ANTS!!

I really like ants, there’s soo much variation in them that they appeal to me pretty much like “herps” or “fish”, the more you know the more amazing the diversity becomes.

I’ve kept a few species, some not too successfully including, Pheidologeton diversus,  these didn’t do well (read survive…) as the colony was way too small.

Solenopsis geminata, didn’t do well, I think because of initially a too low temperature so I gave them away to someone with warmer conditions. Polyrhachis australis, I tried my first colony in a mixed tank with Diacamma sp. but kept finding ants dead in a midden, I believe the Diacamma picked them off as they met them. My second colony did well until I moved them into a much bigger area and the started to produce queens and males which I think drained the colony and they faded away…
    
However, I don’t kill everything; a colony of Crematagaster sp.  I received from my ant store did too well. I initially got them hoping they would set up home in a Dischidia pectinoides the species of plant they had been collected in. However they dug under some wood and grew from there. I gave them to someone who had much more space so they could expand. He thinks they have now split into 3 or 4 colonies. 

Acromyrmex octospinosus;

I seem to be having luck with my leaf cutter ants, Acromyrmex octospinosus. These I received from Andrew Stevenson of the company Educational Displays, I have known Andrew for many years and have always had great colonies from him. My current colony I recently gave a new chamber to see if they either moved into it, leaving their old nest or just added it as another chamber. They very quickly started gardening in this one as well, nearly doubling the size of the fungus garden in under a month. They are collecting much more plant matter but producing much less waste, as it’s all going to use.

The only problem I have had with this colony is they have repeatedly gone sexual. A number of times they have started to produce winged queens, which if allowed to stay will drain the resources of the colony by eating the fungus but giving nothing back. I have been told that once this starts that the colony is probably doomed. (We once counted around 100 alates leaving the nest trying to do a nuptial flight).

The advice I received to stop this is to tip the nest into a tub so you can remove the winged queens, however after a while the alates remove their wings and are difficulty to tell from the actual queen. But if placed in a tub the original queen will soon by surrounded and protected by workers while the others will be wandering around, ready to be removed. But as I didn’t have the nerve to do this I pushed bits of fruit (mainly apple or grape) into the openings of the nest so that the alates could easily feed even if they didn’t leave the nest. Then, when, I noticed alates outside the nest I removed them. This is most easily done by turning the lights on suddenly. 

Oecophylla smaragdina

My weaver ants, Oecophylla smaragdina which I received a month ago are doing well, they moved out of the initial nest of 3 or 4 Ficus leaves onto a live Ficus pumilia as soon as the old leaves dried up.

However due to space restrictions I would like the colony to start living in a fake plant. The space I want to keep them in is very long and wide but no higher than around 60cm if it’s a real plant. (This is because the lighting will need too much space.) To see if this will work I added a few bits of the fake plant on top of the nest.

Within a few days they started to attach silk on to the leaves.

I have now added more of the fake plant nearby hoping they will move there permanently as the real plant starts to suffer from their actions.

Looking at posts on ant forums (by ant keepers, not by ants) it seems this should work. We will see…

SebastiansAnimals;
Dodgy videos of my animals on You Tube, a bit of a mix to give you an idea of what I like.

Basically, I like everything!

Sebastian
April 2012

A quick invert update!

As Ive been a bit busy lately I haven't had time to post about a couple of new additions, a small weaver ant Oecophylla smaragdina colony arrived just over a week ago and 3 small paper wasp colonies Polistes dominulus the day after that.

The weavers are from an online store called My ant shop http://www.myantshop.com/ who I have used a few times and can't rate highly enough and you will doubtless be hearing lots more about in the future, while the Polistes came from a friend who was collecting for a project in Spain and gave me 3 small colonies.

The weavers are great, very active and collecting food within minutes of being released, the wasps are dead...

They lasted a week and seemed to be doing well, taking food from tweezers, no obvious aggression and tending 2 out of the 3 nests which were altogether in a large plastic container. But then after five day's I found 2 (out of around 10 animals) dead, the next day all but one were dead on the floor. It 's unlikely to be dramatic temperature fluctuations as the weavers and a Stegodyphus sp. colony in the same area are all fine. 

And although I have not seen any aggression I cant help feeling it may have played a part but if that is so, why so sudden? Perhaps putting the 3 nests together did create tensions, and even though they are probably related colonies the close proximity was just too much?

