Greetings Ant Lovers,

I created the coolest ant terrarium ever, a designed I’ve never before tried but always wanted to, and with the arrival of my newest ant colony made for the perfect opportunity to try. They are a dream specie and the home I built for them was a dream terrarium build. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode and our brand new fledgling ant colony. All hail the Titanic Empress! Ant love forever!

Starting A Dream Ant Colony | Asian Marauder Ants

Ever wonder how an ant colony starts?

Well, what you’re looking at right here is exactly that, and this is usually where a new journey of discovery, for an ant keeper like myself, begins.

A queen ant guards her starting brood and first generation of worker ants within a chamber, in this case a simulated one in a container.

Now this queen possesses an insane amount of potential, and actually happens to be one of my dream and favourite species of ant to keep.

You’ll see why soon.

The stray workers look tiny and harmless, but don’t be fooled, as these ants are a stinging and aggressive species that possess some of the coolest, baddest looking supermajors in the ant world!

So, they might not look like much now, but in a week’s time, this humble ant colony will be much bigger, and I have plans to build for them an incredible new palace, a terrarium setup I’ve never actually tried before, but one that both I, as well as our new pet ants, would totally come to love!

Welcome to these ant keeper joys, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the BELL ICON!

Welcome to the AC Family!

New Ant Family

Enjoy!

AC Family, here we are again!

I say again because if you’ve been following this channel for a while, you may remember that I’ve owned this ant species before, if you recall the Titans.

However, after downsizing my ant collection during the pandemic, and then again prior to moving to our current new Ant Room location, I’ve been dying to bring these ants back to the channel just because of how epic they are as a species.

But the thing that makes this colony different from the Titans, is the fact that the Titans was an already mature colony when I got them, but in this case here, we are actually starting with an inceptive queen and initial brood.

And I always love starting up new ant colonies from just a young pregnant queen ant with brood like this, because it gives all of you guys a special sneak peek into how an ant colony starts up and be part of the journey, as the ant colony grows!

For now, the next step is to give these new ants a proper home, and I’ve got some epic plans ahead for that, but do stay tuned until the very end, because I’ll be asking you a very important question regarding the future of these very special ants.

Alright now, let’s look closer at our new ant family, shall we?

As mentioned, this is a dream ant species of mine.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you don’t recognize them, these are the ever-famous Carebara diversa, a.k.a. Asian Marauder Ants—truly some of the most incredible ants on the planet, in my opinion.

This marauder ant colony is now a week older than when you first saw them at the start of the video, and if you look closer, you’ll notice that there are not only many more workers now, but you’ll see one of the very reasons why I and a lot of ant keepers love these ants so much.

See those two massive majors guarding the queen, brood, and colony?

They’re two extra-large worker ants that act like the colony’s bodyguards, born with enormous heads with powerful mandibles.

The colony’s brawny jaw-crushing force!

Now if you think these majors are impressive, just wait until you see what the supermajors look like.

If you’ve been following the channel for a while, you know the supermajors get even larger than this, and are just breathtaking to look at!

But the supermajors won’t arrive for a little while still, as the colony matures.

Now the colony’s official rule is that at least one of these bodyguards—these majors—must be right near the queen at all times.

She is, after all, a VIP—or rather, a VIA.

The queen lies snuggled and protected by all her workers and majors who swarm around her, protecting her with their life.

I would not want to mess with that swarm, as these ants, as mentioned, do sting!

AC Family, let’s name this queen the Titanic Empress, an ode to her predecessors of our Old Antiverse.

All hail the Titanic Empress.

Please leave your bows and salutes in the comments, and let’s give our Titanic Empress and her minions a warm welcome to the channel.

As part of their royal welcome, it was time to give these new marauder ants a proper home.

This little container was just NOT luxurious enough nor worthy, and I had the perfect home setup for them—one that I have never yet tried in all my years of ant keeping.

AC Family, behold!

Test Tube Setup

A giant test tube with a golden holder.

Now though it is customary to house new ant colonies in test tubes, this setup was different because it was simply composed of only moistened medium, and no cotton blocker creating a water reservoir, which is what we usually do for test tube setups.

This setup was inspired by a friend of mine named Jon Ye, from Just Ants in Singapore, who told me he found success at housing founding colonies of this species in simply a jar of coco fiber, later to be moved into a larger container of coco fiber.

So simple, which I loved.

