Guys, I’m working on recreating the Floating Mountains from the movie Avatar in a terrarium
for my massive pet fire ant colony, which is slowly outgrowing their current beloved
home of ac ant farms, but all of you are going to help me make a decision so we can execute
this very ambitious biological project together beautifully!
Welcome to the AntsCanada ant channel!
Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the BELL icon.
Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy!
AC Family, have we got some awesome work ahead!
I've been quite busy working behind the scenes, and today, I’m going to share with you the
official plans for creating the future terrarium home of our fire ants, an epic Avatar-themed
paludarium featuring a majestic set of floating mountains, and at the end of the video I will
be needing your help again through votes, this time with deciding what other creatures
we’ll be adding to this Avatar-themed paludarium to live together symbiotically with the ants,
so stay tuned for all that coming up!
But if you’re just joining us, welcome to the channel.
You’ve joined us right on time!
We’re in the beginning stages of recreating this, and this, and this, and even this, and
placing it into a single terrarium to become the home of our beloved pet fire ant colony,
the Phoenix Empire, whom we’ve raised together on this channel for the past seven months,
incredibly from just a single pregnant queen ant.
Now before I talk about the official plans and show you the epic blueprints of the Avatar
Floating Mountains Paludarium, there’s something I have to show you guys first so you can better
understand the paludarium plans.
Guys, have a look at this!
Opening the Fire Fortress, the ants’ ac Ant Tower and wow!
Isn’t that crazy?!
Look at how many ants and brood are jam-packed in there now.
The eggs, larvae, and pupae are simply a huge mass, collecting in the Ant Tower, and it
almost looks like there aren’t really any defined tunnels anymore.
There is just so much traffic going on and babies, that the Ant Tower has simply become
one huge silo for the brood and fire ants.
Isn’t it just beautiful?
OK, as mesmerizing as it is watching them, let’s move on.
Opening the ac Hybrid Nest Mini, the Magma Chambers, and it’s the same story.
Completely packed!
The Maze of Flames, their larger ac Hybrid Nest is still a place that the ants hang out
but they haven’t officially expanded the colony into here yet.
It seems they still prefer to max out the space available in the Ant Tower, the Magma
Chambers, and the soils of their ac Outworld, called Hell’s Kitchen.
Now this maxing out of living space is something I noticed my previous fire ant colony, the
Fire Nation did in their paludarium.
Instead of evenly spreading out their humongous colony throughout all the available soils
of the tank, they chose instead to focus most of their nest area in a single place, this
tree stump driftwood area which I ended up calling the Mothernest.
All the brood, the queen, and most of the workers were all living in this one concentrated
space despite having a tonne of available space to dig.
It’s a great way to ensure the colony’s success because a colony that is jammed together
in a mass, is better protected, can distribute food to all members of the colony much more
efficiently, and can communicate more effectively.
And so, this natural tendency for the fire ants to bunch up and simply create a series
of connected satellite nests around a main mothernest helped me come up with the plans
for the Phoenix Empire’s Avatar Floating Mountains Paludarium.
Behold!
The sketch!
Now, I knew I would need help creating these Avatar Floating Mountains, so I asked a very
skilled craftsman friend of mine to help me pull this off, and this sketch was what we
came up with for the Phoenix Empire’s Avatar floating island paludarium.
What do you guys think?
Now, let me explain how this will work.
So here you can see the series of floating mountains which I’ll talk more about later,
and the lower half of the paludarium will be a mix of both a land area off to the sides
and water towards to the middle and front.
What will make this paludarium different from the previous Selva de Fuego is that the water
will extend to the back, unlike the Selva de Fuego where the water was pushed up to
the front of the tank with a glass partition.
At least this way, we won’t be seeing a glass partition anymore, and yes, in case
you were wondering, this old tank of the Selva de Fuego will be scrapped completely, and
I’ll be building a totally brand new tank with the same dimensions, but with some adjustments.
One such adjustment is instead of the tank having one hole on the side which accommodated
both the input and output tubes for the external canister filter, we’re now drilling two
holes, one on each side.
This way, I don’t need to fish the output tube along the back of the tank which is what
we did for the Selva, which also scared me because I felt that one day the fire ants
would chew through the tube and cause a flood.
So now the output tube, i.e. the clean filtered water coming from my external filter will
enter through the left side, where we hope to install an epic waterfall.
Now get this, guys.
The land portion off to the sides will be created using styrofoam shaped like rocks
then covered in resin, which will harden then get painted to look like natural rock.
This will be perfectly water-proof and impenetrable to the ants.
The reason we want this land portion to be impenetrable is because I want the fire ants
to nest in the floating mountains.
Check this out!
Each floating mountain will also be fashioned from resin and will be hollow, so I can fill
the mountains with digging medium, and cause the fire ants to set up their nests within
these floating mountains.
Now the way I hope to suspend the mountains in the air is via the root system which will
be connecting each of the mountains.
The root system can then be attached discreetly to the land portions off to the sides, hopefully
in places we can’t really see or notice readily.
I plan on placing a white or sky blue background to really bring out that feel of the floating
mountains suspended in the skies.
Now imagine this for a moment: we place one of the fire ants’ feeder roaches somewhere
on the land and the workers all come boiling out of their nests from within the floating
mountains, trailing in droves across the root system connecting the mountains to feed on
the roach at ground level.
That would be epic, in my mind anyway!
And what’s great is, the fact that the fire ants have this natural tendency to bunch up
and fill out satellite nests with brood, instead of evenly spreading out, I think the hollow
floating mountains filled with digging medium would make perfect locations for the ants
to nest.
