Greetings AC Family,

Aliens? Today we watch what happens when some foreign lifeforms are introduced to our South American biotope system. Check out how the story unfolds! Hope you enjoy this week’s episode!

Aliens vs. Ecosystem

Nature is a beautiful work of art, with all its moving parts, living and non-living, interdependent and mutually benefiting from each other’s presence—a perfect biological and self-perpetuating machine.

This is the Selva de Fuego, our great South American river biotope paludarium, home to a kingdom of fire ants we call the Fire Nation, as well as a whole plethora of South American fish and plants that are all connected and quite literally made for each other.

But what happens when alien lifeforms infiltrate such a balanced native system?

Today, AC Family, some creatures of unknown origin wait to be unleashed into these lands—foreign messengers with a purpose, carrying within them the seeds to spawn an engineered settlement of aliens in this great habitat.

And so begins a new chapter in this epic story of the Selva de Fuego.

Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel. Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the bell icon.

Welcome to the AC Family. Enjoy!

Before I get into why I decided to unleash some alien beasts into the Selva de Fuego and what exactly these beasts are, let me just say, what you’re about to see today is a biological engineering project I’ve been dreaming of since the day the Selva de Fuego was first created, but couldn’t possibly execute until today.

Stay tuned until the end for the epic introduction of our new Selva de Fuegan colonists.

Waters from the new waterfall of the Selva de Fuego trickled down into the river. I loved watching these crystal waters cascading down the rock, bringing oxygen and purity to the Guppy Gang and White Tigers that swam in the river below.

I couldn’t have been happier with the state of our new rainforest river world, kingdom to the Fire Nation.

I often found myself getting lost in the happenings of the various microenvironments of this kingdom.

Take these water lettuce, for instance. Look at how cool they are! Their leaves are covered in microscopic hairs, which causes the plants’ surface to perfectly repel water, creating gorgeous aqua beads.

This amazing water-repelling ability to literally manipulate water and not break water surface tension is actually what allows the plant to float with elevated dry leaves, unlike the frogbit, which sits flat entirely on the water’s surface and is constantly wet.

If you’re new to the channel, these floating plants have a very important purpose in the kingdom. They’re much more than just pretty landscape decor.

These plants are purifiers, natural botanic alchemists that ensure the waters, which bring life to all the Selva de Fuegans, are clean and safe to drink and live in.

You see, a couple of weeks ago, we were met with an unexpected crisis of sorts.

The Fire Nation randomly decided to dump their entire ant cemetery into the river, and it caused a lethal spike in poisonous ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates in the water, which then went on to kill a fish.

To save the Selva de Fuegans, we installed this new whirlpool and waterfall to create a venue for more plants to grow so they can do their amazing work at eating up any poisonous ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates in the water from here on in.

So now, AC Family, I’d like to take you down for a moment into the place where all this purifying alchemy happens—the whirlpool.

It has become a swirling, aquatic root forest. Circling currents of water blow past hungry roots, sucking up nitrogenous poisons and debris missed by our canister filter.

It is here where our river waters receive a second and thorough round of natural filtration!

I love staring into this strangely eerie, darkened netherworld. It’s like an entirely different planet of its own.

Over time, it has built up quite a bit of debris and biofilm, which simply means it’s doing its job.

But now, AC Family, this place of purification—our whirlpool—also needs an official name. Please take a moment to vote here for your favorite from these top 5 picks of name suggestions by you, the AC Family.

Thank you, AC Council, for your input.

One of the things I realized about this grand whirlpool after it was created was that it actually forms a very cool component well-known to aquatics, called a refugium.

So get this, AC Family, are you ready? A refugium is a smaller, often hidden aquarium whose water is connected to a larger main show aquarium, which in this case is our river.

There can be several purposes for a refugium, one of them being exactly what we’ve done here: offering a place for plants to grow so that they can filter the water.

But also, a refugium can be used as an isolated biospace for breeding and housing organisms which would otherwise not survive in the main waters.

As soon as I realized this, my heart leaped with intense excitement as an old and buried idea came electrifyingly to life in my mind.

