My Next Giant Ecosystem Vivarium

This is my giant cloud rainforest vivarium, I  call Pantdora, and it’s about to get a whole lot  

bigger, and with it some surprises I can’t wait  to unleash. Some might call me a little crazy,  

but I figure, someone’s gotta do it, right? For  science! The purpose of building this tropical  

world within glass, full of interconnected  animals, plants, and fungi with its own automated  

weather system, pond, and nutrient cycle, is to  observe what truly happens in wild ecosystems,  

the wars, the alliances, the plot twists,  and the triumphs, and though being part  

of Pantdora’s journey has been nothing short of  sublime, the problem is, it needed to be bigger!

So, I’ve begun to draw my plans, with the  help of your votes and input to help me  

decide what our next ecosystem vivarium will  be like. Shall we build a swamp world? A cave?  

A tree top canopy or lowland rainforest?  A grassland plains, perhaps? Well,  

I am finally ready to share my plans with you,  and show you how I’ve already begun to collect  

more amazing new creatures to seed into our  tropical world, soon-to-be double vivaria.  

Welcome to the story of my greatest biological  project, where we attempt to recreate Mother  

Nature within glass and make her a whole lot  bigger, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel!

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

In the darkened corner of my Ant Room  lay a powerful empress, one of several  

new ordained and mighty creatures, I’ve carefully  selected to be part of our new vivaria. In fact,  

I feel you guys will love all the cool beasts I’ve  chosen thus far, which I’ll be adding and showing  

you today. But this one here, is a beauty with a  very unique purpose for our project in the works.

You see in Pantdora, there is a particular egg  sac that I’ve been watching over the past few  

months now, which still has not hatched, which  to me means, it wasn’t fertilized. It was the  

product of a failed breeding experiment, which I  plan to take a second shot at and rectify today.

Behold, Empress Emeralda, a green marbled  mantis. Seeing her brings back some very  

nostalgic and bittersweet memories,  of our late Green Reaper who laid  

the unfertilized egg sac in Pantdora  before she passed away, but this time,  

with Empress Emeralda, I was determined to be  successful with some special plans I had been  

waiting to finally carry out, but first, we  needed to prepare her for her big job ahead.

Good day, Empress and welcome to the Antiverse.  Here is a roach sacrifice to welcome you home.  

She instantly accepted: “Thank you!” and  began to feed. The living roach breathed  

heavily as the Empress began to feed on its  head and legs. The sight was a bit gory,  

but our royal Empress only accepts  living prey and I needed to respect  

that. Watching our Empress feed voraciously  on the roach’s face was a rite of passage  

for us and a stark reminder that  she was a royal to be respected.

But there was a purpose to allowing our Empress to  indulge in such a fattened calf offering, as she  

would be needing all the valuable nourishment  she could get for the long and physically  

taxing task ahead. “Feast, well, my precious  Empress! There is more meat coming your way,  

before I introduce you to someone, who will  assist us in reaching your ultimate destiny.”

Alright, don’t come for me, AC Family!  I’ve had months to think about this and  

plan everything out! I’ve considered all  of your input and gone over the pros,  

cons, and possibilities in my head  for what is feasible and manageable,  

and I have finally come to the ultimate  decision for our next ecosystem vivarium.  

Based on the polls, Cave, Swamp, and Canopy  were the three most popular biomes for the  

design of Pantdora’s extension, and so I’ve  decided, I’m doing a Cave, Swamp, and Canopy!

I plan on doing all of them, just not at the  same time. I decided the easiest vivarium to  

prepare for now would be Canopy, meaning the  treetop layer of a forest. I will need a bit  

more time to lay out the plans for a swamp or  cave vivarium, so they will just have to follow.

But now that we’ve decided to go forward with  a Giant Canopy Vivarium, here are my plans.  

So this is the second floor to my Ant Room, and it  sports these glass floor cutouts that I initially  

designed into the floors just as a way to see the  Ant Setups from a bird’s eye view, but turns out,  

this perfectly sets up the orientation and  location for our second giant ecosystem vivarium.