And thus, this setup here is a giant test tube full of moistened bioactive coco fiber—bioactive because it contained colonies of tiny beneficial insects like mites, worms, and springtails, which you might spot here and there throughout the video, which will help act as cleanup crew for decaying ant garbage, ant poop, and the colony’s midden.

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Here’s the continuation and full correction of the transcription:

Alright, now the problem is getting the ants into the test tube.

These ants sting and get quite aggressive.

It isn’t as painful as a fire ant sting, but it can get quite uncomfortable when a lot of ants are biting and stinging.

And I don’t ever want to feel a bite from one of those majors.

I had no choice but to dump them in as quickly as I could and then plug the top with a cotton swab immediately to lock the colony in.

There were a lot of them in there, but right now, they were quite calm.

Alright, wish me luck, AC Family. Here goes nothing!

I opened the container and first attempted to place the test tube over the ants but changed my mind last minute and simply took tweezers to place the entire dead leaf they were on inside.

When working with ants, I’ve realized a lot of times you need to think and act quickly, as every millisecond matters.

I worked the cotton swab into the test tube opening, trying my best not to sandwich any workers, then placed the entire test tube back into the holder.

And that was that—they were in!

The queen was rather calm, but her minions were panicking in a rush.

The majors patrolled the new space, ready to give up their lives as they searched the new premises for the enemy that had disturbed them.

That’s when I noticed the workers had already begun their next major project: Excavation!

They were so quick to act, too.

The ants instinctively knew they needed to get the queen underground to safety ASAP!

The ants communicate with each other through pheromones, so for sure the emergency dig pheromone was being wafted throughout this entire test tube right now.

The queen lay calm as the workers worked in unison to deal with the issue as best they could.

Workers grasped at loose pieces of coco fiber to start the excavation.

As the colony continued to work, I was grateful that our dream colony was officially in their new home.

I knew they would love this space once they customized tunnels and chambers within it and settled in.

I couldn’t wait to see their new tunnels and chambers.

I resolved to come back and check up on them in a couple hours.

Little did I know the ants’ concerted work would blow my mind!

Ant Excavation

Two hours later, this is what I saw!

The ants circled around in celebration, laying pheromones over what they anointed as their new lair.

The queen hung out on her familiar leaf as the tunnel extended downwards into a spacious basement chamber.

A major came down to inspect the area and ensure its safety.

Just amazing!

I loved watching the ants at the surface as well as below ground.

I couldn’t believe how much work had been done in just two hours.

If all this were human-sized in scale, there’s no way such a project could have been possible in such a short amount of time.

The Titanic Empress hid behind her leaf shroud, bodyguard nearby, as the ants continued to work.

After all this work, I knew the colony would be hungry and would be needing food.

All this time, the colony had been sustained off liquified body tissues from the Titanic Empress.

They’d never had a legit meal yet.

I decided it was time to give the colony that official meal as our housewarming gift to them.

The feeding would happen once it looked like their excavation project was done.

Colony Complete

I came back a few hours later, and the colony was done.

Wow!

Look at that huge pile of brood.

A major stood guard as the Titanic Empress hid within the shadows at the back.

It didn’t look like the ants were excavating deeper than this.

At the surface, ants were moving about as a major patrolled the grounds.

I just couldn’t believe how impressive the tunnel work was, as the chambers and nest tunnels winded downwards within the test tube.

Awesome architecture!

But I knew, AC Family, it was time for these ants to eat.

My plan was to simply drop a freshly cut-up roach onto the surface.

I knew protein would help this colony explode in population, as it would nourish the growing larvae, as well as our Titanic Empress who suddenly was walking around exploring the new chambers her workers had constructed for her.

I just couldn’t wait to see the swarm boiling up once the roach was in!

Here goes nothing, AC Family—let’s do this!

I unplugged the cotton blocker and placed in a cut-up roach.

An ant instantly began to attack.

It began to bite and sting the roach as best it could.

It moved over to a leg and attacked.

The roach, still capable of movement, tried its best to kick the ant off.

Now I watched this ant attack this roach for a long time.

A very long time.

I was expecting the swarm to arrive soon.

But to my surprise, it didn’t.

For a good 30 minutes, even after the ant had given up attacking the roach, there was no swarm in sight.

How strange.

I came back at 4 AM in the morning to look, and the roach had been cut in half and had partially been eaten.

I guess the swarm arrived much later?

OK, talk about anti-climactic!

I wanted to see the swarm!

One of the most impressive things about this species was how the ants came swarming out of their nests to collect food, and inside, I so desperately wanted to see this with our marauder ants!

And AC Family, that was when a crazy idea came to me!

