|
Raenir Salazar posted:I've been ant keeping for a while and love this content! I got some pictures over in the Ant keeping thread if you wanna look: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3880473#post507051775 There's at least four ant threads on this goddamn forum now. We need to rationalise this.
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 21:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 12:37 |
|
|
My current ants: Myrmica Rubra: I had ordered these from my local dealer, as I didn't want to go outside as covid had just started and also didn't want to get stung/bitten by them. Also I had spent hours hiking to get my campos (more below) so I was done with going outside and I figured finding and spotting a queen Myrmica would be hard. I love my Rubra a lot, they have a poor reputation as "bad ants" for some reason I don't really understand but they're consistently the most interesting ants in my care. They are active, aggressive, and are constantly out and about, and its fun to see them actually moving the prey insects I give them deeper into the nest. They do a weird thing where they will "carry" curled up/sleeping(?) sister workers with them and wander around their outworld. Sometimes I see them trying to climb the walls of the outworld with a worker in their jaws. I can't tell if some of them are dead or just sun bathing. They take a bunch of workers who appear dead (curled up) and up against the wall, but they constantly seem to be moved to different parts of the outworld so I can't tell what they're doing exactly. When their numbers grow more I want to move them into one of the Ants Canada formicariums I got. Camponotus pennsylvanicus: I caught like 8 queens of these, only three ended up founding colonies. They're lazy fucks. They crowd super cramped together in their nesting test tubes and basically seem to rarely patrol their outworld or looking for food currently. Currently my main concern is that their brood (which takes around 4 months to develop) seems to be... Delayed? I can't tell what's going on. They had periods from when I first took them out of hibernation (I had a mini-fridge with a temp. control to hibernate them during the winter) where they were super active and have moments of activity but seem mostly not doing a whole lot. It's quite nail biting because I can't tell whats going on. Camponotus novaeboracensis: They got a shiny red thorax and are about the same size as above. Since I only have one of them they're kinda getting extra attention from me where I make sure to give them their food directly in the Ants Canada portal they have.   As we see their larva have been "stuck" for a while, it worries me. My novo setup: New tube on the left since they're water is running out. All my colonies are like this.  Myrmica top left with the bigger outworld. And the other setups are my penn's. I got like two lamps to try to give them more heat, and a LED light try to encourage the ones whose water ran out to move to their new tube. Next year I hope they're big enough to use my AC formicariums! Monomorium Pharaonis: Honourary mention. These are my free-range ants. And also bad roommates for my captive ants, so on my ant shelf I put the legs in water dishes so they don't rudely steal the food of the other ants.   This is Theresa, I see her around. She's helping herself to some sugar water I left for her so I could take the picture. I was offered money if I could successfully capture a wild pharoah ant colony, and was told they tend to move into roach nests, I got a container with terrarium dirt/coco husk and food left for them in my bathroom with the cricket pen (they killed all the feeder crickets!) but no luck yet. Bug Squash posted:There's at least four ant threads on this goddamn forum now. We need to rationalise this. Sadly we're not the kind of goons which can have multiple threads form together to form a supercolony of threads!!!!
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 21:53
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:Sadly we're not the kind of goons which can have multiple threads form together to form a supercolony of threads!!!! Goons going for the rare all-drone colony 
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 22:59
|
|
|
aphid_licker posted:Goons going for the rare all-drone colony I think it's Bulldog ants, and Dinoponera that have ghamergates?