So get this: This glass panel can be  removed, and a section at the top of  

Pantdora can be cut out and connected  to a glass bridge that joins Pantdora  

to the Canopy vivarium located up on the second  floor. Orientation-wise this also makes sense,  

because imagine looking up from  Pantdora level to the treetop canopy,  

or from Canopy level down to Pantdora. That would  be totally epic and make perfect spatial sense!

Now let’s talk size! So I had a guy come in who  will help me build the main glass structure of  

our new Canopy vivarium, and I’m happy to  announce that due to the greater amount of  

space available on the second floor, we have the  freedom to build a bigger vivarium than Pantdora,  

just a little bigger. I’ve decided it will be the  same length and width of Pantdora, but will be a  

foot taller. I began to sketch out my ideas so  I could foresee what it might look like when it  

was all done. I can’t wait to show you guys what  I envision in my head, as well as the possible  

creatures I plan to house, on which I’ll be  needing more of your opinions, so hang tight.

But meanwhile, speaking of animals, I’ve begun  to prepare ahead for our Canopy world addition,  

and have started to collect more cool creatures  to become official Pantdorans in this new chapter.  

It seems in my area at this time of the year,  

it is the season for beetles! Beetle fans  you will love our newest Pantdoran additions.

Check out this gorgeous piece. It remained still,  

playing dead for the longest time  after placing it in. Eventually though,  

I found it moving around in the foliage. This is  a jewel scarab beetle, and check out that colour!  

Even its rump had a cool colour design! These  beetles as adults feed on vegetation and I hoped  

it would find some tasty leaves to chew on from  our forest. I felt this little one, assuming it  

could avoid predation, would make a great resident  of Pantdora and our upcoming canopy vivarium,  

where it could munch on leaves. I will continue to  scour my area for more of these emerging beetles,  

as I find them super pretty! It stopped to  relax on a leaf to take in its new surroundings.

Next, another beetle! This cool giant is also a  scarab beetle, but I don’t quite know the exact  

species. Have a look at it! Its colour is so  unique. It almost looks like it is covered in  

a tonne of little mites! Any beetle enthusiasts  out there care to take a stab at its species? It  

climbed the Hallelujah Tree Stump and when it was  ready unfolded its elytra to fly into the canopy.

And now another beetle, also a scarab beetle and  again I’m not sure what the species is, but it had  

the most gorgeous colouration: deep metallic green  with mustard coloured spots, side, and leg bands.  

It was such a little robotic-looking creature!  It also climbed the stump, got to the top,  

wandered the summit for a bit, then flew up into  the air. I managed to catch three of these beetles  

and released them into our forest. Let’s hope  they survive predation to breed in these lands.

This appears to be the beetle resurgence in  our rainforest, for in a previous episode,  

I also released three of these coconut  rhino beetles which I always spotted  

wandering around the territories. This  here is one of three males I placed in,  

with their little horns. I’m still trying  to look for females to place in Pantdora,  

as well. They are so big and heavily armoured that  they have no predators in this forest (yet), but  

I believe, they will also love the upcoming canopy  vivarium along with our other scarab beetles. Hey,  

have a look at that baby huntsman, one  of the hundreds of babies born from our  

massive matriarch Lady Death Strike, who is way up  there. This spider has had one heck of a journey,  

having given birth to hundreds of spiders who  now frolic Pantdora, and has been a great and  

epic success story in terms of passing on her  genes to the next generation of huntsman spiders.

And due to this breeding success,  I decided I would repeat Lady Death  

Strike’s procreational formula, so we could  hopefully duplicate her great results.

Meet Emperor Silverio, a male marbled mantis,  whose unique silvery grey colour is another  

colour phase of the species. I tried to offer  him a cricket, but he was not interested in the  

sacrifice. He was here for one thing, one very  ultimate purpose, laced with unspeakable danger.

Empress Emeralda was well into the innards of her  roach morsel now. Mmmm look at those nutritious  

guts! So as mentioned fattening her up, was  key and it was both supportive and strategic  

for this mantis pairing and breeding operation  to work. In the last attempt to breed mantises,  

the female our Green Reaper was full, but I don’t  think she was full enough, because she went on to  

consume the male. My plan this time, was to really  fatten up our Empress, so feeding wasn’t the first  

thing on her mind once she would meet her brave  Emperor, which instead of happening in Pantdora  

like the first time, would be taking place here  in this smaller more controlled space. We did  

it successfully with Lady Death Strike, so my  hopes was it would work for our mantises, too.