The Long Tank

AC Family, behold—my idea!

It was a long tank for which I had some pretty cool plans.

The awesome length of this tank would be perfect to watch the ants form their iconic trails to food.

And at one end of the tank was a hole.

And into this hole would fit our colony’s test tube.

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I took our colony, wrapped a foam stopper around them to elevate the tube slightly, and placed them into the hole.

They were now situated as planned into the setup, and now it was time to do what we do best, AC Family.

I, your Creator of Worlds, went straight to work!

It was time to make this place a suitable kingdom for our beloved marauder ants.

I added a gravel layer.

Then I added driftwood.

And after an hour of work, this is what the new lands looked like by sunrise.

AC Family, behold! Marauder’s Alley

Marauder’s Alley—the new and cool terrarium home for our beloved marauder ants.

Let me show you guys around.

Marauder’s Alley, to me, was the perfect habitat for the ants to forage and form their iconic trails to and from their nest when feeding.

The colony was covered to keep them in the dark, but above ground, it was a sunny paradise of bromeliads, driftwood, mosses, stones, and sand.

Now it was important that I only used epiphytes for plants because ordinarily, plants would need soil, and I didn’t want the ants to move into it where I couldn’t see them.

I had to make sure no part of this place was a more attractive nesting spot for the colony than their dark, moist test tube.

The idea was to keep the ants coming back here to nest, while the terrarium was their place to find food and dump garbage.

I couldn’t wait to see the ants form their trails down Marauder’s Alley to where I would place their food—somewhere on the opposite end.

But before unplugging this test tube and releasing the ants, there was something I needed to do first.

I needed to add my ant barrier.

Alcohol and baby powder once mixed forms a slippery barrier for the ants once it dries, so I painted this mixture onto a bottom lip which I had installed at the top of the terrarium.

Once done, this slippery barrier would ensure no ants would escape and form their iconic trails into my house.

Alright AC Family, and now all was set.

Time to remove the cotton.

I did so with care, and there was a final touch: a tower.

Now, the ants had official access to their new territories.

This was truly my dream ant tank, and a design I’ve actually been waiting years to try.

I couldn’t wait to see the trails coming out of this tower, running down Marauder’s Alley.

And look! The ants were already beginning to explore!

In fact, to my surprise, it wasn’t long before news of the new territories reached the entire colony within the test tube, springing curious workers up to the surface to explore.

And that was when I did this:

The fragrant and tantalizing juices of a fresh jelly cup cascaded down the rock platform I placed it on.

And now for the remainder of the video, I’ll just allow all of us to sit back and watch news of our new gift offering reach the colony.

Let’s all now enjoy some ant watching!

And that was that!

So, turns out we didn’t get to see a huge swarm of ants come pouring out from the tower, but instead, over the course of several hours, it seems the ants chose to send out teams of workers to go and collect the sweet goods.

And after thinking about it for a while, this actually made sense and was a very prudent choice on behalf of the ants, because they were just a young colony with a limited amount of workers, and at this stage, every worker counts and could mean the difference between survival or death!

So, they weren’t about to just send every single worker out of the nest to bring back food.

This was just too risky!

Instead, they could send the workers out in shifts or send out the oldest workers to go out for food collection, to bring back the goods within their bodies, then transfer all that food mouth-to-mouth to the rest of the colony.

Good call, marauder ants. Good call.

Guess we’ll just have to wait for our colony to get bigger before we start to see those iconic trails.

But I knew in my heart that it wouldn’t be long until we got to that point, as this colony was growing pretty fast in just the week that I’ve had them, and now that they’re consuming actual meals now, it meant that they were on the brink of population explosion!

Now at the start of the video, I mentioned I’d be asking you a very important question, and it’s this:

What should we name our marauder ant colony?

Leave your name suggestions in the comments, and your AC Senate and I will choose our top 5 favourites for all of us to vote on in their next video, likely next week.

So don’t forget to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to this channel to let YouTube know you want to see more about this colony.

I must say, it’s a total dream to own marauder ants again, and truly an honour to start this new journey with this colony with all of you.

It means a lot to me that you guys out there seem to have a passion and love for ants as much as I do.

I read all your comments and appreciate you all being part of the journey, as we care for our beloved ants together.

I have a feeling these majestic marauder ants will quickly become my favourite, and I hope for you guys as well.

Until the next time we visit them, thank you so much for watching and supporting the ants.

It’s ant love forever!

Hope you can SUBSCRIBE to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM 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! 🐜❤️