Greetings ant lovers,

Oh no! My pet fire ants, named the “Phoenix Empire”, are in danger! There’s been a pink outbreak in the water test tube setup of my fire ants. This is a big problem, but it can be fixed. In today’s episode we create two test tube setups and collectively vote to help out our beloved fire ant colony.

OH NO! MY FIRE ANTS ARE IN DANGER | The “Pink Outbreak”

Oh no!

My pet fire ant colony is in danger.

But I won’t panic now, as this can be fixed.

I woke up this week to a rather shocking discovery when peeking into the City of Ashes, metropolis home of our beloved and expanding fire ant colony, named the Phoenix Empire.

Everything seemed normal. The workers were all active, the brood pile—massive as ever—

and the queen, Ember Empress, tucked snugly in her bed of ant babies.

But just when I figured all was well as usual, I saw this.

The colony’s primary water reservoir had strangely turned pink!

Oh no!

Something needed to be done immediately, you guys!

I was familiar with this pink water, and it wasn’t good news.

Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the BELL icon.

Welcome to the AC Family!

What is this pink water?

Enjoy!

So, what is this pink water? How did it appear? Why is it bad? And what do we have to do to get rid of it?

AC Family, I’ll be getting to all those answers in just a moment, but I must say, in all my years of ant-keeping, this ominous and mysterious pink water has only happened to me once before, many years ago.

And if you are planning on keeping pet ants, you might want to take note of this in case it happens to you.

Also, guys, an important decision is coming up, and I’ll be needing your help today to make a major decision for this colony via a VOTE at the end of this video, so please stay tuned for that!

So if you’re new here, the Phoenix Empire is a colony of fire ants that I grew from just a single queen ant some 10 weeks ago.

Together, on this channel, we cared for them, watched them grow, and evolve—even making their first kill last week.

They’re dear to us and are set to become a great and mighty fire ant colony of millions in the not-so-distant future.

But if you’ve been following the channel for a while, you’ll know that sometimes we’re met with challenges and crises that Mother Nature throws at us, threatening the lives of our dear ants who depend on us to keep them safe.

Wild ant invasions, parasitic mite plagues, and catastrophes like that periodically occur, forcing us to take certain actions to save them.

Our Golden Empire, for instance—a mighty yellow crazy ant supercolony—was almost exterminated by some blood-sucking mites last year.

Thankfully, they were saved by quarantining the colony with predatory Hypoaspis mites, which ate the bad mites off the yellow crazy ants.

For all of you who’ve been asking for an update on them, rest assured that today, the Golden Empire is healthy again and bouncing back in numbers.

So now, about this pink water.

Though I’m not certain what exactly causes this pinking, I do feel it’s either some kind of microbial outbreak in the water—i.e., some bacterial, fungal, or other microcellular organism-involved contamination—or some substance that is produced by such a microbial outbreak, causing it to discolor.

Either way, I feel this is not a good thing.

Ants should have clean, fresh water at all times, so the Phoenix Empire will be needing a new water source and reservoir right now.

And here, AC Family, is where I can show you guys how to properly make an ant test tube setup!

All you future ant keepers, let’s get into ant-keeping tutorial mode!

Tutorial

First, I’ll be needing these two AC Test Tubes from AntsCanada.com.

These AC Test Tubes are designed specifically for us ant keepers.

They’re extra long with lots of space and have these small ridges that keep them from rolling off a table—giving your ants the nightmare rollercoaster ride of their lives!

So, before doing anything else, the first step is to make sure your hands and instruments are as sterile as possible.

Test tube setups need to be super clean to minimize microbial outbreaks from the get-go.

You can wear gloves or wash your hands, followed by a hand sanitizer—which I’m hoping all of you out there watching have by now.

Next, it’s important to wash and disinfect all instruments used.

This is our pokey!

Then, it’s important to use clean, bottled water.

I like to fill it to this rim, which is placed on the AC Test Tubes to help guide you.

Then, you place a cotton ball inside, and with a pokey, the key is to press down quickly so you don’t have bubbles.

And so…

Down we go fast!

Boom!

Shake away any remaining droplets, and there you have it: a perfect test tube setup!

While we’re at it, I also wanted to create a new sugar-water test tube setup, seeing as their current sugar-water test tube cotton has also gone foul with mold.

This time, I’m mixing in honey and water together.

Done!

Popped in some AC Test Tube Adapters, opened up the top of the Fire Forest, and attached the newly made test tubes to the setups—dumping any ants that happened to be in the old test tubes inside the Fire Forest to rejoin the colony.

Immediately, the ants checked out the new living space attached to the City of Ashes and rejoiced at the new fresh water source, as well as their new sugar source.

Haha!

Look at how excited they are to make the new discovery!

Now, as for the colony living inside the pink water test tube, I’ll leave it to the ants to move out on their own.

At least now, the colony had a clean source of water to drink from again.

When they’re ready, they’ll make the emigration to the new test tube setup—or perhaps this…

Vote

Guys, it’s now time for our final order of business.

Get your voting fingers ready, AC Council!

In last week’s episode, I asked all of you to vote for the next grand attachment to the City of Ashes, and it turns out you guys voted saying you wanted the Phoenix Empire to finally receive their very first formicarium—i.e., a proper ant farm for them to nest in.

And so, guys, behold the potential real estate options for the Phoenix Empire!

Please watch carefully and help me decide which to choose for them.

Outro

AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode?

Be sure to tune in next week when we give the Phoenix Empire their very first proper nest, 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 believe notifications seem to be broken, but the YouTube Support Team is on it.

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 footage of the Phoenix Empire in the City of Ashes.

Also, just a note:

It’s anting season, and nuptial flights start in the Northern Hemisphere this month!

Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant-keeping and collecting gear.

And now, it’s time for the AC Question of the Week!

Last week, we asked:

What is the name of the toxin fire ants inject when stinging?

Congratulations to Nora Garcia, who answered: Solenopsin!

This week’s question:

Why do we need to push the cotton in quickly when making a test tube setup?

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

It’s ant love forever! 🐜❤️

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 8 AM 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! 🐜❤️