I watched as she gobbled down the remaining parts  of the roach and began to lick her arm spikes  

clean. She totally ate and left no crumbs. What a  formidable predator, but judging from her abdomen,  

I knew she could fit much more in there.  So I gave her a cricket to polish off,  

which she consumed cum gusto. Once she was  done, her abdomen looked like this. Check  

out that gyatt! It was almost full to  capacity and her breathing was laboured,  

but I know these mantises, and she had just  enough room now for the great distraction!

And here it was! I opened the glass  enclosure and handed our Empress  

her final fattened roach to officially  launch the Empiric union of mantises. “Oh,  

Empress!” As if she hadn’t eaten a day in her  life, she responded “Another offering? How kind!”

I lured her forward with the roach, and  waited for her to strike! She lunged and  

grabbed on to the roach, as I pulled  her gently further towards the middle  

of the glass enclosure. She then began to  feed on the distraction roach, and now,  

all was set for the introduction. So the reason I  had to move her was because I needed to position  

her at a location that made it easy for  our male to approach her from behind,  

which as you can imagine is a very dangerous task!  I needed to set our Emperor up for success as best  

I could. The plan was to place the male in  somewhere along these sticks and hopefully  

the female mantis would be too busy feeding  to notice him sneaking up from behind where  

he would then try to launch into a piggy back  position safe from her dangerous arm spikes.

And so that time has come! Emperor  Silverio, come with me. Your time is  

now to fulfil your ultimate destiny! I  opened the glass front and proceeded to  

place in the Emperor. “What?!... Oh,  it’s just you… Wait! Who… is that?!”

And then, he was in. In an instant, he spotted  our Empress and stood still in his tracks.

“And who pray-tell might you be?” she scoured  staring into the soul of our Empreror with the  

glare of death. He was cleaning himself  now then proceeded to move away higher up  

the stick. This was mantis disrespect of the  highest sin! The emperor continued to clean  

himself nonchalantly from the top of the stick.  The whole time she refused to take her eyes of  

him. I was concerned because it looked like  he was not interested in breeding with her,  

which was what happened with my  first mantis breeding attempt,  

which ultimately lead to his doom.  Would the same fate befall our Emperor?

With the new cooler temperatures and extended  rainfall of the new season, the soils of Pantdora  

have once again sprung alive with life. I was  delighted to spot the crickets back in full  

effect foraging the forest floor, eager and ready  to breed, and my, my, were the ants also making  

quite the come back! Dwarf ants which had since  disappeared from our forest were seen foraging for  

foliage. Members of the Dark Horde, an invasive  OG colony of black crazy ants were also seen  

here and there, hopefully not making a comeback to  their once devastating numbers. I think the most  

successful ants of Pantdora these past few months  were these: the tiny yet energetic gnome ants,  

which look like fire ants but are much smaller,  however, after looking into it, I believe they  

might actually be an invasive species known as  Little Fire Ants or Electric Ants (Wasmannia  

auropunctata), but then again, maybe they’re  not? Whatever the case, they do an excellent job  

and cleaning up the forest floor of insect body  parts. I loved watching the gnome ants at work!

But guys, these aren’t the only ants active in  our Pantdoran soils. You guys won’t believe this  

but check out these totally new ants I spotted  this week! Once again, I have no idea where  

they came from, as it’s been months since I  had planted any new plants in our vivarium,  

but if their queen did sneak in through  the plants months ago, her offspring is  

finally showing up above ground now and my  what a cute bunch of ants they are! Again,  

I don’t exactly know the species, but  let’s call them little golden ants for  

now! They were the new ants in town,  also competing for insect body parts.

