• Vivid Blue gel lights up with a bright blue LED!

The Antworks Habitat and the Antworks Illuminator are all in one box. It includes a removable LED Illuminator with power adaptor, nutrient gel, magnifying glass, extreme zoom lens, ant catching/tunnel starting tool, and instruction booklet with interesting facts about ants. The ants not included, order form enclosed on back page of booklet. Item dimensions: 6.5 x 6 x 1.25 .

Customer Rating:
Summary: My son loves it
Comment: This is so cool to watch. My son gets so excited to see a new tunnel dug by his ants. Its a fantastic night light in his room too.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very cool
Comment: This is my first ant farm, and I have to say it's been a lot of fun to see my ants develop a tunnel system in the transparent gel. The LED lights create a futuristic kind of feel, and are handy because you don't have to worry about having another light source to see what they're doing.

A couple of notes: I started by catching some small ants behind my home, but they found a way to escape, I never did find out exactly how, but i purchased some harvester ants online and haven't had any problems. Also the gel in the farm didn't conform perfectly to the inside walls, so there was a gap that ants ended up sliding down into, but none died as a result, and the ants eventually dug in such a way that rendered the gap harmless. I did email the Fascinations website about both of these issues, but never received any kind of reply.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: the girls are busy!!!
Comment: hi all!

(update) its now a couple months later and the girls are still goin strong! only two have died. the rest are happily doin their lil anty things! i love this item! almost no care is required to provide your colony with a happy healthy anty sorta life...(they are diggin a new tunnel as i type this...use the 'super zoom' magnifier! its awesome!!!)

looking forward to my next colony and habitat!

(orig. review)...

first understand. when you order this product. you will not get ants with it! its no big deal, jus use the included forms to order your ant colony (i went with edmunds scientific, and was thrilled with the service. I RECOMEND UPS 2ND DAY AIR!!! specially now that its winter! it took about a week (have to wait till conditions are good to ship your new pets) and the ants arrived in a vial with a lil heat pack to keep them comfy...(only three out of thirty didnt make it...not bad)

it cost an extra ten bux to get the ants...

i popped them into their new home and waited to see what they would do... and they surprised me!

the kit comes with a 'starter hole tool' to poke lil holes in the gel for the girls (you will learn ALL ants that do anything meaningfull in day to day activities are girls) and they promptly ignored the holes i poked for them and started their own digs! (women)

i got the 'harvester' species of ants. and when they got here they were pretty tiny and brown. but now a couple weeks later, they are black and HUGE! (be carefull when cracking the lid to give them air!)

they are now happily diggin tunnels all over the place! its sooo cool to see them in this gel stuff! like they live in 'solid water'

they have made lots of tunnels and connections and picked out a spot at the bottom left corner where they like to go to sleep...at any one time i see most of them now snoozin...while a few wander around. then sometimes they all wake up at once and start a new connecting tunnel...

all the surviving ants from the shipment are still goin strong and i hope they live long and happy lives (for ants) and am lookin forward to a new colony (and probably and new habitat...or maybe ill get a new colony for this current habitat, and a new hab. and colony. and compare their activities!)

jus so you know...im 44. but this is really cool! if you have kids and want to get this for them. i recomend it! (just use some comon sense supervision)

really cool great item!

update...weeks later...

the girls are still goin strong! a few have died...the others are happily tunneling away still! try the super magnifier you get with the habitat! really gets you CLOSE to your new friends!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great fun
Comment: I received one of these ant farms for Christmas last year and waited all winter for the ants. Once we got them they went nuts!! The entire family enjoyed watching these busy workers dig and dig. But after a few months they just stopped digging. A few died but the others just stood around. I let that go on a few weeks even after poking a couple new holes on the top of the gel but they just would not dig any longer. So I let them go and ordered a second batch and they dug like crazy for a couple months then just stopped.

The tunnel system they left behind is amazing. There is a product made by antworks called "Antworks sculpture kit". It consist of a illuminated base and a two part resin. After the ants are done digging you rinse the ant farm out with water, let dry and mix and pour the resin in the gel with tunnels. It fills up the tunnels and hardens into a hard clear plastic. You rinse the gel away and you have a very nice illuminated work of art. Just do a google search for antworks products. You can even get replacement gel for the antfarm to do it all over again.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Ant Farm
Comment: Pretty cool educational toy. The ant farm is a whole lot smaller than I anticipated, but it's still interesting. Out of 20 ants shipped to me, only 8 made it here alive. The cool part was that the alive ants sequestered their dead comrades into a makeshift graveyard and then walled them off in gel. It took them about 5 days to start digging, but once they started it was fascinating stuff. Thumbs up.

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