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 23:02
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:My current ants: Oh that's so cool! You got way more exciting ants than me, they're all magical. Good luck on those pharaohs, that's certainly an unforgiving project you're working on Raenir Salazar posted:I think it's Bulldog ants, and Dinoponera that have ghamergates? Ponerinae, primal ants, have Gamergates. Although those aren't drones, they have regular, haploid, drones like all ants. It just happens that they don't have a specific queen caste yet, all workers are fully functional biological females and can turn into queens, which leads to endless civil war and ant game of thrones to become queen in a given nest. Either way, definitely ladies, so goons will remain the very unproductive drone type
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 23:23
|
|
|
The most annoying thing about the pharoahs is that I'd like to clean my bathroom, particularly the floor but there's this massive ant trial with like hundreds of them going to/from the cricket pen and I don't wanna hurt any. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 23:49
|
|
|
Goons Are Great posted:
So what you're telling me is that Starship Troopers was 100% accurate.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2020 03:55
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:So what you're telling me is that Starship Troopers was 100% accurate. So in retrospect as an Ant Keeper, I feel like Starship Troopers is a huge missed oppurtunity to present a more Lovecraftian aesthetic to the Bugs. Instead of them like, actively trying to kill humans or acting like they knew they were in a war with humans and specifically chucking rocks at Earth, they should've not cared about humans at all. See a human? Food. See lots of humans? Lots of food. A key element in ant behavior is that like, you see them swarm over something and sting/B I T E it to death, they dismember it and then drag it piece by piece back to the nest. So a scene of them non-chalantly picking up wounded marines and dragging them back uncaringly as the human begs/screams etc would've conveyed a much more apathetic and uncaring truly alien mindset. Basically they're just doing their thing, following through on their reproduction cycle, foraging for resources and food, and humans just either happen to be in the way or presenting themselves oh so conveniently to be picked up and harvested. Humans launching an invasion to them is just the food coming to you, sparing you the effort to go to them. In a way the chucking rocks at earth bit could be reframed as them figuring out that this is the best way to get humans to come to you like a AI through machine learning figuring out the right incentives. It'd be interesting albeit beside the point of either the book or the film.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2020 04:07
|
|
|
Last nuptial flight season I collected three ant queens from my driveway, two Lasius Niger, one Lasius Brunneus and CHECK OUT WHO JUST BECAME MOMMY TODAY!! A whooping four adult pygmae, that's the special caste for first time mothers I mentioned before, hatched last night. Since mommy has starved since June for this to happen, I immediately offered some honey to the new family and they were very glad:  If you're wondering why I poured 250 liters or honey in there, I didn't, that's how small pygmae are. They are the literal opposite of the soldier caste, due to the insane starvation they and their mom had to go through the last months after mom got laid. These Lasius pygmae are exactly 0.9mm in length and they will never grow any bigger. Pygmae are a special emergency solution for new founded ant empires, when an ant queen that starts claustral, meaning she doesn't leave the founding nest at all, does not eat anything at all after leaving her home nest at the start of June. They digest their own muscles, rip out and eat their muscular part where their wings were attached and reform their abdomen to make baby pregnancy possible. She lays a ton of eggs from the proteins she had left from before leaving home, this one had around 12 eggs, of which they do eat a few to regain proteins and to be able to feed the first hatching babies a tiny bit. Still, neither she nor the babies are able to take any notable amount of food in, which hinders baby growth as larva massively, so they stay almost as small as they were as eggs. All ants are able to enter an emergency pupa stage, where if the larva does not get any food at all for a few days, they will start to pupate immediately as this is a sign for a big emergency in the nest and they need all ants on deck asap, which is the normal modus operandi for pygmae. They sacrifice a part of their siblings, their own growth and also most of their future to form the foundation of a new ant empire and will die after a month or two, long before regular workers would, due to being so weak and small. La familia es todo. Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Aug 30, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2020 13:08
|
|
|
In the UK at least these are called nanitics. I've had a few live for a whole year, but mostly they do their job of getting another few batchs of larvae fed up and then die.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2020 13:42
|
|
|
Yes, in English literature they're called nanitics or minin workers, in the international attempt to make Myrmecology Greek Again an alternative term is pygma or pygmae in plural, coming from πυγμαῖος (pygmaíos) which roughly means "as big as your fist" and refers to the mythological people of pygmaíoi mentioned in the Illiad by Homer, where it's an ethnical group of really really small and for some reason always naked people who lived in caves on the edge of the inhabitable world. Every autumn when the European birds fly south they have to fight terrible battles with those birds. Interesting research about those super small ants: It does not seem to be only a nutrition thing that they remain this small. If you try to feed a founding queen, she won't accept the food so that's not a satisfying answer, but if you manage to add a founding queen to another existing nest where she gets fed by other workers and never has to starve, the workers still turn out this small. It's likely it's also a hormone thing and they get fed via excretions of the queen no matter the amount of food they theoretically have.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2020 14:44
|
|
|
How can there be three new posts this morning and no one links the new ant video from Kurzgesagt!? Weaver Ants
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2020 16:38
|
|
|
Found out that my lawn ants are making a nest in the cracked concrete out by the garden and got on my knees to stare at them for a while and it was awesome, I watched them carefully haul out more grains of "sand" or dirt or whatever and make their mounds and then I decided to go for it, and lo! Actually kinda decent pictures with my phone!   I live in upstate NY, have no idea what these guys are, but they're super industrious and I try not to step on them.