But guys, I have another surprise for you! The  rains have caused certain favourite ant species of  

mine to have nuptial flights again, and I think  you’ll love whom I’ve collected. Behold, the  

double queen sisterhood of the world famous Weaver  Ants. For all you OG AC Family, I’m sure you’re  

as excited as I am, and know full well why these  ants are like no other on the planet! Weaver ants  

are famous for their hanging leaf basket nests in  the trees, which are all glued together using silk  

from their larvae. I felt weaver ants would be  awesome to eventually inhabit our Canopy Vivarium  

if they so chose. Now these two queens were caught  separately and have decided to band together to  

start egg laying. It hadn’t even been 24 hrs and  the queens already had a little brood pile going,  

but it was time for a very delicate operation.  I wanted to transport them into Pantdora,  

but little did I know, their introduction  was about to spur a mini ant confrontation.

Moving the queens and the brood would require  some surgical-level handling but it needed to be  

done. First, I chose a spot behind the rock wall  that I felt the queens might like to begin their  

claustral chamber. In went the green weaver  ant queen, then the yellow weaver ant queen,  

and then using a qtip the brood. Man, was it  hard to transport the brood! The green queen  

found a little chamber to hide in but what I  spotted next shocked me. Oh no! Ghost ants! A  

tiny invasive ghost ant found an egg, pulled  it free from the batch and ran with it. How  

sad! The yellow queen was somewhere off to  the other side of the eggs and wasn’t around  

to protect the brood batch. Using tweezers  I gently prodded her towards the brood,  

so she could stand guard over them. As soon as she  was reunited with the brood she lovingly picked  

up a batch and moved it closer to another. That  ghost ant would surely be back for more eggs soon,  

and there was still another batch in the moss.  She began to move, assumingly towards the scent  

of her partner in crime, the green weaver.  She could smell she was nearby, but didn’t  

know where. The ghost ant had returned and went in  for another egg, but this time got a two for one  

and dashed away with the catch! How terrible! I  felt so bad for partially setting this ant war up!

Thankfully, the yellow queen was back to pick  up the other batch of eggs, but where was that  

other stray batch? She could smell it but  wasn’t quite sure where it was. Eventually,  

the green weaver ant emerged and reunited with  her sister to help defend the eggs. They noted  

that there was still a batch missing and it  was right there in the moss. “Where did you  

put it?” “I’m not sure, I just found these laying  around.” “OK, but where did you last seen them?”

I couldn’t help it. I had to go in to help.  I went in with a q-tip again to fish out the  

eggs. Handling them was the hardest thing ever,  and I got more clumsy as I panicked seeing the  

ghost ant had come back for more eggs. Ahhh!  Eventually, I moistened the end of the q-tip  

then managed to stick as many of the eggs as I  could salvage near the two weaver ant queens. It  

wasn’t a lot of eggs but it was the most I could  do. I wasn’t too worried though, because these  

queens would be laying a tonne more eggs over the  next few weeks, and they could now stand guard  

over their brood against invasive ants and other  predators. The green weaver picked up the brood  

blob and began to lick them clean, as the ghost  ant realized it could steal no more. I was so  

happy that the weaver ant queens were all settled  in, and couldn’t wait for them to found their  

new colony to eventually move into the leaves  of Pantdora’s canopy, but little did I know,  

this was not the last harsh welcome our new weaver  ant queen sisters would be facing in Pantdora.

So this was my sketch. What do you think? It’s  basically a neat network of vines and branches  

with mostly vining and epiphytic plants, as well  as treetop-looking vegetation. Now a vivarium like  

this has plenty of potential to create ample  living space for a broad array of creatures  

that would much prefer to occupy the canopy  up in the trees, than an area closer to the  

ground like in Pantdora. This canopy vivarium  will also have its own rain system which will  

set to rain at the same time as Pantdora,  as well as wind. So what do you think?

Now I need your opinions on mammals. Many  of you were excited at the idea of possibly  

adding primates like marmosets inside. The  canopy vivarium will already be larger than  

the recommended size requirement for a pair  of marmoset, though as mentioned in a previous  

episode, I would simply have the monkeys  live in my three story aviary full time,  

and only release them to hang out in our double  vivarium on days I film. In the wild, such monkeys  

cover some pretty vast distances, so releasing  the monkeys into our double vivarium periodically  

can mimic their natural come-and-go presence and  impact on the ecosystem. Another possible creature  

I’ve been thinking of adding, if not primates,  is dormice, which are a type of cute arboreal  

rodent. They would love our canopy vivarium! A  third and final option as far as mammals go are  

sugar gliders, and you guys already know I have  a pair who recently gave birth to two super cute  

sugar gliders. They’ll be ready to leave their  parents soon and are already exploring their cage  

away from mom, so they could also be an ideal  arboreal mammal to inhabit our canopy vivarium.