Now that this entire river system had a refugium, I could finally make one of my dream biological engineering projects become a reality.

Do you see where I’m going with this yet, AC Family?

Alright, let me explain further.

As you know, on this channel, we are on a constant quest to improve the lives of the animals under our care more and more. We want our animals to be as healthy and happy as possible and go to great lengths to give them the best of everything we possibly can.

Some of you have asked in the past what I feed the fish in these waters. After all, they surely don’t just eat ants.

Well, the Guppy Gang gets a good quality micropellet formulated for guppies, and the White Tigers, in between meals of organic debris and dead ants in the water, are supplemented with a sinking shrimp pellet, also designed for Corydoras.

Now as great as these foods have been so far at keeping our fish nourished, these are not the best food sources for them. They’re still man-made and not natural. The best food for fish is alive.

AC Family, now that we had this great whirlpool acting as a refugium, I now had a separate mothertank in which I could spawn a whole, self-perpetuating colony of living food for our fish. And today, I have the perfect beasts to seed our spawn.

They happen to be aliens, AC Family. Complete and utter aliens of unknown origin, that I’m over-the-moon excited to introduce to you now.

Behold! The alien colonists.

Three absolutely spellbinding, alien glass shrimp.

Check them out, AC Family!

These glass shrimp were just gorgeous and odd-looking. I couldn’t take my eyes off them, with bodies so transparent you can see their organs working inside.

That contracting organ there is the shrimp’s stomach. So cool, right?

Check out their various legs, each with varying functions. Some legs were used for walking, some as pincers, and even some as small brushes.

I loved the shape of their serrated, spiny heads, which looked like sharpened, broken shards of glass!

But perhaps their most out-of-this-world feature were their eyes!

Look at them! Those eyes are just crazy, like staring into the eyes of an alien! Their appearance was nothing short of a sci-fi creature.

Now real talk: these shrimp obviously aren’t real extraterrestrials—they’re from Earth.

But the reason why I refer to these shrimp as aliens is because their profile and origin are unknown.

The supplier I bought them from did not know what species of glass shrimp they were nor their native origin, though he’d been selling them for years.

Now, as you may know, the Selva de Fuego is a South American biotope, meaning every single plant and animal inside this paludarium is native to South America, sharing the same Amazonian motherland.

But for the very first time, adding these alien glass shrimp may break this South American biotope rule.

Most of the commercially available shrimp, like cherry shrimp and Amano shrimp, are definite Asian species, but I figured there is a small chance that these mysterious glass shrimp may be from the Americas, which was why I chose them over the other common shrimp like those in the waters of El Dragon.

AC Family, are any of you shrimp experts? Want to take a stab at identifying these aliens?

Let us know, because I’m about to add these girls into the Selva de Fuego.

Now, how do I know they are girls, you ask?

Well, if you look carefully at the underside of each shrimp, you will see that they each carry a beautiful mass of some yellowish-green balls.

Those are babies—developing shrimplets.

Each of those little round balls has two tiny dots, which are the shrimplets’ eyes.

These glass shrimp are mothers and our colonists.

Of course, these shrimp were more than just a food source for our fish.

Another reason I chose these glass shrimp to colonize our refugium and our river is because they allegedly are even better cleaners than our White Tigers.

Like the White Tigers, they also eat decaying debris.

This was perfect because decaying debris was already building up in our whirlpool and in the river, along with decaying dead ants accumulating at certain places of the river.

So, if we could have a self-perpetuating team of cleaners helping out in the whirlpool and assisting our White Tigers at cleaning up the river, that would be amazing!

Plus, the biowaste these glass shrimp produce is very low—much less than that which would have been produced had we just added more White Tigers.

In other words, adding these shrimp would increase the river’s cleaning team while still keeping poisonous nitrogenous compounds low, which was great!

But I wanted to test the palate of our colonists first. If they were going to be our river cleaners, I’d hoped they had a taste for our river’s gunk.

I took some decaying dead ants from the river waters and dropped them into the shrimp’s container to see if they’d eat it.

