Customer Reviews

Fascinations AntWorks Illuminated Blue

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4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

My son gave me this ant farm for Christmas this year. I ordered the ants the next day and then started waiting. The unused ant farm sat in my office and my coworkers all wanted to know what it was. Their first comment was "it didn't come with the ants?" The answer is "of course not, they would be dead by the time someone bought it." You have to order your ants and it can take a long time for them to come in, especially in the winter.

It took several weeks for the ants to arrive. They come in a small brown pouch containing one vial of ants and are delivered via the post office. I carefully read the instructions as the ants had large mandibles and didn't look too happy about being in such a small space. Into the refrigerator they went for just a few minutes and they I easily popped them into the habitat. It's been almost two months now and they have created a lot of tunnels and most are still alive. The gel in which they live is also their food. This is a nice feature since I don't like lifting the lid any more than I have to. These little guys want out.

In case you are wondering, you DO NOT get a queen so the ants will live their life expectancy and then die. You don't get baby ants without a queen.

The kit comes with instructions for collecting ants yourself, but I live in Texas where the only ants are fire ants. The instruction book tells you to NOT collect fire ants, nor army ants. The book that comes with the habitat has some basic ant info and was a fun read. If you are going to give this as a gift to a child, order the ants in advance because it could take a month to 6 weeks for your ants to arrive.

The Antworks antfarm is by far the best antfarm available. Forget about buying an antfarm with dirt or sand. With Antworks you can see right through the gel for optimal observation. Here are some helpful tips to make your ant watching experience the best possible!
Order your ants from Life Studies as suggested in other posts. However, go to http://www.infowest.com/life/ants.htm and order them online. I ordered them online and received them in 6 days! If you use the form that comes with Antworks, it will take longer, and there is nothing worse than staring at your Antworks with no ants!
The directions tell you to poke 4 holes in the gel with the included stick. Poke the holes in the gel next to the glass. This will assure that the ants will stay next to the glass when tunneling. With the tunnels next to the glass, you can see much better detail!
The directions tell you to open the top for a few seconds each week to allow new Oxygen inside. BE CAREFULL - the ants will swarm to the opening, so do it when no ants are near the top.
The ants are huge!! THEY WILL BITE!! Once you get your vile of ants, make sure they are on the bottom of the vile. Open the Antworks, open the vile, and tap them hard to drop them inside. If one falls outside of the Antworks, dont try to pick it up. It is probably best to just squash it!
Sit back and watch you ants build their world!

We bought this for our ant-obsessed son, and the whole family and all visitors have loved watching the ants work.

A couple of notes:

The life-span of the ants is about 3 months -- it's been exactly 3 months and we have about 4 living ants left.

The ants bite - at a science store where we bought the habitat, they had one on display. The cashier was trying to show me how you would clean out any dead ants, and when he lifted the lid, the ants swarmed out and a few bit him. I taped the lid shut to deter any kids from trying to open it.

If you refrigerate the habitat for 15 minutes, that will make the ants sluggish, and you can clean out any dead ants or excess gel that the ants bring to the surface. However, set a timer! Once I left the poor ants in the refrigerator for 2 hours and when I retrieved them they were all huddled at the bottom of the habitat. Fortunately, they all survived (although perhaps you should take the 3 month life-span with a grain of salt, given the extreme conditions they faced early in their habitat life).

Due to health and mortality concerns, my son would not allow me to put a drop of nail polish on the back of one ant so that we could name him and chart his/her progress. I think that would have made the habitat even more interesting, to be able to track one specific ant.

Also, the clerk at the science store said the gel is reusable, that is, when the old ants all die, I can add more ants. That would also be interesting - would they close off the old tunnels and build new ones? Would they use the ones that exist? Too bad I've misplaced the order form...

All in all, a very worthwhile $20.

The ant farm is truly a wonder. Smaller than expected, and the ants did take a long time to arrive, but well worth all the time invested.

There is one warning I would pass along, avoid ant bites at all costs. I would recommend the following ant loading technique:
1,Ants arrive in small test tube
2. open lid of ant works
3 open vial of ants and immediately place horizontally in antworks
4 CLOSE LID OF ANTWORKS !
5 wait until ants have calmed down to retrieve vial ( next day)

A harvester ant bite on my finger was instantly painful, just as one would imagine a bite by a pair of mandibles the size of an insects head would be. But that initial shock and pain paled in comparison with what was to come. Stoic Dad played down the initial pain in front of my 6 year old, but within the hour I knew that the little ant that my child had identified as the culprit had made a mess of my evening. A dull throbbing pain was creeping up my arm, my chest was feeling strange on my right side. What began as a little bite at 6:00pm, was by 10:00pm a fully engrossed groaning pain and paranoia as I lay completely collapsed into the couch. Retiring to bed was unthinkable as the pain alternated from dull throb to burning spear.
Finally laying in bed holding a bag of ice was quite the joke on me, $20 of ant farm was a far cry from where I was at the moment. Deep in my hand was the throbbing burning pain of certain stigmata. By morning thankfully , all symptoms were gone,(and no evidence of the aforementioned ) and the excited screamings of my six year old as to the ants progress was well worth the pain I had endured. ( And I am not allergic to bee stings )

PAy attention to the slip of paper that accompanies the ants, the sting is about 1000 times as painful as that sliver of paper can possibly warn of.

cheers and happy ant farming.

