Greetings AC Family,

In all my years of ant keeping, I have never created an ant setup so ambitious and intricate! Check out the new, upgraded home of our Golden Empire (yellow crazy ant colony). Do you like the new change?

The Craziest Ant Farm I’ve Ever Made

This El Dragon paludarium setup was such a huge success. It made me look over to our Black Dragons’ neighbors, the Golden Empire in their Hacienda Del Dorado. Our Yellow Crazy Ants have been living in this terrarium for over a year. Look at all of that chaos! The Hacienda Del Dorado was in desperate need of a makeover! We also had to find another way to deal with their exploding population, and I had just the renovation to solve both those problems. AC Family, behold. Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the bell icon. Welcome to the AC Family. Enjoy!

So AC Family, what you will see in this video is truly the craziest ant setup I have ever created in my life. Today, we will be drastically transforming the Hacienda Del Dorado, our long-time home of our Yellow Crazy Ants, we call the Golden Empire, and man, I cannot wait to show you what I have planned. I intend for the new ant setup to incorporate some really cool elements of nature, some careful design, and neat ant engineering! Keep on watching until the end for the complete tour of the Golden Empire’s new kingdom!

So there were two problems with the current territories of our Golden Empire that we covered in previous videos. First, having lived in this Hacienda Del Dorado terrarium for over a year, I felt the ants were not being stimulated enough. They were settling too much into routine, devoid of any enrichment or life events. There were no changes to their day-to-day activities to the point that they seemed almost placid and expectant at feeding time. The Hacienda Del Dorado became the same old territory dominated and overrun by the same ficus vegetation, and the only place the ants could catch a break from these lands was at Golden Rock, their custom Gold Play Button ant farm. The Golden Empire clearly needed a territory makeover.

Second, this supercolony of eight queens has been continually growing over the past year without a limiter to control their population. We attempted using carnivorous pitcher plants last year to help curb the Golden Empire’s population growth, but that proved ineffective as the ants began forming a symbiotic relationship with the plants by dumping their leftover insect parts into the plants to keep them fed and their pitchers in non-trapping mode. We attempted to introduce a praying mantis into the Hacienda Del Dorado as a natural predator, and the mantis did prey on ants, but it wasn’t enough to keep the Golden Empire’s numbers in check.

But today, AC Family, the new territory renovation I had in mind would offer a solution to both the Golden Empire’s lack of enrichment and population control. Check it out, AC Family. Here sits a gorgeous paludarium piece, part land, part water, designed like a tropical rocky pool fed by a natural spring. I absolutely love this ornate terrascape of rocks and plants arching over this pool of fresh water. I love how various blooming mosses carpet the surface of the rocks. The crystal waters bubbling from a spring at the top of the rock face is powered by a mini water pump filter within the pool. Attached to the rock grow some epiphytic and gorgeous bird’s nest fern, along with a small Arrow Arum plant growing from the marginal shallows at the east end of the pool. I also added some driftwood limbs to help the colony safely travel around these wetlands. The substrate of the aquatic portion is a pebbly gravel along with brown aquarium soil, to mimic the floor of some natural spring pools I have seen in jungles in the past. Overall, I could not wait to add this to the Hacienda Del Dorado, because aside from the obvious aesthetic it would add to the ants’ setup, its purpose was also functional. I knew the Golden Empire would benefit from the enrichment offered by this new habitat type which they would need to learn to navigate safely.

The Golden Empire has never had to deal with living around a large body of water before, and although these yellow crazy ants are a tropical species and are fully capable of learning to live around water, I am certain there will still be a learning curve as they adapt to their new spring. Also, with the new trickling water and pool, I knew the least nimble ants of the colony would inevitably fall into the water and drown, which would definitely help curb the Golden Empire’s numbers in a natural way.

So the time has come, to give the Hacienda Del Dorado, the greatest makeover and upgrade in all of Golden Empire history! The first step was I needed to completely rework the lighting system. My plan was to increase the living area vertically, so I needed to have the lighting elevated from where it originally was. So I built a structure to support the new lights. Due to the higher elevation of the lighting, I also needed to install a higher quality lighting system so that all underlying plants and mosses could receive the ample lighting needed for photosynthesis. With the new lighting rig setup, we now move down to the ground.

