Man, there was once a time where I told myself
that if ever this channel were to receive this inconcievable milestone award, I would
treasure it, hang it on a wall and keep it forever in mint condition to admire as a trophy
piece. The Youtube Gold Play button awarded to Youtube
channels reaching 1 million subscribers finally arrived. But then, I told myself... Imagine if I were to turn my Gold Play Button
into an antfarm... No, that's just crazy. I would never do that! Ever! Well, this week 'never' happened, and you
won't believe what I did in the name of ant love! AC Family, I pulled the Golden stunt. Yes, today I hold my breath, and hand over
my Youtube Gold Play Button to the real stars of this channel, the ants. Find out which of our five colonies we move
in, how we customize it for them, and how they ultimately reacted to the inside of the
Gold Play Button, on this eye-opening, celebratory episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel. Please subscribe to my channel and hit the
bell icon. Welcome to the AC Family. Tired of nature channels not showing nature
shows? Just watch this channel. Enjoy. So last month I was happy to receive in the
mail our Youtube Gold Play Button for reaching over 1 million subscribers earlier this year. It was just so moving to unbox this amazing
award. By the way, whether you're old or new AC Family,
please hit that like button if you enjoy our videos. Thank you so much. This channel and award is yours, and we all
earned this together, AC Family! So, opening the box, it included a note from
Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of Youtube encouraging us to continue making entertaining videos. Very cool. Lifting this piece of foam, wow! AC Family, here it is. The fabled Youtube Gold Play Button. It was just magical and huge! Now, back when reaching a million subscribers
was just a fantasy, I toyed with the idea of turning my Gold Play Button into an ant
farm for an ant colony. The idea of course was just crazy. I would have needed to customize it to make
it habitable for the ants, I needed to drill holes into it, I wouldn't even know how to
open the thing, and overall I would have essentially needed to destroy the piece. But seeing the Gold Play Button now fresh
out of the box, I said no way would I ever destroy this thing. It was going up on a wall. But something interesting and a bit unbelievable
happened. A couple days after, I received another box
from Youtube. What? I opened it, and sure enough it was a second
Gold Play Button! They sent me two! How could this be? Do any of you guys know if other Youtubers
receive two Gold Play Buttons? Could this be some freak mistake? Perhaps Youtube telling me they want me to
make an ant farm? Whatever it was, I wasn't going to give it
back. And so, AC Family! I wasn't going to need two Gold Play Buttons! I had decided. I was going to turn this second Gold Play
Button into an ant farm. Here we go! The first step was to decide which of the
ant colonies would be moving in. Who was going to be getting this Gold Play
Button ant farm? To me, there were only 3 logical options: First, the Fire Nation. Our long time, ferocious fire ant colony who
in essence became the first super stars of the channel, when their video "My Ants Are
Planning an Escape" went completely viral, followed by another video "Cockroach Giving
Birth While Being Devoured by Fire Ants", which have a combined viewership of 31 million
views on Youtube. I felt they surely deserved to be one of the
candidates to inhabit this Gold Play Button. Next, we have the Dark Knights, our black
crazy ant colony, also a senior colony of the channel, having started around the same
time as our Fire Nation. They've been a good colony, contrasting our
ravenous Fire Nation, always easy-to-care for, predictable, non-aggressive, and what
was super convenient about the Dark Knights was that if I were to move them into the Gold
Play Button, I could simply hang the Gold Play Button on the same wall as my other Silver
Play Buttons and easily connect the tubes of their two story setup which pass that area
of my place. And next, we have the Golden Empire, our yellow
crazy ant colony that came a bit after the Fire Nation and the Dark Knights, but garnered
a big fan base of ant lovers fast, as we helped them overcome their biggest survival challenge,
beating a plague of parasitic mites. They were a good candidate because with their
booming population and limited only to the Hacienda Del Dorado terrarium, they needed
the new space badly. In a previous video we also noticed that they
needed change in routine. Now, for those fans of our other ant colonies,
we couldn't move in the Titans, our Marauder ant colony because they were in a sensitive
time at the moment, and we also couldn't do the Tomb Raiders, our Pharaoh Ants, because
they were a new colony under quarantine, dealing with their own crisis at the moment. By the way, if you're following that story
AC Family I promise to update you about their situation next week. So, I had to decide, and of course I went
to consult the AC Council, so on our brand new Youtube community tab which we just got
this week, I asked you which of the three colonies you wanted to see move in to this
Gold Play Button ant farm. You casted your votes, and AC Family, you
chose the Golden Empire based on over 35,000 votes. It seemed the general reasoning was "Golden
Empire for the Gold Play Button". Made sense. So now that we knew who would be moving in,
it was time to customize the Gold Play Button to make it more habitable for the Golden Empire. After examining the structure of the framework,
I discovered that it was actually quite easy to open up from the back. I opened it up and went straight to work. Using an old aquarium background I had laying
around, as well as natural decor from our AC Biome Kits, I began to cut, glue, and arrange. It took a lot of careful planning and designing. I didn't really know what I was doing, and
I was completely improvising along the way, but I was determined to make this new territory
