I finally connected my three giant ecosystem vivariums together, and the result was unbelievable. My long term plan had come to completion when my rainforest floor vivarium, canopy vivarium, and tropical wetlands vivarium became a single space, with shared animals freely able to cross over to the different habitats. I was shocked at what animals crossed over through the new cave tunnel bridge. Our rainforest ecosystem within glass has been forever changed. Hope you enjoy the Season 4 Finale of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series. Ant love forever!

I Connected My Three Giant Vivariums Together and It Changed Everything

This is Pantdora, my giant rainforest floor vivarium, Orchadia, my giant treetop canopy vivarium, and Hydromeda, my giant tropical wetlands vivarium. All the creatures within have no idea their world is about to get a whole lot bigger, with the Great Connection Event I’ve been planning for months.

You see, Pantdora and Orchadia were already attached via a glass bridge through the floor and have long been exchanging their creatures within. But last week, a cave tunnel bridge had been completed, and so it was time to remove the blockade to finally make the Great Connection Event of our three rainforest worlds official.

Let’s do this, AC Family.

And just like that, the Great Connection Event of Worlds was complete!

I couldn’t wait to see what creatures would cross over to the other side. But little did I know, I was in for the biggest surprise ever! Everything changed with this Great Connection.

Welcome to the Season 4 Finale of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel!

Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the BELL ICON. Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy!

This is what it’s all about, AC Family!

With the Cave Bridge Tunnel of cockroaches I call Roachella’s Pass now unblocked, I couldn’t wait to see what creatures from Pantdora and Orchadia would cross over to the other side and explore the wetlands of Hydromeda.

I’ve waited forever for this because there were a few creatures in my mind that I knew actually needed access to the wetlands in order to breed. But I wasn’t even sure how long it would take creatures to discover Roachella’s Pass, or if any would even discover there was a cave tunnel here at all.

Little did I know, by the end of all this, I would be in for the surprise of a lifetime.

It was morning in the Ant Room, always quite glorious as the amber sunbeams streamed through the windows.

If you’re new to the channel, I currently live in tropical Southeast Asia, not Canada anymore—hence all these strange-looking acacia trees seen outside my Ant Room window and the thick forest of wild bamboo in my yard.

It’s our summer now here, so it’s scorching hot during the day. The tropical conditions are the perfect climate for my various tropical ant setups, like this volcanic island ant farm of fire ants called Volcania.

There are the fire ants feasting on their chicken feet, and tropical animals like Godzilla, my baby caiman, who was relaxing in his holding marsh tank.

Guess you can say, I’m a bit crazy about nature, which is why I embarked on the biggest project of my life a year and a half ago: my three giant tropical vivaria.

They’ve changed a lot over time, and the new scorching summers have brought about a whole new set of some pretty interesting changes I have to show you—some good, some bad, some sad.

Let’s start with Hydromeda.

For most of its life, other than a couple of leak incidents, Hydromeda as a wetlands ecosystem vivarium has been pretty problem-free. But recently, I noticed this. Tell me if you notice it, too.

Do you guys notice anything weird?

The lack of shrimps.

In the beginning, I had added hundreds of various colored shrimp—we call them the Skittles—into our vivarium, and my hope was that the Skittles would multiply in huge numbers and one day provide a viable food source for larger predatory creatures I hoped to add to the wetlands.

But strangely, even after three months, the population of shrimp appeared way smaller than I expected they would be at this stage.

It was peculiar to me, but some of you fish experts had warned me in a previous video that I had made a very grave mistake with the addition of these creatures.

A pea puffer fish swam through the waters, fat and searching for a next meal. Though these dwarf pea puffers specialize on pest snails, many of you warned me that they would totally annihilate the shrimp population.

But my plan was that the shrimp would have plenty of places to hide in Hydromeda from the dwarf pea puffers—a labyrinth of driftwood, and not to mention, plants that were growing in quite nicely now.

Check out that wall of flame moss and rotala.

In nature, prey creatures like shrimp have places to hide from predatorial creatures, and Hydromeda had plenty.

But now, I was beginning to see that perhaps I should have listened to the fish experts, as the shrimp seemed to be unable to replenish their population fast enough. The Skittles appeared to be dwindling now, and it saddened me to see.

But the problems didn’t end there.

