutter Ant Display
Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Putting the top back on
Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Leaf Cutter Ant Display

Leaf Cutter Ant Display

And lastly this is the fungus now, it has almost completely filled the original chamber now.

This is where we had a couple questions.

Should we move 1/3 of fungus to one of the new chambers?

We've added 1 litre of moist/wet coco fibre on two occasions hoping for them to start them on their own and they've moved it all to in original chamber as well on top of the chamber. We figured they were trying to seal the crack so we've taped the crack for now and they've stopping moving the coco fibre.

We were thinking of making a bed of coco like Andrew did for the introduction and the move the newest 1/3 of the colony to another chamber, any suggestions on this or should be let them do their thing?

We also noticed there was an outbreak of mites (looked like grain mites) on the outside of the fungal chamber, they've since completely dissipated, should we be worried about this in the future? We also notice the odd fungus gnat in the dump, no clue how it got in there.