beautiful and homey for our ants. And so AC Family, after hours of breaking
away at faux rock and arranging of decor, I am pleased to present to you "Golden Rock",
the soon-to-be new stomping grounds of our Golden Empire. Do you like it? What do you guys think? Let me show you around. Golden Rock was inspired by the natural terrain
in which I have seen yellow crazy ants in the wild. It is a simulated volcanic rock escarpment
complete with lichens, mosses, tropical foliage, sticks, and crevices and presented at the center of Golden Rock's
cliff face, the Youtube Gold Play Button, shining like a beautifully polished stone
adorning the territories. Now this setup was designed to be dry and
soiless and I didn't want to add digging medium because the structure wasn't designed to hold
moisture. You see the back is made of painted plywood,
which could rot if moist soil was added, and I didn't want to paint the entire thing with
water sealant, in fear of toxic materials killing the ants. Also this setup would no longer be opened
after being sealed so dry meant cleaner interior and easier maintenance. So the question we needed to answer now was
"What would make Golden Rock interesting for our ants?" Why would the ants want to come here? If we just connected the colony to this Gold
Play Button as is, they might wander a bit but get bored and find it dead space for the
colony. So, AC Family, my solution? Four entrances drilled directly into the plastic
plated plywood framing, and polytubing inserted into them. One of these entrances would be the official
entrance to the territories, and the others, to accomodate test tubes with some goodies
for the ants to discover. On one side I attached a test tube of some
dry fish food and on the other, some blue-dyed honey. So now the Golden Empire had a reason to come
to Golden Rock. Golden Rock would from now on be a hub for
food collection. And now, the moment we've all been waiting
for. The moment of truth. It was time to move our Golden Empire, our
booming colony of yellow crazy ants into their new Youtube Gold Play Button territories we
call Golden Rock. Here we go, my plan was we needed a way to
safely connect the Hacienda Del Dorado to Golden Rock, but there way no way I was going
to drill a hole through this glass. It is certainly possible to drill holes throug
aquarium glass with special drill bits but, in all my experience working with glass and
creating ant farms, there are a million and one ways to screw it up and completely crack
and ruin the glass, and I wasn't willing to take that risk today, lest the Golden Empire
is suddenly given the chance to move into my whole place! And so here is my hack for those who need
to connect their ant colonies in aquariums to another living area. First, I take a plastic water bottle and cut
it here, to create a sort of funnel. Then I take some baby powder and mix it with
rubbing alcohol until the mixture is uniform, then completely smother the inside of the
funnel, as well as the outside with this mixture. It dries in about 10 minutes and becomes super
slippery for the ants. The idea was to situate this funnel at the
top of terrarium using a barbeque skewer and then fasten the tube leading out of the terrarium
through this slippery funnel. This way the ants could travel through the
tube but not climb out of the terrarium by climbing the outside of the tube. So here we go, guys are you ready? It was time to see if our Golden Empire would
like these new lands we are introducing to them. 1 - 2 -3. I placed the tube into our slippery funnel
then stuffed all spaced between with cotton. I placed the tube into the ficus foliage for
the ants to discover. The other end of this tube was attached to
this entrance of Golden Rock. The ants instantly began to climb the tube,
but hadn't yet thought of climbing through it. As planned the ants climbed the outside of
the tube but could not escape due to our special funnel. Suddenly, a few minutes later, one inquisitive
and brave ant decides to walk through the tube to explore. It moves up the tube, and out of the Hacienda
Del Dorado. This was the very first time any Golden Empire
worker has left the boundaries of the Hacienda Del Dorado in almost a year, and considering
the fact that ant workers live for only two months, it was certainly the very first time
this worker has ever left. She was going to be the official discoverer
of Golden Rock. She excitely rushed through the tube across
the great chasm and on to Fire Nation continent. She rushed into Golden Rock. With joy and jubilee, the ant immediately
began to explore this wide and open rockscape, running and mapping out these new territories. If you've never seen an excited and happy
ant, this is what it looks like! And look, here comes a second ant explorer. Her sister will officially be the second to
set tarsi on Golden Rock territories. Back at the Hacienda Del Dorado, it seems
most ants are preoccupied with trying to get out of the terrarium by climbing the tube,
which may seem pretty unintelligent on the ants' part, but see this is the beauty of
ant intelligence. The very few who do happen to stumble their
way into the tube, end up communicating their discovery to the other ants. And look, here returns one of the ants from
Golden Rock to announce the news to the rest of the Empire. She's got some joyous news to tell of a new
promised land beyond the borders of the Hacienda Del Dorado. It wasn't long before more and more ants decide
to check out the hype and also return home to announce their findings to the rest of
the colony. With this continuing message of new property
becoming a trending topic witin the Golden Empire, I knew it wasn't long before the ants
would start an impressive ant trail between the two lands, and the news was about to kick
up a notch. One ant has found our reservoir of blue honey. After having a sip, it is suddenly full of
excitement and lets other ants it comes in contact with know that "OMG, there's a huge
