A massive fire ant colony, named the Phoenix Empire, numbering in the hundreds of thousands
of ants, grows steadily in power like a growing flame within their shadowy City of Ashes,
awaiting patiently for the awesome moment, they first set foot in a vast and lush world
all you guys watching shall begin creating for them today.
Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the BELL icon.
Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy!
Guys, this is the collaboration of the century!
Today, all you watching will be able to take part in designing the future terrarium home
of my booming pet fire ant colony.
Usually I just create the kingdoms of our ants and beasts myself, but this time, I wanted
to try for the very first time on the channel, crowd sourcing with your creative minds to
construct the ultimate grand ant kingdom fit for our growing empire of fire ants.
It’s only appropriate seeing as many of you guys have been following and rooting for
them from the start, so if you’ve never built a terrarium before, now you guys can
walk with me through my terrarium-building creation process, so keep on watching until
the end when we vote as an ant-caring community to choose the future home of our beloved fire
ants.
So let me start from the beginning for those who are just joining us.
This here is the Phoenix Empire, a massive fire ant colony that we’ve raised on this
channel since January this year from just a pregnant queen ant with eggs, living in
a test tube.
The colony was quiet in those days, non-aggressive, was pretty afraid of everything, and didn’t
even sting.
That however was short-lived, as the colony grew more and more and we, as their caregivers
slowly expanded their setup, first to a small feeding chamber, then offering them their
first outworld, then finally moving them out of their founding test tube into a legit ant
farm, to eventually expanding the Phoenix Empire’s territories bigger, and bigger,
and bigger, and bigger.
The interconnected network of ant farms, which you guys helped build for them through votes,
became known as the City of Ashes.
And so, exactly 7 months after the Phoenix Empire was introduced to the channel, the
colony today numbers somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, they’re fierce, extremely
active, prolific with a tonne of brood, with workers highly polymorphic and specialized,
and have even attempted an escape operation once.
Thus, I was forced to finally ask the big question last week: When should we move the
fire ants into their forever home, a full out paludarium outfitted with a moving body
of water, decor, and soil to dig their nests to their heart’s desire, a habitat complete
with automated climate and rain control?
And well, this is what you guys said in the votes: About 8,000 of you felt the fire ants
should never move into a terrarium, that they should remain in the City of Ashes and we
could simply expand by connecting ant farms as needed for the rest of their lives.
At least this way, we could see them both inside and outside of their nest.
About 9,700 of you said the Phoenix Empire should move into their paludarium now, that
the fire ants needed the space and a highly bioactive environment.
But the majority, some 13,900 of you said that the colony should definitely move into
a terrarium, but not yet.
I think most of you felt the way I did, in that we could wait a bit longer before moving
the ants out of the City of Ashes so we could enjoy seeing the colony living in their ant
farms while we still can, hopefully get a glimpse of the queen again, the Ember Empress,
whom we haven’t seen since March when the colony finally moved out of their founding
test tube.
And so, you the AC Council had spoken.
The fire ants shall be officially moving into a terrarium, but now to talk about when.
Plus, I’m over the moon excited to show you guys exactly how you all will be involved
in creating their terrarium.
Prepare for an exciting journey, guys.
You’re officially fire ant architects inducted by the mighty Phoenix Empire!
Okay, so to address when the fire ants should move into their terrarium, I’ve got to show
you this.
Opening their ac Hybrid Nest Mini, the Magma Chambers, and you can see it is filled to
capacity, and so is their ac Ant Tower, the Fire Fortress.
And as for their latest ant farm addition, the large ac Hybrid Nest Camponotus, which
a whopping 102,000 of you voted to be named the Maze of Flames, is now the newest satellite
nest of the colony, as they’ve already officially begun moving the queen’s brood in.
It’s clear the colony is exploding in numbers now and I believe it will only be a matter
of time before the Maze of Flames, also becomes filled to capacity.
Now, I wanted to show you all of this so you guys have a better idea as to our time frame,
for when the terrarium should be completed and turned over, ready for the ants to move
in, assuming you want them to move in once they fill the Maze of Flames, that is.
Be sure to leave your VOTE on my latest community tab post on my channel page, to help me determine
whether their next living space should be another ant farm or their actual terrarium
forever home.
Your vote on that poll will determine how soon the ants will be moving into their terrarium.
But now for the ultimate vote: Here’s the cool part, guys!
Building the terrarium from scratch with all of you!
So check this out: this here, as some of you who’ve been following this channel for awhile
might know, is the Selva de Fuego, home to my previous late fire ant colony, the Fire
Nation.
Now, it could be easy to just move our fire ants into these now vacated territories, but
here’s the thing.
I initially felt our Fire Nation had passed away due to the queen dying of old age, but
one of you AC Family pointed out this in one of the Fire Nation's final videos!
Blood sucking parasitic mites!
Now there are two possibilities: the presence of blood-sucking parasitic mites doesn’t
necessarily mean it caused the death of the Fire Nation, because if a colony is fast-growing,
like in fire ants, the mites will have a harder time proliferating as their increasing number
of hosts make it harder and harder for the mites to find each other to mate and therefore
spread.
It’s quite possible these blood sucking mites, could have been the ultimate cause
of death of our Fire Nation, by way of killing the queen, but it could have also been because
the queen had died of old age and the dwindling number of fire ant hosts made it easier for
the parasitic blood-sucking mites to take over and finish off the remaining worker ants.