With the decreased number of shrimp, who were important cleanup crew in the wetlands, plus the compiling bioload from all the creatures, combined with the rising temperatures of summer where I live—despite there being a water chiller—it seems another problem was slowly beginning to creep into the waters.

Algae.

Check out that crazy clump of algae hair growing from my precious Buce! No!

Now, algae is OK in a tank, as it too is part of a healthy aquatic ecosystem. But when allowed to grow out of hand, algae can completely destroy an ecosystem by stealing nutrients and sunlight from plants and choking them.

Hydromeda did have an initial defense against the green monster, though—including snails, and these fish: algae-eaters.

Something was happening.

One algae-eater approached the other, and soon, I realized I was witnessing an interesting behavior. Have a look!

The two seemed to be circling one another.

Was this a mating ritual, perhaps a social interaction between two algae-eaters, a sizing up of each other, or a territorial display?

In the end, they separated. But overall, the algae-eaters seemed well fed and healthy, pooping nonstop as they continued to graze on algae patches around the wetlands.

But still, I think I have to consider adding Amano shrimp or other known natural algae-eaters like tadpoles or something.

Speaking of amphibians, one amphibian has been settling into Hydromeda quite nicely.

Shortcake, our resident baby strawberry pacman frog, was huddled in her comfy patch of miniature plants. She had been living here now for a few weeks and knew the place well. But as I was watching her one day, something very concerning caught my eye.

Oh no! Fire ants?!

She didn’t seem too concerned about it at the moment, but the fact that there were still fire ants in here was a bit of a concern.

If you’re new, fire ants had broken into Hydromeda from—I suspect—the floor drains a few weeks back, and I wasn’t sure if there was a queen also residing in Hydromeda, which would have been a big problem.

I was actually waiting to see if the fire ants would die out in two months, which meant no queen.

I resolved to keep an eye on Shortcake, as I suspect fire ants were responsible for the death of a past flying dragon whose dead fire-ant-covered body I discovered one day by Cascadia Falls.

I figured Shortcake should be OK, as she and fire ants are both native to the same place in the world and do share the same habitat where they are from. For sure she had her methods of keeping fire ants away—perhaps some irritating mucous on her skin or something. At least I hoped so.

I didn’t know it, but this would be the last time I would spot Shortcake here.

But another problem was that if there was indeed a fire ant colony here, I really didn’t want them to use Roachella’s Pass to migrate into Pantdora, which had a pretty established and active ecosystem of its own.

Snap, our resident sun skink, had just finished her routine morning bask and was all heated up and hungry.

I watched as she descended down to ground level to begin her morning hunt. With her supreme eyesight and keen sense of smell, she scoured the forest floor for just the right morsel.

She spotted the perfect juvenile cricket—and bam! I watched her scarf down her catch. Mmmm! Delicious!

How I love watching such scenes as they would happen out in nature. She then retreated into the foliage to rest and digest somewhere within the privacy of the leaves.

The land was actually experiencing a cricket population boom. They were literally everywhere.

Aside from being a constant food source for predators, the crickets have been vital as herbivores—i.e., eating plants—and detritivores, meaning they break down decomposing matter.

But these crickets, though having food quite abundant in the forest, don’t have it easy. Not only do they have to worry about creatures larger than them, but they also have to worry about those smaller than them.

As a scheduled ecosystem event, I placed in a slice of fruit to simulate fruit cast off by monkeys in the canopy overhead—an apple—and the crickets loved it.

But it wasn’t long until a particular army had found the fruit—an army that wasn’t readily willing to share.

The Gnomads, the dominant ant colony of the rainforest floor, had also discovered the apple and were now beginning to trail in from their nest to hoard the fruit.

Here they come now.

It quickly became evident that the ants didn’t like the fact that they had to share with the crickets and began to drive them away.

In fact, this battle between the Gnomads and the crickets has been ongoing for quite a while now, with Gnomads even picking away at the baby crickets.

Now, there were a lot of other ant species living in Pantdora—for example, the Giant Trap-jaw Ants—but it seems all these other terrestrial ant species have gone away to estivate, as they have been MIA since summer started.

It was either that, or the addition of another predator had totally devastated the ant population.

Beyonce, one of our two chubby frogs, stood full to the brim with a swollen belly. She had eaten a tonne of insects since she was added in three weeks ago and had had her fill.

