Oh no!
You've read the title, and yes, AC Family it's true.
We have an emergency situation on our hands.
My ants officially escaped!
Now this typically never happens on this channel, especially because the setups we use are specially
designed to keep ants in, but this time, this typical terrarium which is originally designed
for reptiles, provided our black crazy ant colony, the Dark Knights with the perfect
opportunity of escape.
But that's not all, this is another video of ours which you must watch until the end.
The plot twist will blow you out of your seat!
AC Family, gather round as we hit the panic button, and watch how our black crazy ants
escaped and how we ultimately manage to control this crisis, in this episode of the AntsCanada
Ant Channel.
Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the bell icon.
Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy!
OK, so I hate to say this, because I personally don't typically believe in these sort of things,
and many of you have been saying it already, but I'm prepared to consider the possibility
that this terrarium is cursed.
Let's recap for those of you who are new to the channel.
This terrarium used to belong to my long time pet bearded dragon, Tarzan, who mysteriously
died a few months ago.
So instead of throwing the tank in the garbage, I decided to turn it into a soil terrarium
and move an ant colony in, to inhabit it.
I asked you guys which of our ant colonies should move in, and by landslide vote, you
asked for the Jawbreakers, our young trapjaw ant colony, to become the new recipients of
this new terrarium.
But almost immediately after their victory in the polls, in a sick twist of fate, a wild,
savage ant colony of black crazy ants living outside my place broke into their setup and
killed the entire ant colony in cold blood before they could ever see the likes of these
unchartered soils.
The savage ant colony abducted and ate all workers, brood, and the queen.
So then, I asked you guys on Twitter who should take their place as new inhabitants of the
terrarium and you, the AC Family voted for the Titans, our young, promising and majestic
Asian Marauder ant colony to move in.
I placed the Titans' towers into the terrarium to allow them to move out on their own.
To our surprise, the Titans didn't take well to the new terrarium and began to die off
mysteriously before our very eyes, almost completely disappearing two weeks after the
move.
After another round of voting, the AC Family decided to restore the towers, and if by chance
the queen and any workers were still alive in there, we hoped they would recover.
So finally, we come to last week's video, where I looked to you the AC Family once again,
for our next move.
The AC Family spoke, and the majority declared that we now move the Dark Knights, our long
time, strong colony of Black Crazy ants into this new terrarium which by now was truly
blossoming with life.
And so here we are, AC Family.
It was time to initiate this move and finally populate the terrarium.
If there was an ant colony that would successfully flourish in these fertile lands, it would
be the versatile and hardy Dark Knights.
I was confident this move was going to run smoothly.
So here was my plan.
Here lies the Dark Knights' Northern satellite nest, comprised of a pot of aloe vera and
a simple rubbermaid bin with baby powder applied on the walls to keep the ants from climbing
out.
A long tube attaches from this rubbermaid bin to this AC Outworld.
This AC Outworld acts as a pitstop for the Dark Knights before proceeding over towards
the Dragon's Stairway which climbs up towards the AC Plateau and the DK Bridge, and into
the Cavern of Darkness, a tunnel which runs into my wall and leads all the way downstairs
towards the Dark Knight's southern nest, a Hybrid Nest.
So how was I going to connect this terrarium to the Dark Knight's already grand setup?
The bridge to this land was here.
This AC T connector would provide a cross roads for the ants.
By the way, AC Family, all our connectors at our shop are now 100% clear like this so
we could see all action and movement between tubes.
And my interests were in this tube.
This was the tube that connected the Northen Nest rubbermaid bin with the AC Outworld.
The plan was to cut this tube and connect the end leading to the AC Outworld to one
opening, and the other end leading to the nest to the other.
It would essentially not change the ants' pathway, but simply provide an extra path
leading to the terrarium.
Let's take a look where the tube takes us.
The ant would climb the tube and emerge on top of the terrarium, and need to cross over
to the other side then plunge down through the mesh screen and into the terrarium.
I chose for the ants to emerge on this side of the tank so we could better see them as
they move in.
I anticipated for it to be a fairly standard, uncomplicated move but there were some other
preparations involved.
I made sure not to water the nest of the Dark Knights of the North for a couple days so
their nest would get slightly dry.
Not completely dry, though, as this would endanger the colony, but just enough to setup
the stage for a colony move.
And look, the Springcleaners, a bustling colony of Springtails that lives cooperatively with
the Dark Knights are also out enjoying this semi-arid spell.
But the ants don't like it.
They've sent workers out to scope for a new location to setup a nest, somewhere to which
the colony could move should this current nest location completely dry out.
These scouting ants exit the rubbermaid bin to start house shopping, and they were about
to find out that the moist rich soils of the terrarium were going to totally make their
day.
Another thing we needed to do before the move was to prepare this tube that was to lead
into the terrarium.
It needed to be coated in baby powder so that the ants wouldn't be able to climb up it and
reach the top mesh.
Basically, the idea was to keep the Dark Knights from reaching the mesh entirely because some
of the holes in the mesh were large enough for the Dark Knights to fit through.
Then, we needed to create a hole in the mesh just big enough to accommodate the tube leading
into the terrarium.
Once in the terrarium we needed to situate the tube's opening right about there.
Next, to be sure, I had to reinforce the band of baby powder barrier.
This would keep the ants from crawling up to the mesh and finding an escape.
And now all was set.
The tube was ready, the terrarium was ready, and now all that was left to do was to cut
their current tube and attach it to this AC T Connector.
Are you ready AC Family?
Here we go.
After cutting the tube, I quickly attached both ends into the two holes in the connector.
And now all that was left to do was watch the ants move in.