But speaking of creatures to  hopefully inhabit our canopy vivarium,  

our mantises were in the middle of  a death-defying dance, performed by  

mantises for millions and millions of years  before them. Empress Emeralda had been death  

staring the Emperor down for the past 30 minutes  until she began to feed again. The Emperor did  

not show any signs of wanting to mate and  continued to clean himself. What gives?  

She also continued to stare him down every  now and then. Something was not right here.

Then I realized maybe the lighting isn’t very  romantic. These mantises mate during the day  

so perhaps sunlight could do the trick. I opened  the Ant Room’s blinds and let the sun shine in.  

This did nothing. I then realized that perhaps  our Emperor wasn’t in the perfect position,  

so I took him and moved him to the other  side of the enclosure where he might have  

a better shot at sneaking up to her. It  was then that our Emperor immediately  

spotted our Empress and entered what I saw  was mating mode. He now couldn’t resist the  

gyatt! He advanced but she had spotted  him by now and watched his every move.  

And then she began to sway and I panicked as soon  as I realized she was slowly turning around to  

face him. Oh no! I wondered if I should go  in to intervene. Now in the last breeding,  

I opted not to intervene because I had assumed  that nature should just take its course,  

but this time, I wasn’t about to make the same  mistake. I was our Emperor Silverio’s wingman  

now. Bro, I got you! I went in and began  to tug at the roach the Empress clung to  

which jarred her for a second and to  my surprise, she began to feed. Wow!

Every time she continued to look his way, I went  in to distract her by pulling on the roach until  

she looked away from him, which I felt definitely  helped him out. This was such a critical moment  

for one wrong move would cost him his life. His  ultimate goal was there, while knowing full well  

his death was on the other end if he failed to  get this right. For the next hour, I continued  

to go in to distract her every time she would  look his way, which gave him a shot to creep  

his way closer and closer ever so slowly. I kept  distracting, and he geniusly timed his movements  

to her movements so to not be noticed. She went  on to feed and he continued to move in some more,  

and I kept performing my job by distracting. I  wondered how such a thing would happen in nature  

without a mystery wingman to assist, or maybe the  dangers of mantis mating are on purpose by design,  

as it ensures only the most nimble and  ambushy males get to mate with the females.

Our Emperor was so gradual with moving in. Check  out this timelapse of the male advancing in over  

a half hour period. He knew that slow and  steady wins the race! He was so close now,  

just a little more. But this was the most  critical of moments. The current angle though  

wasn’t the most ideal for him. It looked as if  he was running the most intense calculations  

in his head. He needed to get this lunge right!

Suddenly, she took notice of how close  our Emperor was and so again I went in  

with my tweezers, but it was  then that I realized, “Hey,  

I could actually help pull her into a better  position!” So this time, using my tweezers I  

guided her up to position her in a place where  he could much more easily jump onto her back.

And then, the moment of truth had arrived.  Her gyatt was right in his face now and she  

couldn’t have been in a better spot for him  to complete the final move of the ancient  

million-year old dance of the mantises.  He moved in and when he was ready… Bam!  

He hung on for dear life! OMG! He did it!  Wooohhooo! Check it out from another angle.  

And bam! Our Emperor successfully piggie backed  on the Empress, and she had totally dropped the  

roach onto the floor. They still weren’t attached  yet, but our Emperor had successfully completed  

the hardest and most dangerous step of the  mantis breeding process and could now take a  

breather before completing the mating ritual.  This was honestly one of the most incredible  

matings I’ve ever witnessed, no Diddy! And with  the Empress’ abdomen totally full of food, she  

now had the necessary nutrients to begin producing  the eggs that will be fertilized by the Emperor,  

which would ultimately end up in our future  canopy to found a new generation of mantises.