The person who gave me them has others which are doing well with just an occasional death here and there and has offered me another colony, perhaps I’ll try and work out what I did wrong before I take them though, and then I'll keep them separately....

I have also added another nest chamber to my leaf cutter ant colony Acromyrmex octospinosus, I had been told that they normally stick in one chamber but will move around quite readily, I have added the second partly to help increase the colony size but also to see if they will just get up and move.

And here are some cute pictures of newts to cheer me up.

Tylototriton verrucosus

With thanks to Jane Hallam for taking the verrucosus pictures.

Feeding live food, justified or not?

I have offered live food to many species; mainly invertebrates but sometimes live fish (and in my youth live mice). I do not like doing it, especially with vertebrates but even with the inverts, but I am sure I will have to make the decision again soon.
If you go onto Youtube and type in nearly any predatory species of animal, you will normally find someone, somewhere, feeding something alive, to that species, and very frequently, in my opinion it doesn’t seem justifiable or necessary. The law in the UK doesn’t actually state that its illegal to feed live vertebrate prey (please let me know if this is wrong and we can then try and prosecute the people who feed live mice to their snakeheads!). It does state that its a crime to cause unnecessary suffering, although this can be taken in many ways. Its basically not nice to feed live food if you don't need to (again, in my opinion).
Although some animals have a feeding response that relies on movement (many frogs, preying mantis etc.) many species can easily be weaned onto dead food, if the keeper wants to.

I have kept a few species that have been very difficult to get feeding and have offered live prey to begin with.

The worst species I had that I couldn’t wean onto dead food were Acrochordus granulatus, the banded file snake (please see separate post and photos to come on this species) These were wild caught animals that were in very poor condition and didn’t eat on their own for some time and had to be tube fed, even though offered live food to begin with. The two that I managed to keep alive eventually started to respond to the splashing of small fish in shallow water which seemed to stimulated their feeding response. I did managed to get one of them onto dead food but this was only on a couple of occasions as normally it would only take live fish.

In this case should we say that species shouldn’t be kept? I imagine that some individuals will move onto dead food but how many wouldn’t and how many feeder fish would be fed for this over its lifetime?

I would hope that it's an obvious fact that this species (and others like it) shouldn’t be available “off the shelf” and prospective buyers should be told all the facts about their keeping.

But they are really interesting, very pretty and if I saw them again I would be very tempted, even though I’ve lost a lot of money, a huge amount of time and been racked with guilt on this issue about them.

So the feeder fish dies so the “wanted” fish, snake or frog lives. What about the dead fish that was fed to the easy to keep species; this roach, trout, whitebait or “lance-fish” probably didn’t want to die, may not have died in a good way and, if farmed was probably fed on wild caught marine fish, that died by either suffocated amongst the bodies of other fish in the ships hold or was blast frozen while still alive and then offered in pellet form for optimum growth. (The same sort of thing that people feed their tropical fish tanks when giving flake food).

Basically, (in my opinion,) if you feed your animals any type of animal prey, dead or alive, then the prey animal has suffered to some extent.

If you feed your animal (what ever taxa) live-food (what ever taxa) you should have to at least try to justify it.

There's a species of shrimp, the amazingly beautiful harlequin shrimp that only feeds on starfish. I have seen articles saying to feed them on tropical starfish imported as tank specimens.

In a world where climate change is causing people to die, where air travel is causing seas to rise, is it really worth importing star fish as food for a species that apparently if removed, allow “problem” starfish to proliferate and could be causing coral declines?                                                                                                                                                    
However, animals dying isn’t my main problem, its why and how they die we should be focusing on. Feeding live food may be needed to kick start something feeding or just to keep it alive. I'd rather not feed live insects if I can help it as I don’t like seeing things being torn apart. I write all this because on many of my posts I’ll mention feeding live animals and I hope that this will make it obvious that I don’t feed live food because its easier or because I get a thrill from it. Even the frozen bloodworms we use died being frozen to death, just because I didn’t do it doesn’t let me off the hook. (And yes I do try and avoid eating or using animal products for myself).

There is a very strong argument that if something can't be fed on dead food then it shouldn’t be kept, and although I’d like to argue against this I do have trouble coming up with a point. And I am very good at arguing, and of course, of being a hypocrite.