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
Here's a quick overview of my ants! I have five colonies ongoing at the moment. One Messor barbarus, and four Lasius niger. My set-ups are very humble at the moment as I have a small house (drat you Britain), and a very curious toddler, so everything has to be tidy and self-contained. This is also why my Messor colony is in a very bad way. The queens are very susceptable to stress, and unfortunately I lost the queen of a successful colony, and her replacement decided to eat all her eggs in responce to my kid bumping into the wardrobe she lives on. Currently I'm doing the desperation tactic of trying to introduce the new queen to the old colony, which is risky as gently caress since the workers will butcher her if she doesn't smell like the old colony. Right now she's sitting in a test tube with some gauze seperating her from the colony, which will hopefully let her pick up the colony smell. I forgot to take picture of one of my Lasius colonies (never mind), but here's the remaining three. Diet is mainly fruit flies, but I'm adding in mealworms and crickets.   This is a real neat little set-up from antskit.uk . It lets you slot a test-tube nest directly into a slick modern arena. So far it's been very successful for this one year old colony.  What a crap photo! Sorry. This is actually a very successful colony, although you wouldn't know from the look of this. At one year old, they have somewhere between 60 to 80 workers. Test tubes and tupperware are annoyingly some of my most succesful set-ups.   These ladies are probably going to be hitting a hundred workers soon, judging by how many larvae they have. I've moved them into a 3d printed set-up from antsantsuk. It's... interesting. It has a perspex sheet held on by tiny molydynium magnets, which makes me very nervous but seems to work. The plan was that the colony would move into the new nest, and then I would create a foraging arena connected to it by tubes. My kid has gotten real grabby lately, and they aren't moving anyway, so the new nest is basically a playground for them at the moment. I have big plans if I ever get a secure place to put them in, but for now I'm just building up numbers in humble containers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 21:09
|
|
|
Feeding my Myrmica the new crickets I got. The crickets are now being kept in a psuedo-terrarium. I setup a layer of activated carbon, some gravel, a weed barrior mesh, and some more gravel, and then jungle substrate with coco husk. Goal is to entire the pharoah's into nesting in it while using the crickets as bait.
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 23:35
|
|
|
Some amazing ant posts ITT, I'm in love. Incredible that I'm saying this, but my outworld has become too small for the ants. They have scouted every inch so viciously their foraging behavior ends up having the entire ground as an ant track. No wonders there, I was planning to expand their world for ages already, but always was messing around with a moist setup with plants and springtails, leading to me being unable to let them in as it was risky due to possible parasite infestation and a not yet good setup. Just too many fungi everywhere. I bought new equipment and will re-do the outworld today or tomorrow, switching from a moist forest style that was too vulnerable to mold to work for the ants to a desert approach and instead offering more water holes. Since their nest also is very humid and my room in general is usually not too dry, this shouldn't be a problem for them. I also got fancy decoration stuff and hope I can do some nice looking setup with no risk to mold or external infestation. Gonna post the process later.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2020 15:37
|
|
|
So, threw out the old setup with tons of wild growing plants and hundreds of springtails (bye bye friends  ) and replanted the plants outside. Both the plants and the springtails are now living in a patch of grass nearby my home, how exciting! Meanwhile I cleaned the mold and everything entirely, emptied out the entire box and rebuilt it from ground up, with sand, artificial plants and a desert theme. Here we go!  Check out what the ants built!  I actually wanted a Maya pyramid in there, but it ended up being too big for this setup to look good, so I used this one instead. The Maya one fits well into my Mexican styled scorpion lair however, so Hector has a new throne, too. It's actually meant for an aquarium as a place for fish to hide, but I liked the look and it fits in very well, plus the ants can explore it or dump stuff in there if they want. Technically they could even move in there, but I don't really want them to, as their current nest is better for control and gives me a better look, plus this one will be too dry and too big anyways. Gonna let the sand dry for a night and then connect it with the first outworld and the nest, so the ants can start exploring this new territory tomorrow. Very exciting to hear what they think.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2020 00:08
|
|
|
