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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2012 11:50:29 GMT 1
Oh no! One of my colonies is in trouble! Some things have started growing in one of my green ant colonies. I'm not sure if they are parasite eggs or mold. I've never experienced anything this horrifying with my previous ant farms. That's about 1mm wide, taken with my camera. It's on the glass walls of my farm. It's tiny but zoomed in it looks really foreboding- any guesses on what it could be? It's probably mold, although it turned up overnight just after I fed my ants a live moth (the moth hung around the top area for a couple of hours so it may be a possibility that it laid some eggs there before getting captured and eaten by the ants?) These little things are even smaller- impossible to determine with the human eye, I actually thought they were gatherings of dust at first until I took the first photo and realised they were something more. They almost look like eggs, and are all around the vertical glass walls of the farm. Is this some really bad mold infestation? Or do you think some sort of parasitical animal has started laying eggs? It's hard to tell for me. The nest has open access to the outside world because it has Green Ants, which can't climb walls. The colony of ants doesn't have a queen, it's just workers, so luckily there's no queen in danger.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2012 13:07:46 GMT 1
the second pic lookes like mites i dont know what the first is though
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2012 0:09:52 GMT 1
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2012 12:01:33 GMT 1
Wow Charlie, you remind me of me when i had my tropical fish tank and the time I borrowed a microscope form a friend, I got paranoid about everything, lol. But yes i would be worried tow, at the same time it could be harmless dust partials that have come off the moths wings , as a precaution you could mix some water with a little bicarbonate soda and a little vinegar or T Tree oil mix with water and spray it, it's all non toxic to wards animals but I've not had chance to make my experiments with it yet so i can not say how effective it will be
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2012 18:25:43 GMT 1
Definitely mites, not too sure about the other circular thing.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2012 9:29:09 GMT 1
Wow So where do mites come from? and how would you treat them?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2012 11:30:32 GMT 1
Pft, well mites are an ant keeper worst nightmare.. The only way to sort it out is to get the ants out of the formicarium they are which has the mites are in also. Hopefully there won't be any mites on the ants but normally there are. At this circumstance the only way to get the mites off is to brush them off with brush but if we are talking hundreds of ants then this isn't really the most practical way. One way too kill them off is to pour boiling water into the formicarium (with no ants in) this will kill the mites.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2012 11:42:00 GMT 1
Could they be mites from the moth?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2012 14:22:28 GMT 1
I believe there were here before the moth but may have been from a cockroach I put in a few days before. I think yes doc, they are usually brought in by live insects. I'll have to be sure to boil them first from now on (bummer, feeding live instects sure was fun!)
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2012 16:56:17 GMT 1
was the queen wild caught? if so she could have got the mites from the parent colony
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2012 20:51:14 GMT 1
That sounds horrible, Ill take note of this and only give insects that have been boiled or microwaved 1st, Are the Mites easy to spot? can you see them moving? I have some Messor Queens in test tubes would I clearly see if they have mites? and can the mites travel far?
PS Charlie, A Cockroach, Man I hate Roaches
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2012 3:45:51 GMT 1
Chicken: Luckily this was a queenless colony in the ant farm, only captured a bunch of workers, so I don't have to worry about the death of a queen on my hands, phew!
Doctor: They don't move, they look like little pieces of dust, VERY hard to see/identify, and they start spreading and eventually getting more dense. The colony started to smell REALLY bad so I think that may be when it started.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2012 16:22:06 GMT 1
i thought mites did move I once got them in my fish tank also i have seen red mites moving a long a wall before
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2012 13:04:55 GMT 1
Yes I have had these but luckily they died off! I was really lucky that they didn't spread, I think a good way to prevent these mites is Humid climate or is It dry climate, it's one of the two, Now that I think about it, it may be a dry climate.
If you leave the climate as dry as possible they don't breed as often, good luck with getting rid of them.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2012 13:11:07 GMT 1
Thanks Rubra, doing my best to make sure no more colonies get contaminated.
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