Illuminated Ant Farm

Product Description

It's been said that ants do some of their best work at night. Put this theory to the test with illuminated ant farm. The glowing design of the farm not only ... [Read more]

Features

• Fascinations designs product to illustrate many magical aspects of our world
• Watch as your ants explore, discover, and develop new territories
• Kit includes instruction booklet with ant order coupon
• You Must Order Ants to inhabit habitat
• Then add your ants and see them transform your design into their own creative patterns

Top Reviews

Really Fun Way to Watch Ants - Even for Adults!
by Katherine B.,Top Contributor: Pets (4 out of 5 stars)
October 11, 2015

Full disclosure: I bought this for me, not for my kids. In fact, my kids couldn't care less about it - but I find it fascinating. Did you know you need a USDA permit to send Harvester ants across state lines?

The next time I purchase one of these, I will go on the website and order the ants at the same time I order the ant farm. (I purchased mine at Ants Alive - the company recommended in the booklet that comes with the Fascinations Ant Farm. http://www.antsalive.com/buy-live-ants.htm) The ant farm arrived quickly (as did the ants, although I would think a week spent waiting for ants would be intolerable for an excited child!) There are many warnings on the box (and website) that Harvester Ants, the kind of ants recommended for use in ant farms, can "bite" or sting you. From what I understand, this sting is pretty painful for about 24 hours. They "bite" you with the same mandibles they use to pinch off gel and carry it around. Apparently, they also have stingers on their abdomens. (One should note that it IS possible to be allergic to their sting - so stings can be LIFE THREATENING. Usually not, but do you really want to be someone who is and not realize the possible dangers??)

I was torn between ordering one or two vials of ants - after receiving the one vial, I will say this...I am happy with the one vial, which is about 30 ants, of which there were probably 4 dead. Two vials (or about 60 ants) could have fit, the tunnels would just pop up much quicker. Either amount would work, it just depends on how fast you want them to make the tunnels. (Three vials - about 90 ants - would be WAY too many.) I am simply shocked at the speed these 30ish ants are constructing tunnels - I really am. I will check the ant farm before I go to bed, and a full, new, completely cleaned out tunnel appears within the next six-or-so hours - and it runs lengthwise from one side of the container to the other!

I used the transparent aqua-colored stick to begin the tunnels for the ants, as instructed. Two holes about 1" deep, two around 1/2" deep. (I had a hard time locating this stick at first - it is taped to the bottom of the box that the AC plug unit is in.) The ants are pretty large - about half an inch. Getting them in the ant farm is easy IF you follow the instructions and refrigerate them for about 10 minutes first. When you pop off the top of the vial don't just mess around - put the end of the open vial by the gel in the container and shake once or twice. My ants came out as a sort of clump. I wanted to remove the dead ones/pieces before closing the lid, but that was a luxury my mighty ant force didn't allow me. They have worked very hard for the last three days, but chose to dig down the sides of the container and not use the holes I had carefully spaced for them. (You can see the holes I started in the last photo - that's what the pink circles are showing.)

It fascinates me how the ants use their mandibles to grasp little bits of gel and pull it off the main block. Each ant then goes back up the tunnel, climbing over and under her comrades until she reaches the top, then deposits the tiny piece of gel in a predetermined place. It all starts with the top inch-and-a-half of the container being clean and clear - but soon has so many gel "pellets" stacked up that it almost looks like bubbles are all over the space between the gel and the lid. There are so many in my little ant farm now that I can't see through the top anymore! :) I was hoping I could clean some of it out, but the ants are having none of that! (Even after another 10 min in the fridge. I'm sure the gel absorbed most of the cold air, but I'm afraid to leave them in there any longer than that...I don't want to kill the lil' things!) There are a few brown spots on the sides of the clear acrylic container, at the top where the "pellets" are, but I'm almost positive that is where they put their dead buddies when they began building. I know you are supposed to remove the deceased girls, but I truly don't see how that's possible...unless you want the rest of the colony to make a break for it. (I remain a little confused, as it appears one ant is specifically in charge of dealing with the dead - and she has an assistant - and it very much looks like that ant eats a portion of the dead ant, before working to collapse the body into a smaller space, then to the trash pile. Everything I've read said Harvester ants aren't cannibalistic, but I don't necessarily believe that after what I've witnessed in my own ant farm.) (I told you I find this really interesting - I either need to get a life, or someone needs to save me from myself. This is what happens when you aren't allowed to have stuff like this when you're a kid, I guess.)