Enjoy!
For the first 20 minutes the ants didn't seem to care about the mysterious tube which lead
to the terrarium.
Some of the ants would attempt to enter it but wouldn't go too far.
It seemed the main priority was this road connecting them to the two satellite nests.
But finally, after about 30 minutes, one brave ant had the random idea to travel off the
familiar path, and wander up the tube.
This curious worker ant traveled up, and across the top of the terrarium inquisitively, and
finally plunged down into the terrarium.
It finally emerges, into a whole new world of tropical splendor, and so begins the epic
move of the Dark Knights.
After exploring the terrarium for awhile, the scout was completely excited.
Look at its crazy erratic movements.
This ant is clearly joyful it has found these new lands.
It enters the tube to tell the rest of the colony.
As soon as it gets back to its sisters, the excitement and news spreads like wildfire
and the others venture out to check out their new promised land.
More and more ants emerge to experience and explore their new future home.
By now the great news has reached the Northern Satellite nest, and more and more workers
leave to explore the territories that everyone is raving about.
The ants really love the the terrarium and seem to have a particular liking for the sphagnum
mossy patches.
Perhaps because they hold water well and are extra moist.
Word also spreads to the Southern colony on the first floor who also send out scouts to
check out the potential new home.
All was going completely as planned, so after watching them for a good 2 hours, I left and
allowed them to continue to move in on their own.
4 hours later, I returned to the terrarium to check up on their progress.
What I saw shocked me.
The ants had escaped and were running everywhere outside of the terrarium.
Oh no!
They danced and rejoiced at their newfound freedom they never knew they didn't have,
and explored the entire vicinity around the tank.
They were all over the place.
Even in my curtains.
How did this happen?
I scoured the terrarium looking for where the ants had managed to escape.
To my complete horror, I watched as the Dark Knights were able to climb up to the mesh
by gripping on to the corners of the terrarium.
You see, some ants are able to grip up 90 degree corners, and turns out our Dark Knights
were able to do this in order to reach the mesh, where they then were able to escape.
I even saw a worker that was completely covered in baby powder.
Perhaps this one got coated as it climbed the heavily powdered corners.
We had no choice!
It was time to abort all operations!
Now we typically never have escapes on this channel.
It has only happened once on this channel, years ago and it was due to keeping escape-artist
ant species in setups that were not designed for ant keeping, much like this terrarium
here, and both times, I was able to resolve the situation and collect all escaped ants
quite easily.
So this was my protocol.
I had to act quickly and cut off the point of escape.
I immediately removed the tube leading into the terrarium and plugged it up, as well as
the mesh hole with cotton.
With the influx of ants now under control, the next step was to bring out my special
instrument.
A hand held vaccuum cleaner.
Like a giant twister, I ploughed through and sucked up all the ants I could collect.
Eventually, I managed to collect the majority of escaped ants.
I wasn't worried because I expected that no queens had escaped since it was still early.
Any workers that were loose in my ant room that were not able to get back to the colony
would eventually die, due to starvation.
Ants need their colony to survive.
I had to do this quickly because with all the sucked up ants blowing around in the vaccuum,
they were drying out with every passing second so timing was of the essence.
I also had to suck up all ants I could find inside the terrarium.
When I had sucked up all the ants I could find, I opened the canister and dumped them
back into their nest.
Thankfully, the situation was now completely under control, and thank goodness!
I watered the nest to rehydrate the sucked up ants and provide moisture for the rest
of the colony in the pot.
Not all ants can climb squared corners, but it seems these Dark Knights are one of those
species that can, so having an outworld with rounded corners was the only way to go for
them.
Our terrarium once again lay bare and uninhabited.
Staring into the empty terrarium due to yet another failed attempt at moving ants in made
me believe that perhaps some of you may have been right.
Perhaps there is a curse, a curse which completely trips up all our plans at moving an ant colony
into these fertile lands.
I was completely prepared give this terrarium perhaps to a new reptile, or amphibian instead,
but then again, I was also afraid the curse would in turn bring misfortune or death to
those animals, so I just resolved to dump out all inhabitants and completely throw the
tank away...
That was until, I saw this.
The Titans are alive!
Alright, AC Family!
Can you believe it?
I am blown away by this.
It seems the Titans actually did move into the terrarium the first time, discreetly while
we weren't looking!
I don't know if the queen is in there for sure, but I highly suspect that she and the
rest of the colony were indeed in there!
Wow!
This was totally incredible!
Stay tuned for an update on this colony in a future video.
And just a note for those who have been wanting to get into ant keeping but are afraid of
escapes, no need to worry because escapes only happen if a setup is not designed for
ant keeping.
If you're a beginner and want to be safe, I would recommend any of the setups we offer
at AntsCanada.com as these are designed to keep ants in.
Whatever the case, if you're keeping ants, it doesn't hurt to have a small vaccuum with
an easy to remove canister ready just in case you do have an escape.
We actually have a helpful tutorial on this channel about preventing and dealing with
ant escapes.
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here if you would just like to see
some extended play footage of the Dark Knights moving into the terrarium without all the
narration and to the sounds of good music.
And now it's time for the AC Question of the Week!
Last week, we asked:
Name one reason why the Fire Nation would not
be an ideal candidate for our new terrarium?
Congratulations to Seecooty, who correctly answered:
The Fire Nation would escape by gripping on to the corners.
Congratulations Seecooty you just won a free ant tshirt from our shop.
And for this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask:
Name one preparation that needed to be done before
moving the Dark Knights into the terrarium.
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could win a free ebook handbook from
our shop!
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It's ant love forever!