So AC Family, here was my plan. I wanted to install the new rocky spring pool here, but I would first need to relocate this huge piece of driftwood westward. Now check this out, prior to installation of the pool, I needed to first install this wooden stool. Its function was to create an elevating plateau for the rocky spring pool. This way, the ants would still have generally the same amount of ground surface area when this new water feature is installed. And now, AC Family, the biggest question was, how was I going to execute all of this with the Golden Empire still inside the setup? For sure the ants would go into complete hijinks as soon as my hands start moving things around. Essentially, there was no plan. I just had to cover my arms in baby powder and work as fast and effectively as I could. So here we go, AC Family. Let’s do this! Let’s drastically transform the Hacienda Del Dorado to make it an even greater haven for our Golden Empire! With the help of my housekeeper, we went in and began to rearrange the setup, working as quickly but carefully as we could. As soon as my arms were in the setup the ants were completely panicked and started to climb my arms, but thankfully yellow crazy ants are a non-stinging species, so it just tickled a bit. I cut away at the ficus and moved the driftwood, then installed the stool. Placing the rocky spring pool inside was super challenging, but after an hour and a half of work and careful planning, check out how the new Hacienda Del Dorado looks now! Behold, the new Hacienda Del Dorado is now a majestic, rainforest palace for our Golden Empire. Isn’t it just incredible? What do you guys think? Alright, I can’t wait to give you a tour of the setup. It may seem a bit confusing at first glance, but check this out. My intention for this new open concept setup was to make the entire living space seem borderless. I wanted to obscure the boundaries of where the outside of the setup begins and where the inside starts. At initial glance, it seems like the Golden Empire has complete freedom to escape this unconfined setup, but if you look carefully, you will see that with some neat design features, the ants actually cannot escape. First, all landmarks that the ants have access to, do not touch the areas which can lead to escape. I took advantage of the fact that these ants do not jump and made sure all decor was at least 1 – 2 inches away from all edges. One challenge however was the electrical cord of the pump powering the spring. Incorporating it in such a way that wouldn’t allow for escapes took some planning. Now, the ants are able to climb the cord but are stopped at this point with this modified slushie cover smothered in baby powder and rubbing alcohol. Any ants that happen to slip off the cord and down onto this shelf, are still unable to escape due to these baby powdered barriers on both ends created from modified takeout container covers, also painted with baby powder and rubbing alcohol. Stranded ants on this shelf end up wandering around, trying to figure out how to reunite with the colony, until it finally decides to take a safe dive off. Now AC Family, check out all these new awesome plant additions! Some Spanish moss, slabs of tree bark, and some epiphytic bird’s nest ferns hang decoratively from the lighting rig, blurring the setup’s boundaries, creating that incredible illusion of a non-bordered territory. Some of my favorite plants of the new Hacienda Del Dorado, however, are these beautiful bromeliads. These plants are also epiphytic, meaning they don’t need soil to grow. Instead, these bromeliads are growing in small bags of coconut husk which I have attached to their old driftwood piece. The ants can also utilize these bags of coconut husk to create some cool tree houses for themselves, offering more nesting space for our Golden Empire. What I also love about these bromeliads is that after watering, water collects in these wells between the leaves, creating small pools of water, offering the Golden Empire some cool sites to drink. These bromeliads would also function as drinking stations for the colony. So cool right? The largest plant in the setup was this gorgeous red anthurium, which the ants loved to climb. It quickly became a popular ant trail pathway. Now, let’s take a look at the new Hacienda Del Dorado floor, which I am obsessed with! I felt this new look of the ground floor was better than before because it more closely resembled the multi-faceted surface of a real rainforest floor. I loved how the branches and plant life above created some beautiful and more natural lighting effects throughout the floor space of this setup. The ants had their bright spots and their dark spots to frequent. Now looking to the right, it may seem a bit strange at first glance to see this floating spring pool in the middle of all this natural landscape. Well, as mentioned, I didn’t want the new water feature to decrease the surface area of the Hacienda Del Dorado, so the fact that this water feature was hovering was a good thing, and it actually created an awesome massive dark and humid cave which the Golden Empire was already using for nesting space! I also wanted the spring pool to hover so that I could better film beneath the water’s surface, so this current arrangement allows us to still have a God’s-eye view into the Hacienda Del Dorado’s aquatic world. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that currently inside these waters live a population of aquatic snails which help keep the waters clean. Now AC Family, let’s finally have a look at how the ants are dealing with this new rocky spring pool. Watching the ants exploring their new spring pool was just awesome! The mosses helped the ants come in close contact with the water which bubbled from the top spring. They explored every corner of their new wetland inquisitively and began to map out the new territories. It was absolutely breathtaking to watch the ants enjoy their new spring pool. By the way AC Family, I think this floating spring pool needs a name. What should we call it? Leave your name suggestions in the comments section and I will choose my top 5 favorites for the AC Family to vote on in a future video. Feel free to also leave your name suggestions for the bromeliad nesting-drinking stations and the Golden Empire’s new cave. Overall, this newly transformed Hacienda Del Dorado paludarium was not only more beautiful than before, but it was also functionally a better more natural habitat for the ants, as well as offered a greater living space for their massive population. And now speaking of massive population, one of the things I wanted to check was how many ants were falling into the water and drowning. Was this new spring pool going to prove effective at helping curb our ant population? Well, turns out, it wasn’t long before I began to spot ants that had sadly slipped into the pool water and drowned. Their dead bodies floated on the water’s surface and even got caught up in the filter’s intake. Now, having decaying ant bodies in the spring water could offer some valuable nutrients for our mosses which help filter out some of the organic matter from the water as it trickles down these moss-carpeted rocks, but having too many ant bodies decaying in the water could also foul up the spring pool pretty quickly. And so AC Family, I think you know what’s next. Our next step was to introduce a great aquatic creature into these waters, to feed on these fallen ants, swallowed by the pool, and AC Family, I know you will absolutely love the creature I’ve chosen for the job! Oh man, AC Family! What do you guys think? Do you like the new Hacienda Del Dorado? Now, guys trust me on this: you won’t want to miss what creature I add to these waters to prey on the fallen ants! I am so excited to show you, for it’s a pretty epic addition to the Hacienda Del Dorado, so hit that subscribe button and bell icon, and hit the like button every time, including now! AC Inner Colony, a special treat this week. I have left a hidden cookie for you here, for a special clue as to what our new aquatic creature is that will be added to our spring pool. Perhaps you can figure it out before everyone else! Good luck! Before continuing to the AC Question of the Week, I wanted to plug my new daily vlogging channel, featuring my daily vlogs for those wondering what I work on between these weekly ant videos! And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week! Last week we asked: List any of the ant scientific discoveries we made in this video. Congratulations to Top 10 Videos who correctly answered: “The 5th stage of larva is the one used to spin silk.” Congratulations Top 10 Videos, you just won a free e-book handbook from our shop. In this week’s AC Question of the Week, we ask: List any of the reasons why this new Hacienda Del Dorado makes a better home for our Golden Empire? Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free ebook 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!