Man could you imagine how awesome it'd be if they could manipulate masonry! I found a male Pharoah ant today, so I got excited and them bummed once I had it ID'd. It had the big back I expected a queen to have but the tiny head in the end dashed my hopes. It was thunderstorming today so it seems like the alates are out because of it. Hopefully the female ones show up in my bathroom as well soon since I imagine if I can capture one that's all I need.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2020 02:28
|
|
|
Introduction of my Messor queen into the old colony has been aborted. They seemed to be accepting her, but one of the medium workers then latched onto a leg and started pulling. It could have been that she had been so accepted that the worker was forcefully dragging her to a new home, but I've decided to play it safe and give her a little bit longer in her test tube to gather up colony smell.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2020 10:56
|
|
|
Better safe than sorry. Queen acceptance is such a delicate mess.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2020 12:02
|
|
|
Are there any ant species where the drones do anything other than have sex and die? Or are there any ant species with particularly notable drones?
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2020 20:14
|
|
|
There are variations in how capable of generally living the drones are. The most evolved ant species have drones that are even lacking a proper mouth, they need to be fed by their sisters to even stay alive over the few weeks they stay in the home nest until nuptial flight. They only consume and never do anything on their own, some are even lacking mandibles. For some older species the drones can eat on their own and sometimes even help out with minor tasks of the nest, although that is rather unusual. They never hunt or go out or otherwise risk their lives, though. As such, there is no species where male ants have any special role outside of offering the missing genes to make diploid females possible - given their genetic setup (males always share 100% of the genes of their mother, they are not clones as still a recombination happens) it is unlikely if they could result in any longer lives either way and thus are, so to speak, in a dead end situation in changing any of this. Since the behavior of males is so similar in all hymenoptera and are even found by the evolutionary oldest relatives, the many solitary bee species, it is very likely that this setup developed very early in the ancestors of both ants, wasps and bees already, at least 350 million years ago, maybe even longer than that. Note that this is not a specialization that came through their eusociality, though, as for one most male bees that are in no way eusocial still share a similar setup where they only mate with females and then die sooner or later and for two, not all eusocial animals have this kind of setup. Termites, for example, have queens and kings. The king lives alongside his queen for his entire life and has almost constantly sex with her to fertilize the thousands of eggs she produces. Plus, worker termites can be both males and females, as they are not haplodiploid like ants or honey bees (as in, the genderless workers have two, the males one set of chromosomes) but all of them are diploid. It seems likely that this specific setup developed a very long time ago and is mostly the result of this genetic setup rather than a behavioral change that developed over time. When males only exist due to the lack of sex based reproduction and bring in no new genetic information, it is impossible for them to have a meaningful impact on evolution (outside of lucky re-shuffles during recombination) and they turn into hardly more than vessels for their sperm.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2020 23:00
|
|
|
Goons Are Great posted:Termites, for example, have queens and kings. The king lives alongside his queen for his entire life and has almost constantly sex with her to fertilize the thousands of eggs she produces. Termites living the life!
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2020 23:42
|
|
|
Man I know this is the ant thread but termites sound way more fascinating than I'd ever really given them credit for. I think you mentioned earlier in the thread that they're a superorganism species that developed entirely separate from bees/ants/wasps? I wonder if there's cool termite documentaries out there
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 00:23
|
|
|
ninjewtsu posted:Man I know this is the ant thread but termites sound way more fascinating than I'd ever really given them credit for. I think you mentioned earlier in the thread that they're a superorganism species that developed entirely separate from bees/ants/wasps? I wonder if there's cool termite documentaries out there Maybe it depends on the species but at least for the ones that appeared on Ants Canada, they kinda make tunnels out of their poop and seem to die if exposed to sunlight? They don't seem as friendly as ants in terms of the ability to observe them.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 00:29
|
|
|
That is so gross but also I'm so much more curious now
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 01:08
|
|
|
ninjewtsu posted:That is so gross but also I'm so much more curious now Enjoy!