pool of honey down there! Go see for yourself and get some!" This quick vibrating you see here is known
as stridulation. If we were to place a tiny microphone close
to them we would hear a chattering noise. By rubbing body parts together and causing
a big vibrational fuss, they literally communicate "the latest buzz", pun completely intended,
and this excites other ants to go check out whatever it was that was causing excitement. It's a more physical mode of ant communication,
unlike the usual pheromones which is more biochemical. When the message of sweet honey got back to
the colony, the trail was officially under way. Check it out! The ants had not discovered the fish food
yet. It was just amazing to see the ants excitely
exploring and mapping out our design. The honey was the newest talk of the town! Look at all those ants with full social stomachs. You can see the blue through their bodies. Later as the honey starts to dilute a bit
by mixing with the ants' drinking water and inner fluids, the ants appear green, as we
saw in a previous video. With all this stored honey, they make their
way back to the nest to share it with the rest of the family. The way they do it is through an awesome process
called trophallaxis: I call it the kiss of life. Honey is regurgitated from their social stomachs
and passed by mouth to hungry ants. It looks like many ants have come back for
seconds! Wanna see something funny? Of course after all that sugary food, the
ants get food coma. Check out these ants that have stationed themselves
in one of the crevices in the rock. It seems they've designated it their place
to nap. According to a study, ants take hundreds of
power naps which last only a couple minutes, before waking up and continuing on with business
as usual. All night, the ants continued to explore Golden
Rock and hang out in cool spots within the multifaceted rock face. The next day, the ants are still working on
the honey! Check out their green bodies! It looks like our fish food wasn't such a
hit. They're just trying to dig into it at this
point. No worries, though. I want Golden Rock to be a place where we
can test new and different foods. I plan to constantly switch up the offerings
in these exits, perhaps offer a tube of water, or various insects, different sweets, and
sometimes I even just want to make exits dead ends. Essentially, the more we keep the ants guessing,
the less chances they have to fall into routine which became a concern in the Hacienda Del
Dorado. These past few days and nights, I've spent
a lot of time just sitting and watching the ants frolicking and congregating in places
around Golden Rock, and I realized something pretty neat. Yes, the ants on this channel will never really
know how many human beings from all around the globe watch them every week, following
their daily lives and quietly supporting them from afar, nor will they ever know how much
joy and inspiration they bring to us, just by being ants, but I feel, that at least by
giving them the chance to find a home within this custom-designed Gold Play button, now
called Golden Rock, they too can benefit in a way, and enjoy this milestone of 1 million
subscribers with us. To all those who have been gracious enough
to subscribe to this channel and are part of this epic ant journey, on behalf of the
ant colonies presently and those of the past on this channel, thank you. AC Family, you've each inspired me and showed
the world that ant love truly is forever. Alright! Thanks for watching, AC Family. We're now on the road to the next milestone:
10M! Crazy to think about right?! Well, I used to think reaching 1 million subscribers
was unattainable especially for an ant channel! But you all proved me wrong, so until we hit
the next milestone, please LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you haven't yet. If you enjoy nature, or even if you don't,
hit that subscribe button and discover the dramatic and crazy world that insects live
on the micro level. It will blow your mind, right AC Family? AC Inner Colony I have left a hidden cookie
for you here, if you would just like to watch extended play footage of the Golden Empire
moving into Golden Rock. Now, before we proceed to the AC Question
of the Week, I have an awesome announcement! In case you haven't heard yet, our annual
Christmas Sale at AntsCanada.com is in full effect! This year we have a great sale on our brand
new Hybrid Nest 2.0 and our All You Need Formica Hybrid Nest Gear Pack! So if you've always wanted to get into ant
keeping, I have left links in the description box to these sale items so you can pick one
up for yourself or someone you love this Christmas. We ship worldwide, but just a reminder, you
must order before Dec 18th to get your order before Christmas so go get it asap! But if you're not fussy about getting the
item before Christmas day, this Christmas sale as usual will continue until January
1st, 2018 and we also have gift cards in case you would like to get your special loved one
an ant setup but are not sure what they would want. Keep ants with me and discover how amazing
these creatures are in real life! Alright, and now it's time for the AC Question
of the week! In last week's video we asked: Name any one of the sites
in the Tomb Raider's Setup. Congratulations to Mariam Hussain who correctly
answered: The Nubian Shelf We also accepted any of the other twelve locations
including Valley of the Kings, Garden of Anubis, and Field of Aaru. Congratulations Miriam, you just won a free
ant tshirt from our shop! In this week's AC Question of the Week, we
ask: Why did we choose to
make Golden Rock a dry setup? Leave your answer in the comments section
and you could win a free ant t-shirt from our shop! Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we
upload every Saturday at 8AM EST. Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, & SUBSCRIBE
if you enjoyed this video to help us keep making more. It's ant love forever!
OHH EHM GEE GUYS
You do know you can buy these Gold buttons for a few dollars in the internet?