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Museum Store Company : The Finest Selection of Historic and Museum Jewelry, Art History Replicas and Museum Reproductions! Own a Piece of History...Give a Piece of History (tm) MuseumStoreCompany.com | |  | Science Toys & Kits | Home » » Fascinations AntWorks Illuminated Blue | | | | | | WARNING:| CHOKING HAZARD -- Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs. |
| | | Description: | | 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 ?. | | | 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
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 9.0 inches | | Product Width:
| 9.0 inches | | Product Height:
| 4.0 inches | | Product Weight:
| 2.3 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.5 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 3.5 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.3 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 175 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 175 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
340 of 342 found the following review helpful:
 Great conversation piece for the officeMar 20, 2007
By M. Kooiman
"nerdette"
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.
269 of 273 found the following review helpful:
Helpful Tips!!!Mar 22, 2006
By T. Burke
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!
145 of 148 found the following review helpful:
Lots of fun for all ages!Dec 20, 2005
By Learning All The Time
"It's Never Too Late to be what you might have been..."
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.
44 of 45 found the following review helpful:
Amazing entertainmentJan 28, 2006
By Richard Lee
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.
29 of 29 found the following review helpful:
The NEW wave of ant farms is here!Oct 13, 2006
By Father of Four Sons
"Dad of Four Sons"
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.
See all 175 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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