Let’s watch.

Hmmm… and success! Dead ant love verified.

The shrimp went around and shoved clumps full of decaying ants into their mouths.

These girls were ready for the introduction.

So, let the alien colonist introduction begin!

Here was my plan:

I wanted to release the two most pregnant glass shrimp into the whirlpool, where they and their young could not be eaten nor chastised by our fish.

In the whirlpool, the shrimp could live and reproduce in peace and feed from the perpetually available biofilm and debris buildup.

My hopes were that some of the shrimplets would sporadically get sucked up into our waterfall and dumped into the river for the hungry fish to eat.

And for a head start at cleaning the river, I would place the third shrimp directly into the river.

When she does eventually release her young shrimplets into the water, we won’t have to worry about the fish completely eradicating the shrimp population in the system because, even if the fish eat all the shrimplets of this third shrimp sharing their river, we still have our whirlpool spawning more shrimp.

In other words, if we didn’t have this whirlpool area acting as a refugium and simply placed all three of these shrimp colonists into the river, our fish could go on to possibly eat all shrimplets produced by our shrimp colonists, squashing all our hopes for a perpetuating shrimp colony into a bitter shrimp paste.

But because we have this whirlpool acting as a refugium, continually culturing more and more shrimplets, our fish will always have a fresh supply of live food.

And should the shrimplets manage to miraculously survive and evade our fish, and go on to grow into adult shrimp, we will also have an eternal shrimp cleanup team in the river too.

Having a self-fish-feeding system and a cleaner shrimp-replenishing system, both simultaneously in one setup, was a biological engineering dream of mine that was about to become a reality!

Buwahahaha!

Alright, let’s do this, AC Family!

After temperature and water drip acclimating the shrimp to the river water, I proceeded to drop two shrimp into the whirlpool.

The first shrimp floated right to the bottom and began to explore the dark root forest.

In went the second, who disappeared immediately somewhere to the back.

It wasn’t long before the shrimp realized that this was a bountiful paradise, practically built for shrimp, and they began to frolic excitedly—but not without a bit of a territorial squabble.

The larger shrimp lunged dominantly at the smaller shrimp, letting her know to keep away from her claimed area.

It kicked up a big cloud of biofilm and debris.

The smaller shrimp obliged.

Establishing territory was a completely natural behavior for glass shrimp like these.

It meant they were immediately identifying this underwater root forest as home.

I loved watching the shrimp explore the premises, grazing on the debris here and there.

Let’s hope they continue to keep this area clean and maintained.

As for the third shrimp, I dropped her into the river, but she instantly disappeared into the darkness behind the rocks, out of sight.

The alien colonists were now in.

Let’s hope this all works out, AC Family.

Hours later, I visited the Selva de Fuego to check up on the progress of the colonists to see how they were settling in.

Indeed, as expected, the shrimp were busy picking and feeding from the whirlpool’s ever-abundant gunk.

They were actually quite thorough at sifting through all areas of the root forest.

Every now and then, the dominant shrimp would let the smaller shrimp know to stay clear, but otherwise, the colonists had begun to establish their settlement in the whirlpool in peace.

As for in the river, in the evening, the third shrimp finally emerged to begin eating biofilm falling from the waterfall above, likely kicked up by her fellow shrimp in the whirlpool.

It was great to know the fish were not chastising her, but she still felt more secure hanging out by the safety of the rocks.

She remained within the shadows of this cave for the rest of the night, with no interest in meeting her gregarious river mates.

The next day, peeking into the whirlpool, it seemed our shrimp were much more at peace now.

Personal and territorial boundaries had been set and understood.

But what shocked me was how much cleaner the root forest looked all of a sudden.

The pebbly floor was devoid of debris and biofilm buildup.

These shrimp were super quick at cleaning up! This was awesome.

Looking into our river, it seemed our lone shrimp had found her way downstream at the complete opposite end of the river, which was a smart move, because this was where all the gunk and debris would end up and collect. Clever girl.

So, it looks like the colonists have set up residence in their respective stations within the Selva de Fuego.