Regardless, as one of you pointed out in the comments in last week’s video, blood sucking
parasitic mites can survive without a host for up to a year, and the Fire Nation completely
died out just last December.
This means then that there could very well be blood sucking mites still alive and remaining
in the Selva de Fuego.
And so, after thinking about it, I felt if we were going to move the Phoenix Empire into
these lands, we’ll need to completely empty out the land portion and redesign it from
scratch, with new soils, new plants, new rocks, new everything!
Which is why, AC Family, I felt this might be the perfect opportunity to get all of you
involved since you guys have been so awesome and being involved at every step of the Phoenix
Empire’s development so far, and help me choose a design for the new fire ant terrarium,
so guys here now are our options to vote for this first step in the building of the new
Phoenix Empire territories.
AC Family, my first step in creating any terrarium is choosing the concept or theme.
So here’s what I’ve come up with.
Option 1: We recreate the Amazon Jungle for the Phoenix Empire, like we did with the Selva
de Fuego, complete with tropical plants all chosen from South America.
The Fire Nation did very well in this setup, and you gotta admit that it’s pretty neat
to see the Fire Ants living in territories designed to mimic their native lands of origin.
So, if this sounds like something you believe would be best for the Phoenix Empire, leave
a comment in the comments section of this video with the hashtag #amazonjungle, and
if you wish, you can leave an explanation as to why you think this would be a great
concept idea for the future home of the Phoenix Empire.
Option 2: We recreate the modern urban setting.
Fire ants have since taken over the world, having populated numerous human cities around
the globe.
One thing we could do is transform this massive tank into a sort of neat parkside type habitat,
with a local creek or canal system running through it, having the plant life limited
to mostly grasses and small shrubs, but landscape dominated by cobblestone bricks or sidewalk
panels to mimic a human street or bike trail.
Imagine feeding them half a burger or melted ice cream in a cup set on the pavement.
Hey, fire ants do live in human cities, too right?!
I’ve never done anything like this on the channel before, so it could turn out to be
really neat to duplicate a plot of cityscape foe their home.
If this is your vote for a terrarium build leave a comment with the hashtag #urbanjungle,
along with an explanation as to why you chose this for the future home of the Phoenix Empire.
And our final option, Option 3: a Diarama-style paludarium.
For those of you who like the novelty-type ant farms, where we basically recreate miniature
artificial worlds, I think this option might excite you!
Imagine creating a huge network of castles on a mountain-side for the fire ants like
we did with our Titans, or perhaps you would like to recreate the tribal jungles of Skull
Island from King Kong, the floating mountains of Pandora from Avatar, or even a post-apocalyptic
world with burnt buildings and ruins for our Phoenix Empire, a full out modern city perhaps,
complete with buildings, streets, and bridges, or maybe a Winterwonderland for our fire ants
with snow and glaciers?
The possibilities are endless, but if this is your choice leave a comment with the hashtag
#diorama, note the spelling of diorama guys so your vote gets counted, and feel free to
leave an explanation and even a suggestion for what miniature world you think would be
coolest to see our Phoenix Empire living in.
And so that does it!
I’ll be using an app over the next few days to tally up your votes and plan for our next
stage in constructing the Phoenix Empire’s future kingdom.
I have no idea how soon the Phoenix Empire will need to move into their terrarium, as
it could be as soon as next week, or a few weeks from now, but regardless, it’s pretty
cool that we’ll be building their future home ahead of time, together, and oh imagine
how awesome it will be to watch our fire ants finally move into the kingdom we’ve created
for them together, literally from the ground up?
Ahhhh so cool!
As I’ve always said, I think it’s pretty awesome that we’re in a very real way, caring
for these fire ants together.
We vote and make choices for the colony’s future, target shoot or point out any areas
of concern, and give them all they need to live out their best lives.
I can’t wait to see what you guys choose for their future home, as currently all three
ideas are super cool in my mind, and I can’t wait to proceed to the next step of construction
of the Phoenix Empire’s future territories!
Thank you for watching and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever!
AC Family, did you enjoy today's episode?
Be sure to vote and be part of these critical steps in our fire ants’ journey to glory,
so if you haven’t yet, do SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you
get notified at every upload, because I think notifications are broken again.
Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time including now.
It would really mean a lot to me, guys.
Thank you!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to watch extended
play scenes of the fire ants living jam-packed in their ant farms today!
And guys, did you know that it’s anting season in the Northern Hemisphere, and you
don’t even need to leave your home to start an ant colony?!
You can catch pregnant queen ants from the safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open
window starting this month!
Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant keeping and collecting gear shipped to
you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA, so you can get the most
out of your ant keeping experience.
We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!
We also have a helpful forum and ant colony trading marketplace on the site.
Visit AntsCanada.com today.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
Why can roaches still move even after they’ve been chopped up?
Congratulations to David A. who answered:
Their brain are ganglia, agglomerations of nervous tissue running down
the center of their body which allow appendages to still move.
Congratulations David, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping handbook from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
What is the new name of the Phoenix Empire’s ac Hybrid Nest Camponotus ant farm?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free ebook handbook
from our shop!
Hope you could subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video, to help
us keep making more.
It’s ant love forever!