In the wild, she feeds primarily on ants and termites, so I had a suspicion that she had eaten plenty of ants and was ready now to retreat underground to estivate for the rest of the summer until the rainy season arrives in about a month or so.

In fact, her lover Jay-Z had already burrowed underground and she was alone.

She went off to seek a suitable place to burrow below ground to begin her extended summer slumber.

I wondered if Beyonce and Jay-Z had both hunted all other ants to extinction. And I mean, whatever happened to the OG termites that used to live here?

All that was left was their old damaged tunnels.

Pantdora had undergone so many changes over a year and a half, including a landscape revamp and the addition of a tonne of predators—from Giant Trap-jaw Ants to Asian Bullet Ants, to Acrobat ants, Spiny ants, and Carpenter ants—all of whom shared this huge stump.

And even if the termites managed to survive all that, the recent addition of Beyonce and Jay-Z, known termite-feeding specialists, made me believe that the termites were no longer alive.

Now speaking of frogs, AC Family, there’s something I need to address.

I do have yet another admission. I have made a very noob mistake—and one I’ve done in the past with other animals.

Let’s now head up into the trees—into Orchadia.

A courting pair of crickets were in the midst of the millions-of-years-old ritual. The male chirped his chirp at the female, and when she showed interest, he went in. He then deposited his spermatheca—a little sac of his little soldiers—which plugged the female up, making her unavailable to mate with other males.

So up here in the treetops, the prey insects like the crickets could breed undisturbed.

It was a haven for prey insects, which is why the OG tree frogs, Kermit and Miss Piggie, have lived in Orchadia for a whole year since Pantdora and Orchadia were first connected.

But I’ve been waiting over a year for them to breed.

There were plenty of places for the tree frogs to spawn up here if they wanted to. They had puddles as well as various natural pockets of water in which the frogs could lay their eggs.

But even still, though I did hear Kermit croaking every night, Miss Piggie still hadn’t decided to mate with Kermit.

Well, AC Family, just this week, I discovered why.

Behold—a female golden tree frog. And she is much larger than Kermit.

Turns out, I had no idea golden tree frogs were sexually dimorphic and that the females were about an inch larger than the males.

See where I’m going with this?

Turns out, this whole time, Miss Piggie was actually a Sir Piggie!

Both our tree frogs were males! No wonder they weren’t breeding!

Well, it was finally time for that to change.

Come with me, my frog princess.

I placed her container into Orchadia and allowed her to wander out into the foliage.

Go forth, my Princess, and breed with the males!

Though I had high hopes for her, what she and the male frogs ended up actually doing surprised me.

Night fell in the Ant Room. The microsquirrels were awake and out to play.

They had already begun hunting for insects, and the acrobat ants were happy to scoop up discarded leftover roach parts.

Kermit was awake and had been croaking like crazy.

I looked around for the new female tree frog but—surprisingly—she was nowhere to be found.

But wanna know where I did find her?

Down in Pantdora, the night air carried the mists through the lands.

A baby huntsman spider was finishing off a meal it had caught from the forest floor.

In fact, at this time of the year, many creatures emerge at night when temperatures are lower and humidity higher.

I spotted baby snails.

A gecko was out hunting as usual—and this particular one is over a year old now.

I spotted Beyonce.

She had found a spot she was happy with and had begun to burrow.

Sleep well, Beyonce. See you in the rainy season.

The roaches had crawled out of Roachella’s Pass and down into the lowlands to feed.

These adults had come to learn that wandering down into the lowlands is usually safe at night, seeing as the predators in this forest prefer feeding on juveniles.

But today, Pantdora had welcomed a new guest.

Oh!

It seems our giant tree frog Princess prefers to be down-to-earth than up in the trees.

She had made her way down here through the glass bridge and was eyeing all the interesting prey all around her.

But she had to be quick in order to catch food.

She had her eye on one of the roaches.

Awww, in the forest, it was important to strike at just the right moment.

But wait too long, and the prey can slip away.

But no worries—there was something else.

She had locked eyes on another target.

A cricket was busy feeding on a piece of fallen Spanish moss, and when the moment was right—bam!

Caught!

I watched as she swallowed the cricket, with the sound of Kermit croaking from upstairs.

As much as I was happy to see that the new female tree frog was enjoying her new life of abundant food in our forest,

I really wanted her to breed with our males so we could ensure a future generation of tree frogs in our forest.