AC Family, I think you know what’s next.

These alien glass shrimp need official names.

Leave your name suggestions in the comments so I can choose my favorites for us to vote on in a future video.

As I watched the colonists continue to graze and feed, my heart couldn’t have been more fulfilled.

The plans all seemed to be working so far.

Although the identity of these shrimp was unknown, it seems our calculations for this biological engineering project were well made.

It did look like the shrimp were already beginning to make this river look cleaner.

It’s well known in nature that the introduction of an alien species into a native habitat can be utterly destructive to an ecosystem, much like how fire ants have become in many parts of the world.

But in some cases, an introduced alien species can integrate into an ecosystem and naturalize relatively non-abrasively, as is the case with pavement ants (Tetramorium immigrans) in North America, which are technically an invasive ant originally from Asia, but haven’t become an ecologically destructive force on North American soils.

They just kind of found their balance in the new ecosystem.

This was what I was hoping for with these newly landed shrimp.

In just a few more days, these non-native shrimp colonists were going to give birth and hopefully go on to provide nourishment to our fish and help keep this river ecosystem healthier by way of their amazing cleaning skills.

There was no other native Selva de Fuegan who could do what they do better, nor provide the same ecological offering to this ecosystem quite like these outsider shrimp would.

Only time would tell if their integration into this South American river world would prove beneficial to the system, but I find that sometimes in life, it takes an outsider to fix the problems of those on the inside.

As I watched the shrimp stationed at the rock, comfortably enjoying the river currents, I had high hopes that good times were up ahead flowing our way.

With these new immigrants adding to the diversity of the Selva de Fuego’s ecosystem, the future looked very promising for the kingdom.

It won’t be long now until we see what happens when the colonists give birth.

Let the colonization begin.

Alright, AC Family, so what do you think?

Do you think adding these shrimp was a good move?

Let me know your thoughts.

I’m currently away from my home in Manila, exploring the ants in other parts of the world, so I won’t be able to find out how this biological engineering project in the Selva de Fuego turns out until I get back a few weeks from now.

By the time I return, you better believe I’m sharing the results on the integration of these alien shrimp, so be sure to hit that SUBSCRIBE button and bell icon now so you don’t miss out on this great ongoing epic ant story, and hit the LIKE button every single time, including now.

Also, if you’re new to the channel and want to catch up on all your AntsCanada Lore, I’ve put together a complete storyline playlist so you can watch how all of the ant colonies you love on this channel came to be, all their challenges and hardships, all their successes and life events—their entire storylines can now be watched from the very start so you can better appreciate the journey these ants, as well as us watching them, have been embarking on.

It’s incredible how epic the lives of ants are!

Also, just a quick reminder to all those wanting to get into ant keeping: we offer a ton of easy-to-use ant keeping gear and pro ant farms at our shop at AntsCanada.com.

We ship worldwide and offer full email customer support if you need it.

AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would just like to watch hypnotic beauty scenes of our new alien shrimp.

They’re gorgeous, and you will be mind-blown by their out-of-this-world appearance.

AC Question of the Week

Before we continue with the AC Question of the Week, I would like to plug my daily vlogging channel—daily vlogs of my travels around the world, which often include a lot of nature stuff.

This particular vlog is about the awesome meet & greet we had in Ontario, Canada, last weekend.

I loved meeting you, AC Family, in person.

Feel free to watch the vlog and subscribe while you’re there!

Last Week’s Question

Last week, we asked:

How are termites and ants different in terms of what happens after a nuptial flight?

Congratulations to Martin Barker, who correctly answered:

“In ants, once mated, the males die, and the females find somewhere to start creating their nest on their own, while in termites, they mate and stay with each other for life as a King and Queen.”

Congratulations, Martin! You just won a free e-book handbook from our shop.

This Week’s Question

In this week’s AC Question of the Week, we ask:

Why were these shrimp ideal candidates as new additions to our river world?

Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could also win a free e-book handbook from our shop.

Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.

Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, & SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video to help us keep making more.

It’s ant love forever!