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 01:50
|
|
|
Gigantic gallery of pro-grade photos of leafcutter ants: https://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Making-a-Living/The-Farming-Ants-Leafcutters/
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 02:35
|
|
|
drat termites are fascinating
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 09:56
|
|
|
ninjewtsu posted:Man I know this is the ant thread but termites sound way more fascinating than I'd ever really given them credit for. I think you mentioned earlier in the thread that they're a superorganism species that developed entirely separate from bees/ants/wasps? I wonder if there's cool termite documentaries out there Yes, termites (isoptera) are a biological order of insects, they are in no way related to ants or bees, which both are a biological family in the order of hymentoptera in the class of insects. So ants are related to termites in the same way as we are related to, say, whales. In fact, the next closest relative termites have are roaches (Dictyoptera). Termites also are older than ants and developed eusociality entirely independent from ants and other eusocial animals, hence why their structure is so fundamentally different in both setup, behavior as well as genes. The only real thing they have in common with each other is that they are in an eternal war in the tropical world, which by now lasts for around 200 million years without having a winner. I wrote an effort post about termites and their relation to ants here, if you're curious! I'd be really curious to also get some termites here, but their setup is not practical to do in Europe, they're not temperate animals and it would probably be too big and too much to make that happen here, but they're super cool.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 10:01
|
|
|
I actually helped look after the only UK research colony for a bit. It was just a set of big plastic tubs that we threw wood into every so often. Whole set-up was kept in a metal temperature control room. Technically, it was easy as pie. I would not recommend trying it at home since it would be illegal as all hell and an escape could permanently damage your home/neighborhood/country.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 11:19
|
|
|
Oh yeah, I am mostly concerned about controlling the climate properly and the amount of energy it requires to run such an atmosphere permanently. Could become quite expensive, naturally someone like AntsCanada has it much easier there given his location. I actually wonder if it's illegal to have termites here. We are super slow in terms of organizing laws on animals that are smaller than dogs, it took until June before my state even bothered to decide on any laws regarding deadly poisonous animals. Now they banned them altogether and I have to get a permit to keep my scorpion.  Without a question though, my landlord would crucify me if she'd find out I'd have freaking termites over here, so yeah not the best idea of all time, but not one I wouldn't consider at all either. Because I am a terrible person. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 13:00
|
|
|
I think there's definitely temperate termites, they also exist here in Canada, albeit a little more in the south.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 15:23
|
|
|
My research colony came from a colony that had established in Devon for a few years until we wiped it out, so they can definitely survive temperate conditions, and European species are gradually spreading north with climate change. These species that are easy to keep are also the species are a bit boring with less specialised castes, so it's never been much of a temptation for me.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2020 15:33
|
|
|
I did it. I went and finally did it. After spotting like 5-10 male pharaoh's mucking about my bathroom a queen finally appeared in the midst of her massive trail of like 100 ants raiding my cricket pen which I kept in the bathroom.  With a brush and some paper I collected easily at least 50 workers dumped them into a container which I lined with fluon and connected the queen to the opposite end in an AC ant portal, hopefully they should meet up soon. Hopefully this was a fertile queen and not an inbred one. e: Better pics.  
Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Sep 14, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2020 09:03
|
|
|
I shelved the ant idea for this year and built a sorta forest terrarium instead. Got a couple neat-looking semitropical mosses that can allegedly deal @ room temp. The dealer didn't have a function to search by temp range so that was a bit annoying, most seem to require like 24C. Threw in a bunch of springtails and pillbugs etc to keep everything clean, but no big insects. Might add temp control and like a millipede later if everything goes well, those look p neat. I like that it looks nice and green and that's gonna be a major concern with the ant thing as well I think next year, I have a single room to live in so it'd be cool if the setup and looked nice in some way. I am figuring out moisture, basically if I crack the terrarium door (it's one of those upright ones) more or less it seems I can control the moisture pretty well, if I close it it goes all the way to 99%, and to ambient if I open it all the way. Allegedly the "terrarium police" (the springtails etc) is supposed to help keep mold at bay, at least that's what the shop writes on their page, so we'll see how that works out. There's nothing expensive in there so a whoopsie would not be a huge problem. There appears to be no terrarium thread in PI, is that right? I'll post a pic once I have everything planted in and am convinced that it'll stay sorta stable so the pic isn't this potential monument to my idiocy
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2020 11:51
|
|
|
Talk to me about fire ants. What's the best way to prevent them? Is there a humane way to deal with them?