Problem was, our two male frogs above had learned to stay up in the trees

because the last time they were in Pantdora, Godzilla, our croc, was living down here.

But he has since moved out,

and I don’t know how to let the male frogs know that it was now safe for them to come down to Pantdora,

and that a huge awesome body of water was now available to them in case they wanted to breed.

Inside, I really hoped the tree frogs would discover Hydromeda together,

though the odds seemed a bit unlikely given the circumstances.

Now, I’ve never shown you guys what Hydromeda looks like at night.

It truly transforms, and this night harboured a certain surprise.

I shuddered when I spotted this—a planarian.

A type of aquatic flatworm swimming up to the surface.

Ew! No thank you!

Cool to see life diversifying in the waters, though.

A nerite snail moved along the glass, going about its nightly endeavours.

And you guys will love this.

Look here! Notice the fish?

Believe it or not, these fish are sleeping.

When the tetras sleep, they don’t really school and just kinda float around.

It’s almost odd to see the fish so still.

In the case of these rummynose tetras, even their bright cherry-coloured heads go dull as they dream their fishy dreams.

Isn’t that interesting?

In Hydromeda, I find the first to go to sleep are the rummynose tetras,

followed by the cardinal and ember tetras,

who at first swim around aimlessly as if in some weird sleepwalking state, before drifting off to a calm slumber.

But ready for another surprise?

Look! Shrimp!

Tonnes and tonnes of shrimp!

The Skittles had emerged, revealing their true numbers!

Shrimp of all ages, from newborn shrimplets to adults, were all out and feeding.

Shrimp of all colours!

It was a pleasant and beautiful surprise to witness.

Their population wasn’t devastated by the pufferfish after all.

It turns out the bulk of the shrimp were just hiding away for most of the day,

and by night, while the fish were fast asleep, they would emerge to feed—

and my, were they awesome to see in such great numbers.

It was then that I spotted another creature out.

Shortcake was relaxing on some moss on the lower part of Cascadia Falls.

Interesting to see her here.

I wonder what she was doing down here.

Was she trying to cool off in the chilled waters coming straight from the water chiller?

Would she return to her favourite spot by morning?

I didn’t know, but the next day, I totally freaked out when this happened.

I returned to Hydromeda and noticed that Shortcake was no longer on the moss where she was the night before,

and to my surprise, she also wasn’t in her usual spot up in the vegetation.

The paranoia in me played some terrible scenes in my head.

Could she have drowned?

But no.

I know these frogs swim, despite some online sources that incorrectly say they can’t.

Could Shortcake have been attacked by a swarm of fire ants?

My PTSD was kicking in.

I checked all the plants and areas Shortcake could have climbed into to hide, but to no avail.

I couldn’t find her.

I then checked Cascadia Falls and braced myself, afraid of what I might discover.

Ahhh! There you are!

You almost gave me a heart attack!

She was perched right at the summit of Cascadia Falls.

What a spot!

I could see why she liked it up here.

She could lay concealed in the landscape while also benefiting from the cool waters coming straight from the chiller.

You clever girl!

I actually loved this spot for her because feeding her her frog pellets from here was much easier. Yum!

By the way, I’m feeding her for now until more and more creatures start coming down the bridge—

And speaking of which—and the whole point of this video—

Let’s talk about the connection event.

I unfortunately didn’t get to actually film creatures passing through Roachella’s Pass,

as I am still working out my options for night vision and overnight filming.

But I do have a great idea which I know you guys will love, that I will get to in a sec.

But I do know that creatures have indeed begun to use Roachella’s Pass and cross the bridge to the other side!

Check this out.

First—roaches for sure have been emerging from the glass bridge,

as I sometimes see some drowned individuals,

and they have been awesome at feeding the life within Hydromeda.

The tetras love taking bites from the dead roaches,

as well as the Skittles,

who love when they discover a random roach gift that fell in from the skies.

It’s pretty amazing to see that our rainforest ecosystem is feeding itself in new ways now.

And guess who else have taken it upon themselves to sample the roaches?

I was surprised to see this: the remains of a roach in Pantdora,

but in a signature mess belonging to none other than the microsquirrels.

This is evidence that our microsquirrels have begun to use the glass bridge to come down to Pantdora—

which for the longest time they were reluctant to do.

