What an amazing place the Victoria Butterfly Gardens is. They have a full scale Butterfly Garden and the area where the ants are going is a very impressive new development, due to open in a couple of weeks, consisting of a series of invert displays and the new, centre piece Atta display, and a very large and impressive gift shop.
The key to this display, and what will eventually be its impact, is the design, which is loosely based on the display I set up at Lakes Aquarium in Cumbria, however with some significant design improvements by the supplier of the exhibit, John Creviston. He is an amazing technician and it has been my pleasure to have worked with him over the past few months to produce this finished product. It is extremely impressive.
Made entirely from Aluminium and glass, the structure was modular and assembled in situ. It is not finished in these pictures, all of the external cladding still has to be attached. But you will see the detail and it is easy to imagine how it will look when finished.
![Image](http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a557/edudisplays/DSC_0169_zpsf7n5djda.jpg)
The colony is a beauty! Loads of fungus and ants! We placed it into one of the nest chambers on day 2, once we had spent a day assessing and modifying some aspects of the overall design.
![Image](http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a557/edudisplays/DSC_0177_zpsb25dk8m1.jpg)
The real shock with this colony was nothing to do with me. Sometimes it takes a piece of genius to come up with a new way to do things, and often it is someone with no experience in setting this type of display up who can take a completely new approach and come up with a design that solves all of the problems. John did this here! The nest area is quite small. John was looking at this and came up with the system in the picture. A central pole, which is a 5cm acrylic pipe, has slots cut in it to match where the chambers would sit. Each nest chamber (I think there were 6 of them( was in the shape of a pie wedge, approx a third of a full pie each. They each had a hole, top and bottom and were slid over the pole so this supported them and they could turn. This means they can be rotated out of the way, without disturbing the ants, for maintenance on the chamber below if needed. The bottom one is for dump. An incredible design, and one I have not done justice to here. Hopefully our new member, captainplantman, will post more pictures here of on their own thread, as time goes on, so we can see how this goes!
![Image](http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a557/edudisplays/DSC_0186_zpsyllbxpm9.jpg)
Sorry about the quality of the pics, taken on my phone. This is the overall exhibit, with the vine, again made by John, snaking its way from nest to feeding platforms. You can see the open nature of this display, minus the cladding.
![Image](http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a557/edudisplays/DSC_0184_zpswtfqpwxc.jpg)
Justin watering the cocoa fibre to raise humidity.
![Image](http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a557/edudisplays/DSC_0183_zpsdluqad8w.jpg)
![Image](http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a557/edudisplays/DSC_0182_zpsablu5fly.jpg)
Closeup of the vine
The feeding table, made by Justin, is three thick branches, with slots cut in them to accommodate 6mm perspex pieces, cut into a wavy, curved table. This seems an excellent idea for providing the ants with multiple surfaces for food, again a fantastic adaption for a limited area.
![Image](http://i1283.photobucket.com/albums/a557/edudisplays/DSC_0175_zpsf4t3annp.jpg)
All together a very interesting trip, made to feel incredibly welcome and really enjoyed the experience of working with these guys. Justin is a force of nature!!
One interesting aside. I think I have cracked Jet Lag!
So I was due to be in Canada for 3 days. Anyone who has ever travelled very much will know that Jet Lag is a factor of how far away from Greenwich Mean Time you travel. I was on the far, Pacific coast of Canada and was actually 8 hours behind british time!! So I know, when I arrived there, I was going to spend the entire time there feeling jet lagged and then the week following my return feeling lousy also. And this week was an important week so I did not, under any circumstances, want to feel bad this week because I am part of a government based committee looking a legislation for the Animal Encounters Industry and we had a very important meeting in London 36 hours after my return from Canada. So what I did was to keep to British time. At 4pm each day I returned to the hotel and immediately went to bed. (This was midnight UK time). I set the alarm for 8pm and went to hotel for dinner and then back to bed at 10pm until 2am. I got up and did the work online that I would have done in the evening, until it was time to go to work. Because I managed to do this all through the trip (Kurtis and Justin must think I am mindbogglingly antisocial) I got home and have had absolutely no jet lag whatsoever, a real bonus given haw short the trip was.
I'd just like to finish by thanking Kurtis and Justin for their hospitality and the effort they put in to making the trip run smoothly. It was a real pleasure to meet you and I look forward to seeing you all again at the Invert Conference in Arizona in July.