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2020 14:04
|
|
|
aphid_licker posted:I shelved the ant idea for this year and built a sorta forest terrarium instead. Got a couple neat-looking semitropical mosses that can allegedly deal @ room temp. The dealer didn't have a function to search by temp range so that was a bit annoying, most seem to require like 24C. Threw in a bunch of springtails and pillbugs etc to keep everything clean, but no big insects. Might add temp control and like a millipede later if everything goes well, those look p neat. Most Springtails (it is a HUGE order with thousands of species, so there's a lot of variety here) eat decaying stuff and thus are competing with mold, not eating it. They usually are faster than fungi and process stuff completely before mold gets a chance to settle down though, so that why it appears they would eat it, too. If you throw in something covered in mold and they do not ignore it (they often do) they will eat the remains probably quicker than the mold could, but that's about it. So you cannot rely on them preventing mold, in fact they will avoid areas that develop a lot of it as its spores are annoying for them, which then causes the mold to explode massively. So you have to act fast if you see it happen, else the fungi can take over the springtail world very quickly. However, if ventilation works out, that shouldn't be a problem! And you can figure out if you can get a living setup to fly before endangering any ants, so that's good! I'm curious to see the result! Bioshuffle posted:Talk to me about fire ants. What's the best way to prevent them? Is there a humane way to deal with them? Fire ants are extremely fast, one of the quickest species to procreate, extremely aggressive and one of the few species that can really really hurt you. If we are talking about preventing them from invading a house, the number 1 priority at all times is to seal away stuff they like to eat. Sugar first, proteins second. No fruits lying around openly, no lemonade drying up on the ground, stuff like that, else you give them a good reason to come in. Proteins are the same, but harder to prevent, as insects just happen and you can never get your home insect free, but preventing mosquitos and flies to come in en mass definitely can help there, too. Third priority would be to seal off potential entrance points if possible. Cracks in walls can be closed, doors and windows should be sealed anyways for temperature control purposes. If you live nearby a colony though, they will find a way in eventually though, which is why not giving them any reason to come back is vital. If you found an entrance, make sure that the general area is and stays clean. You can use vinegar based cleaning agents to make it stink for them, make sure to repeat this a regularly if invasions happen. Ants so not like soap, cleaning agents and generally our chemicals that we use to clean up, so make sure you use a lot of those to repel them. It shouldn't poison them this way either, it just makes sure they have not only no reason to come in, but also a good reason to stay out, too. Fire ants can become an actual pest and depending on the level of infestation that happens, if any, it becomes something you cannot handle yourself relatively quickly and at that point I recommend professional help to exterminate them entirely. This is the last option though and should only be done if it's really necessary, like, you have a huge colony spreading inside your walls and they launch large scale invasions. In that case, and only that case, you have to treat it like any major pest infestation. Especially with kids or small animals around the area, as fire ants can seriously hurt them.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2020 15:11
|
|
|
I had been wondering about the "tropical springtail" thing, lmao. Ah well, they were three euros. I'll keep an eye out for mold, see how it goes and keep you updated!
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2020 20:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 12:37 |
|
|
No worries, the temperate ones are a lot easier to keep. Tropical springtails are stunningly beautiful, they have a lot of super cool colors, there are even blinking ones! They are one of the most ignored yet belong to the most important animals on the planet, as they break down stuff to make it available to bacteria and even smaller decomposers, so they function as a bridge between the macro and microfauna. Tropical ones require very high humidity and very high temperature though, while the temperate ones you probably got (Like Protaphorura armata, super small white dots in the soil, roughly 0.05 to 0.1mm in length) accept anything between 10 and 30°C and 30 to 100% humidity, just make sure the soil stays a bit wet all the time and you're good to go. Very useful little fellas either way, any kind of competition for mold is a worthwhile companion to have around.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2020 21:28
|
|