This leaves the sand-between-glass ant farms of old in the dust. The self contained nutrition, water, and living environment first of all make it incredibly simple. But the vantage point and clarity that the owner has of all things ant related is unsurpassed.
We've had ours for about four months. The ants have lived out their lives and we are on our second order of ants.

I suspect I would really like this item if I could only get Life Studies to send ants that still have a pulse (Do ants have pulses? I don't know. Why? Because I've no ants to observe). The first batch of ants arrived a month and a half after my check was cashed with every ant dead in the tube, the second batch hasn't arrived and numerous emails to Life Studies have gone unanswered. I've now owned this thing for four months and it's been empty the entire time. Normally, I wouldn't crab on about a consumables supply issue (it's a bit like filling a review of an automobile with complaints about motor oil) but a) the manufacturers of this item instruct you to buy ants from Life Studies and b) an ant farm without ants is not an ant farm, nor even a farm, it's a rather pricey blue night-light.

This is the nicest ant farm I've ever seen, the curve of the plastic reminds one of a deep sea aquarium exhibit. As mentioned, it's filled with a blue goo that the ants might tunnel through (not that I'd know, sans ants). The lights (four white LEDs) are in the base and cast a nice glow upwards through the gel medium; overall, it looks really neat in a darkened room, a bit like a swimming pool at night.

Be advised there's a smallish (about 2"x 1.5" x 1.5") wall-wart power supply on the end of the power cord, in case you plan to put this somewhere where you can't easily get to the outlet. There's no power switch to turn off the light, you have to unplug the power cord and as it winds through the base of the unit, it's easier to pull out at the wall end. The tank's clear plastic front scratches very easily but fortunately, the scratches buff out relatively well using toothpaste and are not generally visible when the unit's lights are on. My unit arrived 3/4s filled with goo--not full nearly to the top as shown on the product photos. That might be due to the lack of ant activity displacement, but in any case, that empty area tends to collect quite a bit of unsightly condensation.

I'll update this review if the ants ever arrive or when six months go by, whichever comes first.

Everyone in the family keeps checking up on the ants! It's really neat to see what they're up to all the time, and follow up on their progress with the tunneling. This provides a maintenance-free ongoing science lesson!

Ants are not included, but you can order them online - very inexpensive. They do, however, take a while to arrive, so you might want to order them at the same time you order the farm. You want harvester ants from Ants Alive...

Anyway, great product, very easy to set up and use, and very cool with the lights and everything. Fascinating to watch.

We bought our Antworks for our 7-year-old son, but everyone else has found it mesmerising. We live in Queensland, Australia, so the mail order Harvester ants available to US customers were not an option. There is an excellent local substitute, however, the green-headed ant - a little internet research will get you all the facts.

Our green-headed workers hesitated for an hour or two and then tunnelled like mad - beautiful, clear tunnels deep in the gel, criss-crossing and widening into hollows against the sides of the container. Their jaws are relatively large, and the small plastic jeweller's loupe supplied gives you a good view of the action as they bite off the gel and transport it to the top of the container. The blue medium seems to suit them admirably; most of our ants lived just over three months. We also bought the LED base, highly recommended despite the extra cost as it highlights the tunnels to great effect (and the blue glow is stunning in a darkened room). We suspect that the near-constant illumination may have shortened the ants' lives, however, as those in the mini-version of this product (purchased at the same time) enjoyed normal night and day cycles and are still going strong nearly a month after the last of the big colony citizens expired. The colony was easy to clean with a cotton-tipped swab, though you don't really need to do this as the gel contains fungicides that keep things pretty clean despite the litter of dead ant parts. When all the ants die, you can sluice out the gel under a gentle stream from the cold water tap (any debris deep in the tunnels just flushes out), tip it to drain, and start again. (You can re-set the gel into a solid block, too - wash it out, warm the container under hot water to slide it out, chop it up and melt in short bursts of a few seconds in the microwave (some users suggest adding a few drops of water for this). Cool slightly and pour back in.)

If you want to see the full life cycle in action, you'll need to catch a queen. There are no commercial retailers of queen ants here that I've been able to discover, but I understand that the winged queens often fall into pools and cluster near windows after nuptial flights on warm evenings. The advice from a local forum is to collect these into a container with a lid and leave them overnight. You'll be able to recognise the fertilised queens in the morning, as they will shed their wings.

In summary: a great product which can work anywhere.

My boys (3 and 5) love their new ant friends, and check in on them throughout the day to marvel at their tunnelling success. But I think I like it even more! I catch myself sitting down and watching them for 15 mnutes at a time. Even better than a fish tank. I would recommend this for kids 5 and up, and adults, too! My one complaint is that the ants do not come with it, which was disappointing. My Dad got this for the kids and thought ants were included. They only cost 4 dollars and take about a week to arrive.

Futuristic ant farm includes blue spacey gel that ants create a little habitat out of. No need to add food or water - very simple. Cool tank design! Recommend sending away for the ants using the form in the packaging. Collecting your own can be a pain and risky in the south - fire ants! Also - if you mix ant types by mistake (they look alike sometimes) - you may have an ant war on your hands. Get the Ant Illuminator night light (sold Sep) if you can. Makes it even cooler.