A few additional ants have passed since they've been working, but they all seem to undergo the same process of being partially eaten, appendages being smushed into smaller packages, then hauled off to the top.

I didn't mean to focus on their death behaviors so much in this review - I just think it's interesting. The gel provides all sustenance the ants require for their normal 3-6 month lifespan. The lights on the bottom of the container don't seem to have any affect on the ants or their productivity. All the ants are female - and no queen is shipped. (From what I've read, putting a queen in an ant farm could be disastrous, and they are difficult to find. Queens are not supposed to be shipped across state lines.)

Having this ant farm has been entertaining. I love watching them work together and seeing how their communal work quickly morphs into activities that seem impossible. I definitely look at ants differently now!
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I love my Antworks
by Andrew Yi (5 out of 5 stars)
December 10, 2014

I love my Antworks. So far, I have 2 antworks and my co-worker has one. Now It's my daily routine to check, how many and how deep tunnels my ants have digged overnight.

Here are my tips.
1. You should buy 50 ants, instead of 25 ants, from ants supplier. -- so Ants will be more active and dig faster.
2. If you want to clean up gel particles, you should put your antworks in freezer for 10-15 mins. -- that will makes your ants to go down below and not move, when you open up the top.
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The best habitat for your ants with and awesome view!
by Alex K (5 out of 5 stars)
August 24, 2016

My son had been wanting an art farm for awhile based on something he learned in his Kindergarten class, so we decided to pick this one up as it looked cool, was light-up and generally reviewed well already. To say the least, we've been quite happy with it, even when our ants haven't fully lived up to some potential expectations. Here's my review:

The PROS:
+ The blue LED lighting is fantastic and really shows the tunnels off well.
+ The size of this farm is just right for 30ish ants or so we've found.
+ The gel seems to nourish the ants just fine and is easily displaced to form tunnels with carpenter/worker ants

The CONS:
- If you get the carpenter/worker ants from antsalive.com you'll find after some time they will attempt to escape. We had one breach even after sealing the whole top in with packing tape. In our situation, several ants chewed through the seal in the corner and maybe even the plastic case along with our packing tape and one escaped (sadly it drowned in a cereal bowl lol). I'm not sure how else they could prevent this honestly though, so i'm not actually deducting points from my review.

So here's the thing, ants are unpredictable - I've read the other reviews and sometimes the ants will just huddle in a corner and never tunnel. That's not really the fault of the farm, but likely the batch of ants. Our ants tunneled several vertical ones down to the bottom and then networked that across the bottom and back to the top. It's not the most amazing tunneling system like the picture shows, especially because the whole middle of the farm is untouched, but hey, they tunneled!! And it was super cool to watch them! We've had them for about a month now and the ants have become very lethargic. Not sure why, but they don't tunnel anymore and just sort of 'sleep' (no they aren't dead yet, and yes we've made sure to open the lid once to give some fresh air in).

Overall though, fun thing to try and watch! I'd recommend doing it at least once :)
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GREAT TO WATCH... Buy the unlit version.
by Ticky85 (4 out of 5 stars)
June 12, 2016

We really enjoyed watching our ant farm. The kids and adults in our house were fascinated.

I do however feel that the extra money I spent on the illuminated farm was a waste. We barely used the lights and the ants seemed to work better without them on.

I was originally concerned that my farm came only 2/3 filled with gel but don't worry.. The ants bite of chunks of gel in their tunnels and then carry it back to the top where they build with it. Our farm ended up filled to the top from the gel they carried up there.

Our ants sadly tunneled through pretty much all available space in the farm in about 3 weeks. After that they got agitated and just crowded around the top of the farm and many started dying off quickly at that point.