I closed up the enclosure to allow our Emperor  and Empress to do their thing in peace. My  

work as wingman was complete. 10 minutes  later, I came back to find that the male  

had attached and was now fertilizing  the female. What a miracle this was,  

and such an amazing process to witness!  The mating continued over the next 2 hours,  

and some interesting observations I made. The  female was fully capable of pooping during the  

mating process. It was also interesting to see her  heart beating through all of this. In the night,  

the Emperor’s eyes turned a gorgeous purple.  Now mantises are known to mate anywhere between  

an hour to a few days, so I had no idea how  long the process would take, so I made sure  

to check up on them every hour. I wanted to  make sure to separate them once they were done,  

because in Nature the male will bolt away the  moment they finish. Otherwise he might be eaten.  

And finally after a long 5 hours of mating,  I finally spotted they had separated.

“Get me outta here, Wingman!” On it, my Emperor.  I carefully removed him and placed him into his  

container. The Empresses’ eyes were now  purple as well, having also fulfilled a  

major part of her destiny. I was so proud of  our Emperor and Empress. This mantis mating was  

a complete success. Now it was all a matter of  waiting for the Empress to lay her egg sacs.

I panicked when I spotted Daenerys sitting  over the spot where the weaver ant queens were  

stationed. No!!! Daenerys, mind moving please? The  weaver queens were gone. This filled my heart with  

such sadness. The eggs were still there which  meant Daenerys had just eaten the queens. But  

then I spotted a movement somewhere below. Ah!  It was the yellow queen. It seems she managed  

to escape to safety. Thank goodness. The green  queen however was nowhere to be found sadly,  

and though I knew the eggs were probably going  to be scooped up by ghost ants, at least this  

one queen was still alive. I was certain she would  begin laying again in this new chamber of hers,  

and just the next day, turns out she did. I hoped  this colony of hers would mature to adulthood and  

eventually move her and the rest of the colony  into the various leaves that were now growing like  

crazy in the canopy. They also will have a tonne  of leaves for nest-building in our new canopy,  

which I am happy to announce will  begin construction this Tuesday.

I couldn’t wait for us to expand on our  ever growing world of Pantdora and continue  

to learn more and more about the wonders of  nature together, its dangers, its triumphs,  

and its hidden beautiful moments. It seems  several of our animals have begun to enter  

breeding mode. I continue to hear our tree frogs  singing at night, which means it’s most likely  

breeding season for them. Our female sun skinks,  now that a true male has been added to the mix,  

seem pretty fat. This is the fattest I’ve ever  seen Smaug! Could they be pregnant? I do see the  

lizards meeting in the shadows! We’ll just have to  see. It’s been a true honour to witness the circle  

of life, and though Pantdora is now emerging  out of a dry spell as far as life goes due to  

the heat of the previous season, it was reassuring  to see that life was making a great comeback with  

the rains returning to our rainforest, and  with a new biological world now on the way.

Now some of you may be wondering what was in the  box I was holding at the start of the video. Well,  

I think you guys will be surprised. So this week,  I’ve been hosting some friends of mine from South  

Africa. Dingo Dinkelman, wildlife expert and  creator, and his family checked out my Ant Room  

last week, and after scanning Pantdora, he looked  into Aqua Noctis and wondered why I hadn’t added a  

particular creature that was one of his ultimate  favourite animals. When he mentioned it, I told  

him that I couldn’t possibly house one because  Aqua Noctis was simply not enough space for it,  

to which, to my surprise, he informed me that Aqua  Noctis was indeed enough space for not one but two  

babies of this particular creature, as the smaller  quarters meant that they would ensure the babies  

find their food and that the pond would be enough  space for them for quite some time, since they are  

such slow growers, at least until we eventually  get our Swamp vivarium up and running. After  

discussing the topic on this “creature” further, I  came to the realization that he might actually be  

right, and so, after further deliberation, within  this box is the creature many of you, who wanted  

a SWAMP vivarium have been dying to learn about.  I’ve also been eager to learn more about them!

Now when you guys see what’s inside,  it might get you asking “Are you OK,  

man?” Behold, our newest prehistoric beast!