Greetings AC family,

The Fire Nation is such a big colony of fire ants! Take a tour with us through this growing fire ant colony and let us know what you think!  Ant love forever!

Fire ant in thumbnail by Alex Wild for the University of  Texas “Insects Unlocked” Project.

OMG! My Fire Ants Have Taken Over My Room!

OMG!

My ants have officially taken over my room.

Welcome to what used to be my office room, which has turned into a haven for my pet fire ants, yellow crazy ants, black crazy ants, and a bearded dragon named Tarzan, sleeping ever so soundly right there. But this video is about the ant colony we all love and fear: “The Fire Nation,” which has grown so big that I’ve had to completely redesign, rearrange, and add to their setup.

Today, we’re going to watch as the Fire Nation discovers three new outworld additions to their growing nation, which offer the ants environments and activities they’ve never experienced before in their lives.

You won’t believe how our fire ants react to and conquer their new territories, so keep watching until the end!

AC Fam, join me as we explore the New Fire Nation in this action-packed episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

Please subscribe to this channel. Thanks.

Behold the Fire Nation today.

You see how much I love these ants? I had to fully ditch a work desk and an entire couch—an expensive one, at that—and buy two brand new drawer units just so I could accommodate my growing ant colonies. There was just no other choice.

The Fire Nation was getting so big, it was either I changed things up, or I got rid of the ants. And hello… Getting rid of the ants? That’s crazy talk now.

Speaking of which, where are the crazy ants, you ask?

Well, our Yellow Crazy Ants are here on a separate unit. By the way, AC Fam, please kindly click this iPoll here and take a few seconds to vote for an official name for this colony. And sharing the same unit are our dearest Black Crazy Ants here.

Both crazy ant colonies have a lot of space to expand still, which is good. Again, guys, please help vote for a name for this colony by clicking here real quick.

Thank you, AC Council, for contributing.

So, the Fire Nation has an entire unit to themselves, and rightfully so.

I cannot even begin to explain how quickly this colony is growing, and to think, it all started with just a single pregnant queen ant, hidden somewhere now in the Fire Nation. I have no idea where she is, and I haven’t seen her for months. If I still lived with my parents, my mom would freak out!

Oh, and off topic, I forgot to mention that there’s a bird-eater tarantula right down there in that aquarium.

Some of you guys have asked me what I plan to do when the ant colony grows to a size that I can no longer handle. Well, you can either limit food or lower the temperature by 1 or 2 degrees to lower the queen’s egg-laying rate until the rate of dying ants matches the rate of egg production.

But I’m not going to be doing that.

I’m just going to keep rearranging, redesigning, and renovating my place to accommodate these ants. I’ll even move to a house for these ants if I have to!

So let’s take a look at the new and exciting Fire Nation territories!

Here, of course, are Fire Ant Mountain and Solenopsis Hill, which became Fire Nation territory just about four months ago.

The main colony lives in these two primary nests, and if we move eastward, we, of course, have the outworld space where we shoot our Ant React Videos, which I have named “The Offering Temple.”

I decided to try using Vaseline for this outworld just to see if it would contain the Fire Nation better than baby powder, but turns out, it doesn’t and actually needs to be reapplied more often than baby powder.

Then just above “The Offering Temple,” we have what I call the “Hydrocombs.”

Basically, it is a new AC outworld with pebbles and two very large water test tube setups. I intend to make this the central source of their water and turn their current water test tubes into sugar water sites.

This is one of the three new units.

Moving further eastward, we have another two new highland territories set to be introduced to the Fire Nation.

Introducing “The Fire Jungle” and “The Tropic of Pyro.” These two territories are AC Outworlds decorated with Rainforest Biome Kits, and instead of hardening ground plate, I’ve given them some soil to dig into.

This will be the very first time The Fire Nation will get to experience true soil. I can’t wait to see how they will like it.

Now, descending into the lowlands, we have, of course, the Fire Nation’s very first outworld, the Badlands.

This is actually where I place most of their insect food because it’s real bare and easy to clean up.

Moving eastward, we have the territory we added a few months back where we unknowingly fed the pregnant cockroach that dreadfully gave birth while it was being devoured.

You guys named this “The Pyre.”

And finally, we can’t forget the Antagon, the territory which used to be the summit of The Fire Nation’s highlands, our network of tubes and test tubes, but now it’s become a valley.

How’s that for screwing up their geographical map? Haha!

And if you look here just above my tarantula terrarium, I’ve got two fairly large Rubbermaid bins, and I’m not too sure what I’m going to use those for yet, but I do feel I’m going to need them for the Fire Nation at some point.

When I saw them in the store, I instantly thought of the Fire Nation and bought them so I could use them for the future somehow.

OK, so the connections get really confusing from here, and frankly, I don’t even know which tubes lead to where anymore, so my plan is to just simply get this tube, cut it here, and attach it to the back of the Hydrocombs here.

The Hydrocombs are already attached to the Fire Jungle, which is attached to the Tropic of Pyro, and I intend on attaching the Tropic of Pyro to the other end of this cut tube.

Here we go, guys! Are you ready? AC Fam, let’s do this.

Watch the Fire Nation move in!

Cutting the tube here and sticking this end into the back of the Hydrocombs.

Connection successful.

And the other end, gotta fish it around here and stick it into the Tropic of Pyro.

Second connection successful.

Now here’s where the fun begins, guys.

AC Family, let’s sit back and enjoy the move.

Here we go!

The move was really successful! The ants loved the new space. I watched as they scoped out their new giant test tube reservoirs in the Hydrocombs, and it seemed they preferred the front test tube more than the other one.

News spread super fast throughout all of the Fire Nation.

