NAVADEALAnt Farm Castle 2.0 with Connecting Tube, Ant Habitat Science Learning Kit, Best STEM 2021 Educational Kids Toy, Study Insect Behavior at Home & School, Plant Based Blue Gel 3D Maze Ecosystem

The media could not be loaded. This ant farm is awesome functions well and it’s fun to watch the ants. We bought it for our 5 year old and he loves it! We may even buy another one to attach and make it larger!- it does Not come with ants (as the description says. We bought ours from the suggested website and they worked well.- per other reviewers suggestion, we scuffed up the middle tube to help give the ants some grip because it is slippery. I do think it helped, as our ants can get to the top using it.

First it clearly states it doesn't come with ants. So a little... short sighted not to read the description of the thing you're buying.I say it's nearly ready to go. The tubes included dont fit perfectly in the holes. You can grind down the sides of the tube by rubbing it on concrete or brick. You won't be removing the tubes much or maybe at all once you put the ants inside but too increase the longevity I'd grind down the sides on the ends a bit.The instructions say they'll eat seeds. I gave them Kentucky Bluegrass and bits of pretzel cracker. They'd probably like poppy seeds too.They'll likely make the "graveyard" in the bottom corner. Which has a plug so you can clean it but you shouldn't be too alarmed. But it will need to be cleaned eventually. (See pic 5 & 6)It's sturdy enough to handle but if you dropped it on a hard surface it'll likely break beyond repair but you never really know.

I'm disappointed that mine has a 1/2 inch wide gap in the blue gel on the side.But other than that, this is pretty neat!I didn't want to purchase ants. Since ants live practically everywhere, it seems stupid to spend $18 on ants and shipping, so I used a mason jar and caught some in my yard.I put about 100 ants and maybe 50 ant eggs inside this ant farm, and it's pretty cool.The ants have made 8 tunnels in 2 days. I'm hoping one of my eggs is a queen, and they will reproduce.They sell blue gel refills on Amazon, so it should be simple enough to keep them happy and busy.The ants have mostly "moved into" the gel area, so I didn't mind getting dirt inside the feeding area because that was the only way to get all the eggs.Once the ants have completely settled in, and finished moving the eggs into the gel, which was neat to watch, I will just vacuum out the dirt with the vacuum hose.And the holes in the feeding area where too big so the ants I collected were getting out. I had to put tape on them. But they aren't coming out of the holes in the top of the gel.Pretty cool though.

It's fair to say that we didn't know a ton about housing ants before this purchase, but my son really wanted ants. I researched a bit, read many reviews, and took some time to make the decision to purchase this ant habitat. I liked the idea that the gel was nutritious for them. However, when I received this thing, the gel looked like it had shrunk far from its original state inside the habitat (like maybe it had been sitting too long and dried out).Despite that, we purchased and received 2 tubes of harvester ants and place them inside. The first thing we notice is how difficult it was for them to get to the food and water. The ones who got down there couldn't get back up without assistance. It seems the tubes are too smooth and when they tried to climb up they just slide right back down. Many ants were stuck in the bottom beneath the "feeding" area. It took them almost an entire week to start tunneling into the gel. They did not previously seem interested in the gel at all, and before that point had just been using the space along the edges and ends where the gel had shrunk and separated from the walls of the habitat. This includes all the way along the bottom underneath the gel.As I don't claim to be an expert on ants or their behaviors, it still seems to me that it's silly to think the ants are going to use this space the way we want them to. I had created a solution for the tube to help them get up and down. The first solution was non-toxic, waterbased paint. I thought maybe they just need something to grip. But they didn't like it and stopped using the tube all together, so I cleaned out the tube and simply used a hard brush to scratch the plastic on the inside to give them something to hang onto. Once they were able to go up and down more effectively, they proceeded to bring chunks of the gel down and put them all over their little water pad. I'm confused by that behavior but I'm sure there's a reason. They seem to also be placing trash on it, and I wonder, where are they going to get water from?Also, the instructions say to place the second water pad on the bottom floor of the feeding area for extra moisture in the habitat. The problem with this is that the only way to do that is to open one of the bottom holes, for example by pulling out the tube and that's just not a great idea in my opinion. So once that pad dries... It's just dry.The ants finally seem to be making this place their home after a couple of weeks, though I still can't claim to understand their behavior. Maybe I'm missing something. My son is happy with the ants, and the habitat overall but I think it could have been in better condition. I'm a bit concerned because they don't seem to be using the food and water area the way we had expected. There is a hole on the very bottom underneath the feeding area explained in the instructions as a way to dump out the dead ants, but who's to say this is where they will place them? And either way it seems a bit difficult to "dump" them effectively without escaping ants.Overall it was a decent purchase and has at least made my son smile for a time, but I think we will consider transferring our ants to something different.

It's very small. The gel was maybe half full. The tube's aren't long enough to reach where it's supposed to go not only that,the enclosure is not enclosed at all. It is not at all boy proof. Two lids come off easy. Ants will be everywhere but in this container.

My granddaughter loves this. Takes it with her everywhere. Her mom says it is well made, seems very secure, ants will not escape.

The media could not be loaded. The key to setting one of these ant farm is to be patient. The ants are not including you you do have to order them separately. The ants at first stay still and may look like that are dead but that’s not the case, that are actually slowly digging. In 3 days your ant farm will start to form. It’s very cool and your kids will love observing this. Easy to assemble , good quality , small but spacious.

Not happy with this farm. The gel is not filled to the bottom so the ants are not tunneling because they made one tunnel and are all just hanging out at the bottom. I wanted to return it but not sure how since the ants are already in the enclosure