I think it's a really cool thing to watch, but I would definitely just go with the basic less expensive, unlit option. $25 for the illuminated one ($30 after you buy the ants) seems a little steep for something that we only got to enjoy for 3 weeks.

With the ant farm I also purchased the "TIME for Kids, ants booklet" which was a fun read to learn about a variety of ants while enjoying our farm.

Overall we loved it... I just wish it lasted longer and perhaps was a little cheaper.
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Great learning tool
by Sweet Sis (4 out of 5 stars)
December 30, 2018

This is truly an awesome gift... at first. I do recommend it. It is fascinating to watch the tunnels being made. You go to bed and wake up and the progress is unbelievable. My son and I love watching the ants work. The only downside is once the tunnels are made, they begin to die. Soon there are dead ants throughout. Many dead ants are brought by other ants to the top, but not all. And you are left with beautiful tunnels and dead ants. What do you do with it then? Buy more ants? Well the tunnels are already made. You can't stir the gel for reuse, or at least I don't think you can. Seems like that would be too hard to see more tunnels being made because the gel would no longer be smooth inside. But I didn't try stirring it up to see the effect although I'm sure it would ruin it. This is a fantastic product though for kids (and adults!) to watch and learn about hard work, teamwork, natural instinct, and nature. I highly recommend it, but don't expect to use it more than once. Don't expect the ants to live very long either. Still, a great learning tool!
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Great concept but major flaws
by J. F. (2 out of 5 stars)
June 19, 2012

After receiving the ants, this product was great for the first 2-3 days then it just went downhill. I should have read the reviews a little more closely, I guess.

PROS
- Very cool to see them digging away for the first 2-3 days. Kids really got into that.
- Very attractive product... in the beginning.

CONS
- They stop digging after 2-3 days and then start their master plan of escape, eating the lid instead.
- We live in Georgia and humidity inside the enclosure has been a problem. I found that if I didn't turn the light on, this helped. No light = not as exciting.
- The booklet says to open the container every couple of days to allow air into the habitat. Since all of ants now have the master escape plan as Priority #1, they all rush the opening (they are fast) and a couple inevitably escape or get squished by the lid when you scream, "Holy cow!" and try to close it.
- The booklet also says that you are supposed to open the habitat and clean out dead ants as they appear (see previous experience). I have been unable to do so because half the "colony" would escape. So, now we have dead ants molding at the top of the container. Very attractive.
- While my oldest son refers to his pet ants every once in a while, and likes to show it off to the occasional visitor, that's the extent of the enjoyment at this point.
- Now I'm trying to figure out when the ants are going to be "released" to wild so my son won't be disappointed.

All in all: It's been fun, but not real fun. We'll leave this stuff to the zoos and science museums in the future.
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Delightfully surprised!
by Ron Williams (5 out of 5 stars)
March 30, 2015

Amazon (I think) kind of messed up on shipping notification, first time ever. And I order way too much stuff from them.

The ant farm sat in my apartment office for a few days, I got it and cool enough, the ants were in my mailbox (I got my ants from Life Studies, both items ordered at the same time) as I headed back to my place.

I stuck them in the fridge for 5 minutes and poked the holes in the gel. A big one got away but I scooped him back into the plastic vial and threw him into the farm.

They were wandering around while I thoroughly read the booklet that came with the farm, they were mostly trying to climb up but a few were sticking their heads into the holes I poked. I read that Harvester ants like seeds so I threw in small piece of a sunflower seed.

I also read that they may take up to 48 hours to begin tunneling, I do not know if I got the head of the class or the seed motivated one of them to make a place to put it but after an hour one of them was tunneling. I knew she was not just sticking her head in the hole because there were these little chunks of gel on the surface on the opposite side of the hole. I put the holes near the sides. 20 minutes later there were three tunneling. Now there are seven crowding the new tunnel digging like crazy. The others are still kind of meandering around, some pick up a chunk of gel and kind of carry it around for a bit, then drop it.

It is so cool to watch them work together to widen and slowly deepen the tunnel. But they are kind of ignoring the sunflower seed piece now?
2 hours after putting them in and one ant is able to completely fit under the surface of the gel.

