What is going on guys it is Ants Britania
I hope you're all having a great weekend at this moment in time
I am in Germany, but obviously I've made this video in advance to you guys. Hope you like it
But this week, I know I promised to film my harpegnathos venator
My Asian Jumping ants
, but unfortunately, I didn't manage to get my hands on another colony
So no panic though, that just gives us something to look forward to in the future
but today I'm going to be talking to you about mold and
Getting rid of mold in your formicariums
So guys when you finally got your ants and you are making a formicarium. nest materials should be selected
Very very carefully wood and plaster are probably at the bottom of the list in terms of mold
resistant materials while YTONG, grout and plastic remain kind of at the top of the list in terms of
mold resistance. mold will potentially grow on any dead organic matter or so despite building like a
perfectly mold resistant formicarium with good ventilation that there is still a risk of
Mold growth. ants need humidity and warmth to grow
But so does mold so it's it's hard to fight against mold while you're trying to keep your ants in the best possible conditions
also ants
need to feed and any kind of dead organic matter that they bring into the nest just
gives mold that higher chance of
growth, so when ants bring food into a damp and warm like humid nest you do have a
serious, cause for concern and
Whatever the nest is made of so in that case today, I'm going to be showing you how to reduce mold
Using examples from my pheidole noda
colony, because my pheidole noda colony if you guys haven't checked out my
Introduction video for them it was basically a video of me getting them and put them into this little formicarium, which I had made
If you want to check that out, I'll leave a link down below in the description
I'll also leave a link down below in the description of the video of me making
This plaster formicarium. So feel free if you've got some time to check those videos out
But I'm going to be using this colony to set some examples on how to reduce mold growth
Because I have made a few little mistakes with this colony recently
Let me give you guys a closer look as to what's been going on with the colony and where I went wrong
So guys, this is my pheidole noda colony. They have come quite far since the previous video
They've settled in really well to their formicarium here
and as you can see
they have a lot of brooood have a lot of brood but they they've moved a lot of sand in they've
Made it very homely, but as you can see
From this here. There's a lot of well, there's some mold in this formicarium
this plaster nest here. And hopefully today we are going to be
Reducing this mold and making our ants feel more comfortable in their home here
So as you can see in these areas mold has actually sprouted
it appears because some of the nest is dry the ants have placed their dead into
One of the chambers they have also placed their unfinished meals into some of the chambers
now this mixed with humidity, heat, water is a
Fantastic combination for mold to grow and that is what we are going to try and reduce today
so let's go through it step by step and
Hopefully together we can prevent mold growth in our formicariums
okay guys, so the first
step in reducing mold in your formicariums is to
Reduce the amount of food
Your ants will be taking into their nest now as far as stopping ants from taking food into their nest
It can be proven quite difficult
But there are several ways in which you can do this. I
Would first recommend using mealworms instead of crickets
If your ants will accept them meal worms are usually quite large and they are extremely hard to
Sometimes extremely hard to drag into the nest
They are filled with required juices such as fats and proteins
But if you find your ants are still dragging their food into their nest
Then you can tie your food down or stake it down. So I would recommend using a small
toothpick or you can use some small some metal wire or string just to tie the outfit down to any
kind of ornaments in the nest
Or you can use a toothpick to stake through the food and stick into the ground the ants cant take anything away
obviously when using the live food
Make sure you kill the live food. Otherwise, that is cruel
If your ants don't accept meal worms then obviously
You can try using crickets by saving crickets or wiring the crickets down. There are some ants that require
Live food such as of my ponerine ants my harpegnathos venator and Odontomachus monticola
So for them when feeding them live food, I recommend you be extra vigilant and try and remove any
discarded food
As quickly as possible which to reduce any kind of mold growth
so the next step the second step is to try and
Clean out the nest whenever it gets moldy or dirty now when creating a formicarium
You want to make sure you have a removable lid now
This is essential when you have a wooden formicarium or a plaster formicarium
Because there is going to come point where you will need to remove the glass and clean inside the nest with this plaster nest
I created I will
move out my pheidole noda colony and I'll move them out into a test tube and then when they were moved out,
I will then proceed to block off the plaster formicarium and clean and scrub
inside of their nest now moving a colony out of a nest is just a matter of using a
a lot of light
I will shine a lot of light onto the plaster nest and I would cover the test tube with this red film here
so it would look like the test tube is nice and dark and this was essentially just encourage the ants to
Leave this exposed nest and go into a much darker one
Now if you don't have a nest with a removable
Kind of glass or plastic lid like this
I do recommend moving the colony out still as I explained before and
I recommend then blocking it off and taking the nest over to your over to a tap and
Flushing the nest with some cold water and this probably won't remove a hundred percent of the mold
It will just remove loose fragments
Right step 3 to feed your ants on a regular basis
It is actually good to over feed your ants this is because your ants would be less
encouraged to bring the food back to the nest and
Store it whereas if you fed them
I don't know every three days. They would feel the need to bring every piece of food
They find back to the nest to ensure
They have a sufficient supply of proteins now step number four
Do not over water the nests like I did
this can actually cause the mold to grow at a
Substantial rate and it can actually overwhelm nest quite quickly
now I recommend if can try not to overwater the nest the ants will not mind if there's
high humidity periods and low humidity periods allowing the nest
humidity levels to rise and fall
will not harm your ants but will definitely go a long way in terms of
Stopping the mold growth within the nest right is step number five
providing substrate. if mold grows inside the nest
Ants will tend to put substrate onto the mold now
mold requires oxygen to thrive by the ants putting the substrate onto the mold they are essentially
Suffocating it and starving starving it of oxygen. This is probably
from personal
experiences this is
Possibly the best way of reducing mold growth now
I obviously this nest the setup I've used
white
Sand this is like white thin sand so the ants can pick it up because they're quite small ants the pheidole they can
pick up this sand and
Drop it into the nest and because it's white it still has a great contrast to the ants inside the nest
Obviously if you use a darker kind of substrate, you will lose that good contrast to your ants
So guys with these five steps to preventing mold
I am going to try and reduce the amount of mold in my
plaster formicarium here in my pheidole noda nest
Hopefully in the next couple of days there will be absolutely no mold
And my ants will have a clean comfortable home to live in. All right, I will see you at couple of days
What is going on guys so after a couple of days
Having followed that step by step guide that I was talking about
my ants
Definitely look a lot happier
they've moved into their nest, which I recently cleaned and I added some substrate to the nest
So I basically just added this so they could move it around
Perhaps move it onto some mold that might develop in the nest. But other than that the ants are doing amazing and
They're they're loving their new home
So I hope this step-by-step
Guide on how to reduce mold in your formicariums really helped you guys because it definitely helped me
let me know in the comment section if you've had any issues with mold and if this
Actually helped you. So that is the end of the video guys. If you did enjoy it. Be sure to let me know in the
comment section below
Be sure to hit the subscribe button to join the colony currently
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Alright, so from myself and my pheidole noda colony here
I hope you have a great weekend and I will see you next week
Wonder if i can move some more plants over
That one looks a bit worse for wear
I was trying to move with plant onto the desk
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