You could actually visually follow as the news spread to all corners of their setup, glorious news that there were suddenly some new territories to conquer.

The Fire Nation went ablaze as workers and even alates moved in droves to explore the fresh new land we gave them that they’d soon claim as their own.

Oops! There’s an escapee right there. Gotta pick it up and throw it into the outworld.

One thing I noticed was that the ants seemed extra excited! Perhaps because these were brand new environments for the Fire Nation. New smells, new textures.

I mean, this is the very first time these ants have ever experienced soil. And my guess was that their instinct would kick in, and they would start to dig, and that is exactly what they did. The fire ants were finally in their element: soil!

The New Home

The next day, the ants were clearly busy at work, and it was evident that the Fire Nation had gone on to call their new territories home.

And as is our custom and pact with the Fire Nation, I gave the ants some housewarming gifts: In the Fire Jungle, I offered them two freshly killed cockroaches to enjoy, and in the Tropic of Pyro, some superworms.

I’ve placed a hidden video for you guys here if you would like to watch the ants feasting on their AC New Home offerings.

I also loved watching the ants congregating around their new water reservoirs in the Hydrocombs, and what I found so cool was that the ants had been drinking a lot of water overnight.

I could tell because there were already air bubbles forming in the tube. Thirsty little ones!

OK, so let’s become ants for a second and figure out this labyrinth of tube connections, which I have no doubt in my mind the Fire Nation has already mastered.

Let’s take a final tour of the New Fire Nation from the ants’ perspective, starting from the Hydrocombs.

OK, so this east exit leads from the Hydrocombs down this tube to the Fire Jungle, where ants are busy digging. Look at all those ants. I mean, can you imagine being in that mass of ants? Being their size? I feel like we’re a fly on the wall. Let’s not anger the Fire Nation now.

Time to move on.

Then from the Fire Jungle, you can take another tube which leads to the Tropic of Pyro, and look at all those ants. Wow! It seems the Tropic of Pyro here is a very popular site at the moment. They’re even burying the decor I’ve chosen.

Alright, so we could leave the Tropic of Pyro through this exit, but before we go down there, let’s backtrack a little bit. Back, back, back to the Hydrocombs.

OK, so if you exit the Hydrocombs through the west exit, it takes you down this tube into this particular crossroads. OK, ready, AC Fam? This is where it gets confusing.

You can either go down this western path to this crazy mess of crossroads, let’s call it the Central Town Square, which leads to either Fire Ant Mountain or Solenopsis Hill.

The exits of both Fire Ant Mountain and Solenopsis Hill connect to each other, plus 1 X connector which we will pass through later.

But if you go back to the crossroads coming out of the Hydrocombs and go the opposite way, it takes you directly to the Badlands, where we have ants tearing apart and discarding feeder insects.

And the eastern exit of the Badlands leads to the Pyre. I find this to be a place where lots of alates hang out.

Now the Pyre’s eastern exit leads back through this tube and into the end of that X connector we saw earlier.

You keeping up, AC Fam?

Alright, traveling through the Central Town Square, we move through this T connector, and it takes us through this gap, let’s call it the Geminata Pass, and down this huge slope, which descends, of course, into the Antagon, which I’m not going to even try to make sense of and figure out.

But what’s cool is the Antagon is now their sugar water utopia.

The ants travel up and down this slope to get their sugar every day.

Now, ascending out of the Antagon and up another tube, it takes us through Geminata Pass, which leads directly to the Offering Temple.

The Offering Temple also happens to be the colony’s primary burial grounds. Perhaps this would be the ants’ equivalent to some sacred land. What do you guys think?

And finally, leaving the Offering Temple through the east exit takes us directly to the Tropic of Pyro.

And that, my friends, is the architecture and design of our beautiful Fire Nation.

Personally, I feel the Fire Nation is probably the most impressive ant colony I’ve ever had and also the most complex, but I am so happy to share this colony with you guys.

And no matter how big this colony will get, I’ll continue to grow the Fire Nation as best I can, until this entire ant room fills up with Fire Nation.

I really love that the ants are enjoying their new environments.

I love that the ants are digging.

Take a look at the Tropic of Pyro in this video footage taken just on Thursday night.

It’s amazing to see the architecture, and it looks like some of their waste is naturally decaying. I see a thin carpet of mold happening there.

Ants seem to be a really big part of the decomposition process of organic matter and… wait a sec… decomposition of organic matter?

Oh my God, guys! I just had an awesome idea for these two Rubbermaid bins!

OMG, this is gonna be so cool!

Thank you guys so much for watching.

I really, really appreciate it.

If you could subscribe to this channel, it would be so awesome to have you join the AC Family.

Your support means so much to me, guys, and believe me, I take none of you for granted.

It’s just amazing that you’ve given ants a chance and opened your hearts and minds to ant love.

And of course, we gotta conclude this video with the AC Question of the Week.

Last week we asked: What is the average number of typhoons or tropical storms the Philippine Islands receive on a yearly basis?

Congratulations to OGNR – Gaming, who correctly answered 20.

Congratulations, OGNR – Gaming, you won a free ebook from our shop.

And for this week’s question of the week, we ask: Name one of the new territories that we added to the Fire Nation in this video.

Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could win a $25 Gift Card to our shop.

Good luck, guys, and stay tuned for the winner next week.

Thank you guys so much for watching this video, and don’t forget to visit AntsCanada.com.

We’ve got an amazing Christmas sale happening on all AC Omni Nest products and AC Outworlds, and also an Ant Keeper’s Beginner Promo, where you get a free ebook if you order the All You Need Omni Gear Pack.

All relevant links will be posted in the description box.

Until next week, AC Fam, it’s ant love forever.