As I don’t want to go about my personal views on this blog, just to say what I’ve tried to keep and how,  I will now shut up.  

Sebastian                                                                                                                                                    April 2012

Future posts...

Helicops angulatus.

Helicops angulatus.
I hadn't even heard of this species until recently. It's a South American water snake, similar to our Natrix or the North American Nerodia species.
 


The first three I received were in very poor condition, and two died within weeks, even though one had fed. I didn't get any autopsy results from these or faecal results until later. The faecals came back as nothing of interest (This was done as a parasitology test, obviously things could be missed, or of a bacterial nature but I think the main problem was the very poor condition of the snakes and their prior husbandry.)
The third refused dead food for a week, so I brought home a small platy, Xiphophorus maculatus, to try it on.
It obviously noticed it in the water and started to hunt, so I tong fed three small dead defrosted roach, which it took straight away. (I removed the platy.) This snake has fed very well ever since.

The next four I received were in good condition, and three started to feed on dead food within a week.

The fourth was a much quieter snake, staying on a piece of floating bark and not taking any interest in food.

I removed the three feeding snakes to another tank and offered the forth a platy; (can't remember if it was the same one). Once again the snake started to hunt so I tried feeding dead food with tongs. This was successful but only after repeated attempts- involving annoying the snake by knocking the food against its head until it struck. It then held and took a further two small fish straight away.


Husbandry;
I first kept them in a 1 metre tank, mainly aquatic with floating cork bark and some plastic plants both in the water and on the wood.
The water had an internal filter and was heated to around 26oC. Out of each batch of snakes I received, all but one from each group was very aquatic, rarely if ever leaving the water. However the two that did sit on the wood were both the hardest to get feeding.
The tank that I moved the established snakes to had a much larger land area with a small spot lamp for basking. None of the snakes have been seen to bask and if placed on the land return to the water quite quickly.


Sloughing;
This is where Helicops get interesting! When they are going into slough they look like hell!

The largest animal often have a few isolated scales that look damaged (possibly with a fungal infection from being in water all the time?) Their eyes tend to be very cloudy for most of the time they are sloughing, but they rarely seem to stop eating. 

At all stages of sloughing they will normally take food, even if it's obvious they can't see very well. This doesn't seem to be because they are really hungry as my largest snake (the original) will eat until obviously bloated, but still have to be removed days later when I'm trying to feed others because of his aggressive feeding behavior.
The two that seemed to be most unhappy when sloughing have left the water and sat quite dry until just about to shed. The first animal I removed from its tank and placed in a drier tank with a large water bowl which it didn't go into. I sprayed it daily until it sloughed. This animal fed but died soon after.

The second to have this "problem" was in the main tank which has a mister system, I overrode the mister timer a number of times a day to increase the humidity as the skin looked like it could crack, and to allow the snake to drink if it wanted to from water droplets. (It didn't).
Afterwards both snakes seemed fine and ate within a day or so of shedding. But as mentioned, these are the only 2 out of 7 that didn't actively feed even if apparently unable to see.
(Note, the second snake has just sloughed again and did feed while sloughing.)


Compatibility;
I have so far had no problems with keeping different sized snake together. I do make sure I remove the largest snakes when feeding and am ready to separate the others if there are any issues, but even when the largest are put back into the main tank I have had no problems. However, due to the very strong feeding response of this species I would always ere on the side of caution and separate or watch closely.

As I have little space and lots of things I want to keep I often have mixed enclosures, often multi taxa. With the Helicops I have a thriving population of the black chin live-bearers Girardinus metallicus which are too small to be of interest to them. Even if the snakes are actively hunting they seem to ignore even the largest female fish. Of course my snakes are reasonably large and juveniles would of course predate on these fish.


Water quality;
All the tanks I have had these snakes in have had mature biological filters and small water changes. The basic parameters have been based on London tap water; pH around 8. General hardness of around 14.6 DH.
It is very possible that the snakes would benefit from a lower pH, especially as they are soo aquatic. this would lower bacteria levels and possibly lower the incidences of infected looking scales.

I currently keep them in a tank that's fits around my lap top so when I'm working I can see them, and they can see me. There is often one or more with their heads just protruding above water waiting to be fed. 

A top species indeed.