NAVAdeal Connecting Ant Farm Castle with Tubes, Habitat Educational & Learning Science Kit Toy for Kids & Adults - Allows Study of Ecosystem, Behavior of Ants within the 3D Maze of Translucent Gel

My students love it! It's so fun to watch the ants make tunnels. * Ants are not included with purchase. I buy butterfly nets that include coupon codes for caterpillars. That is not included with this.

Pro: it has a complicated lay out which is fun for ants and comes with whole tool set to watch, observe and sustain.Cons it is relatively small about a palm size i would expext it to be biggerYou will have to order or catch big size ants ( best place to find them on the beach- sprinkle some crumbs and wait) itherwise small ants can escape and ruin the whole experience

Got this for my kids. The first one we got the gel was too hard (maybe because it's winter) but the ants couldn't dig through for two weeks. So we got a replacement and after only a few days they already got a long tunnel through! It's nice and easy to set up. For precaution we taped the lids down. (Remember to poke holes through tape for air holes) There are two separate lids. One smaller for feeding area and larger one on top. They were both secured. No gaps or holes. There are some smaller holes on sides with removable covers to put in the tubes. Which we also did after week. Other reviewers mentioned how ants struggled to climb tubes so we put little "climbing ropes" into tubes as well, taped. I thought it helped the ants. The blue gel is beautiful to look at. The kids love looking at ants moving in all areas. You can remove small covered hole on top and drip water through there as well. Accessories included were: water dropper pipette, magnifying glass, 2 water sponge cloths, 2 tubes, and plastic tweezer which we used for feeding and cleaning. Most likely you got harvester ants so just be careful with opening lids to clean and feed. Keep ants in and watch out for bites! It was easy to transport ants from old to new (and you could connect more than 1 together). The holes are big enough to grab ants and small enough that they aren't spilling out and hurting you.

My son was dieing for an ant farm . He searched and searched and found this one. The gel was nice because unlike dirt you can see easily . We did have an ant farm with sand and I think it was equally visible. The tubing was nice to see the ants in action .

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.