But AC Family, that’s not all. Check this out!

See those little cute paw prints?

They’ve been checking out Roachella’s Pass, too! Amazing!

It would make sense that the microsquirrels would visit the roach cave,

because roaches were their favourite food.

They probably were snatching exposed individuals that weren’t hiding in the unreachable crevices,

as well as taking nibbles from the fruit I would periodically stick into the cave for the roaches.

But guys—the microsquirrels weren’t the only ones I discovered using Roachella’s Pass.

Do you see that shape there?

Those are frog thighs!

I jumped for joy when I saw the thigh prints

and immediately began searching for signs of the tree frogs in Hydromeda.

And yup, lo and behold—our Princess tree frog had discovered Hydromeda!

And a few days later, followed by Kermit or Sir Piggie—not sure which one it was.

They stood on the branches near the opening of Roachella’s Pass waiting for food to come down.

Seeing the tree frogs in Hydromeda like this was to me a resounding confirmation

that our longtime plan of joining our three giant vivaria—three worlds all exchanging life together—had manifested.

The three vivaria were now a single ecosystem.

This is the Season 4 Finale of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series,

which means that I will be taking a few weeks’ break to prepare for the next season.

Which also gives you guys a chance to go back and watch any episodes you may have missed.

But unlike the last season’s break, I have some awesome news that may make some of you quite happy.

During the weeks that I won’t be uploading, I plan on doing livestreams of various areas of our rainforest vivaria.

Let me know which area you think I should livestream first.

I plan on just letting the livestream run for as long as my internet connection remains stable,

which may be several hours, so that you guys can check in on your favourite vivariums whenever you like—

perhaps even catch some action.

Millions of pairs of eyes are better than one, right?

I even plan on livestreaming Roachella’s Pass

so you guys can help me watch what creatures pass through and indicate the timestamps in the comments.

So while waiting for Season 5, be sure to check my channel often

as I move the livestream around between Orchadia, Pantdora, Hydromeda, and the bridges.

This is just experimental and in its beta phase for now,

but I know you guys have been begging for a livestream for ages,

and so I felt now—with three vivaria and two connection bridges—it was the perfect time to try.

Speaking of taking a break, I was surprised to notice the spot Beyonce had burrowed.

She was underground now—but look!

She had chosen to bury herself right next to where another chubby frog had chosen to bury himself.

Aha! Jay-Z!

How cute!

They will emerge together come rainy season.

And funny thing is—I did spot Jay-Z waking up early one night, perhaps in search of his Bey,

but went back underground when he realized it was early, and my, was he a chubster, too!

What was so cool about all of this was seeing how one event spurred a domino effect of changes down the food chain within the forest—

proof of how connected our ecosystem truly was.

With the sudden absence of the chubby frogs, I was surprised to spot Giant Trap-jaw Ants emerging again!

Did they know the frogs were gone?

I don’t know, but it seems these seasonal cycles are necessary to ensure that life persists elsewhere.

In fact, the absence of the frogs and most of the other ant species also convinced some other elusive creatures to come out of hiding…

The termites are alive!

I couldn’t believe my eyes—spotting our OG termites trailing on the stump in broad daylight one morning.

Can you believe it?

After all the changes and predators, the OG termites had managed to survive it all.

Guess I should have known that just because you can’t see them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there…

And that life finds a way.

When I first began this biological project, an ecosystem was what I sought to create—

but what I got was so much more.

Together with all of you watching, joining me week after week,

we uncovered many of Mother Nature’s most incredible hidden secrets,

mourned together over beloved losses, solved problems,

watched scenes of nature up close that we could have never observed and experienced ourselves had we tried to out in the wild,

as well as learned a whole slew of new things—even teaching some experts out there a thing or two.

But this is what it’s all about—

and the whole purpose of this biological project.

As time goes on, and as our tropical worlds within glass evolve to greater mimic nature out in the world,

I’m reminded of how important it is for us animal and plant hobbyists—

us lovers of nature—

to remain curious enough to look at the natural world,

to care for it, to understand it, be inspired by it,

to share our findings,

and ultimately be stewards of life watching over our planet and home.

Because one day, when we least expect it,

Mother Nature just might leave us a nice surprise to thank us for our job well done.

And that, to me—the constant journey of discovery—

is what life is all about.

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