I can’t wait to see them create a mothernest in one of the larger floating mountains, how
about you guys?
And top of all this floating mountain awesomeness, I also wanted for the paludarium to be a spectacle
at night!
In Avatar, the planet Pandora blossoms into a bioilluminescent wonderland, and so my plans
are to decorate this land portion and perhaps parts of the water with some cool glow-in-the-dark
decor which I’ve already ordered online.
I also have ordered glow in the dark paints which I can use to colour the land and decor,
as well as some glow in the dark stones.
Not sure if or how I am going to incorporate these into the setup just yet, but under some
blacklights outfitted at the top of the tank, it should look really cool at night!
This paludarium will truly be one of the most ambitious and complex ant builds, I’ve ever
made, but now it’s time for you guys to help me with a major decision, and it’s
not so much about the ants nor specs of the paludarium this time; it’s about what will
be living in the water.
Now, here’s what’s awesome about this setup.
The Selva de Fuego had only a limited amount of water, so it restricted the amount of livestock
we could add to the water portion to simply a few fish and shrimp.
But if my estimates are correct, this time we’ll be able to have much more water which
will allow us to be more flexible with the aquatic life we choose to put in this paludarium,
but one thing I knew we had to keep in mind, when deciding on the aquatic livestock, was
that the aquatic creatures we add to the waters need to help with cleanup, as the fire ants
would surely be dumping all their garbage, dead ants, and soil, into the waters, which
can get messy and foul up the water even with a filter running.
The water will also be a main source of drinking water for the ants, so it’s important the
waters stay clean.
And so, AC Family, I need your opinions as to what combinations of creatures we should
add to the waters.
Here we go!
Aquatic Livestock Combo #1 - I was thinking small creatures in an expansive body of water
would make the water portion of the paludarium look massive!
So, I was thinking of big colonies of various colours of cleaner shrimp, schools of smaller
rasbora fish, otto catfish, and families of Clithon corona snails to help keep the waters
clean and algae down.
This is something we did in the Selva de Fuego, I have found it to work well.
We can even add a school of Glofish, designer genetically modified glow-in-the-dark danios
which might look really cool under black lights, or perhaps a gorgeous flaming red betta to
patrol the waters for fallen ants.
This combo of creatures will also allow us to safely grow some aquatic plants to assist
at water purification.
Aquatic Livestock Combo #2 - I was thinking we could try something totally different.
Less livestock, but bigger!
Perhaps a voracious army of 20 or more clawed frogs might be an effective cleanup crew.
I don’t think we’d be able to add fish because these frogs are known to eat everything
they can fit into their mouths, and can die from it, but I do know that they love to eat,
including insects both live and rotting.
We can also decorate with some plants but they’d likely destroy and uproot most plants,
so we’d have to stick to mosses and floating duckweed.
Or, we can go with something totally epic…
Aquatic Livestock Combo #3 - One of the greatest aquatic beasts I’ve ever kept with ants
was a gorgeous crayfish, which inhabited the former water feature of our yellow crazy ants,
the Golden Empire.
Not only was it a beautiful and easy creature to keep, but it also kept the waters pristinely
clean.
It ate dead ants, any garbage the ants dropped into the waters, and immaculately cleaned
the filter of its watery palace.
I imagine an amazing flaming red crayfish to match the Phoenix theme, or blue crayfish
as a nod to the movie Avatar lurking in the waters of the paludarium!
The only drawback with this option is crayfish are solitary creatures so we’d only be able
to keep one crayfish, and they uproot and even eat plants so we’d only be able to
keep mosses and some floating duckweed in the water.
We could also try to house schools of fish with the crayfish, but we’d have to be prepared
for the crayfish to pick off and eat the fish it’s able to catch!
Not sure how comfortable you guys are with that idea but just throwing it out there.
And so, guys these are our the three aquatic livestock combos that I think would work well,
that we as the AC Family can choose from.
Now AC Council, get your voting fingers ready and listen carefully, because here’s how
to vote: I’ve pinned in the comments section of this video a post for the official voting,
and directly under it, I’ve replied with three other separate posts, each corresponding
to our three livestock combos.
Simply look for the option you’re voting for, and give that post a THUMBS UP to cast
your vote.
The option with the most number of likes will win.
The great part about this voting system is if you can’t decide on just one option,
do feel free to thumbs up and vote for more than one option.
I also would love to hear your opinions as to why you chose the options that you did,
and if you have any suggestions for modifications to the combos feel free to let me know, if
you feel like anything else should be added!
The fate of the Phoenix Empire’s future kingdom is in your hands, and together as
their Creator of Worlds, we’ll be able to fashion for them the promised land that awaits
to cradle our beloved Phoenix Empire, as they rise to become the greatest ant colony of
all time, in one the greatest ant kingdoms ever made on this channel.
The day is fast approaching for the colony’s official homecoming, and I can’t wait to
share that ultimate moment with you all.
I’ll see you guys again next week!
Thank you for watching and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever!
AC Family, did you enjoy today's episode?
I just know this paludarium build is going to be awesome 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, so come follow the building
of this ant kingdom with us.
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 hear what
my vote is for aquatic livestock combo.
Go check it out!
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:
What is a nuptial flight?
Congratulations to Owo Artastic who answered:
Nuptial flights are when virgin queen and male ants leave the nest to mate.
Congratulations Owo Artastic, you just won a free ac Ant Tower Small Deluxe Kit + Ultimate
Ant Keeping Handbook E-book from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
Why do the floating mountains need to be hollow?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could win a free Ultimate Ant Keeping
Handbook E-book 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!