Just plugged it in and the lighting is VERY cool! 4 blue LED's in the bottom shining upward highlight the gel as it fractures when it hits ant disturbed gel. In the undisturbed gel it has a lights in heavy fog feel/glow up into the gel. Would make an awesome living night light for a kid.

Nature and science are soooo cool. Highly recommend! I may try to update later. Thank you for reading and best wishes if you get one of these.
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Fascinating To Watch Ants Work!
by homeschool_mama (5 out of 5 stars)
September 19, 2012

My 3-year-old loves this ant farm! We used sand in our ant farms when I was a kid and while they were still fun to watch as they poked through to the wall, it made it difficult to see what was going on inside. The gel that's used in this ant farm is so much better, plus it's edible so no need to leave a messy goo of honey inside.

The ants don't come with the farm, they have to be order separately. There's an order form inside the box to order the ants for about $5 or you can search for your own which is what we did. We gathered up about 25-30 ants from our yard and tapped them in. The trick is to keep them inside as they immediately wanted out making it difficult to close the lid. Once it was closed though, it made a tight seal that they could not escape from. My husband wanted to tape it shut to make sure it wouldn't open, but I showed him that even tugging on the lid to open it was tough to do. We had the small variety of ants and while they were able to crawl in between the top and seal, there is no way they can escape.

Within a few hours of the ants being inside, they had started digging tunnels. However, 24 hours later, they looked lethargic and some had stopped moving. I tapped a few of them down off the side and opened the lid and they immediately came to life. The instructions say to open the lid to give them air every few days, but I guess with that many ants, they really need it every day or sooner.

The lights are pretty neat. They illuminate the gel from the bottom like movie spotlights. Both the gel and the lights are blue in color so it gives it a glowing effect. It also makes a neat night light!

A couple of tips:
* Don't mix ants from different colonies. They will end up fighting instead of building.
* Ants live about 3 months. It's best to collect them before it gets too cold or too hot or you won't have any for the winter and summer months.
* Chill the ants in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes before opening the lid. It will calm them down.
* Clear out the dead ants once they all die before adding new ones.
* It's cheaper to buy the refill of gel instead of a new ant farm. ANT CHOW Refills ALL Gel Ant Farms

The only thing I'd change to this product is to have a slide that can be opened to allow air to come in and with a metal or plastic grate to keep the ants from escaping. Otherwise, I'm very happy with the product.
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Great Ant Farm!
by California Mom (5 out of 5 stars)
August 3, 2016

This was such a great ant farm! After reading some reviews, I was hesitant about what to expect. But, I couldn't be happier with what I got. I also bought the live ants, and even though 40% of them were dead on arrival, the remaining ants far exceeded what I thought they could do! They made the most intricate tunnels and never stopped digging. The blue light on this ant farm was a nice touch. The plastic casing was sturdy and the lid never became loose...even when it was dropped...twice! This was the most favorite of the the gifts my daughter received for her birthday, and it was enjoyed by everyone in the family. The ants lived for about 5 weeks and used the entire ant farm to dig and connect their tunnels. Everyday we'd look and see something new they had done! I would definitely buy this again.
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Ant Wars!
by Mary Elizabeth Hall (4 out of 5 stars)
October 2, 2015

This Antworks farm is fascinating and lots of fun. Unfortunately, however, our ants from AntsAlive! didn't work and play very well together. They developed enemy factions soon after their introduction into the farm. The North Ants developed an extensive tunnel network. The South Ants dug a smaller network as far from the North Ants as they could. Soon the South Ants began to turn up dead - with heads and body parts removed, which suggests that natural causes weren't likely. We never witnessed the attacks; those North Ants were stealthy! The South Ants were all dead within three weeks. Then the North Ants began to die off. Soon we were left with one lone ant. We called him Jack. As in "Jack the Ant-Ripper." It's possible we just had an unusually aggressive bunch of ants - or perhaps just one unusually aggressive ant named Jack. We're planning to order some new ants from a different source to see if they get along any better.

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