Ant Farm Stores Review

Ant farms have been enjoyed for decades as a way to witness the behavior of these fascinating creatures as they eat, make tunnels and work to maintain their habitat. Ant farms are usually populated with no more than 20 ants, but even in that small group the ants will work together to dig interlinking tunnels that can be observed from the sides of the habitat.

This review site examines the top ant farm stores to determine the best source for these timeless toys. We compare the various sellers for their selection of ant farms, their live ant purchase policies, their selection of other small animal kits and related products, the features of their websites and the accessibility of their customer services.

How Did We Rate the Ant Farm Stores?

Ant Farm Selection
First we have examined what types of ant farms are available from each seller, including color varieties and self-sustained kits.

Modern ant farm kits may be filled with soil or sand, or with the new space-age gel material that contains all the nourishment the ants need to survive. Traditional ant habitats required you to provide small bits of food and water for the ants, whereas the gel provides food, water and a substrate for the farm. The gel-filled ant farms offer greater transparency so the ants can be observed from anywhere in the habitat.

Live Ant Purchase Terms
Ant farms are pretty boring without the live ants and most kits (for obvious reasons) don’t come with ants in the box. Some ant farm stores offer the option to order the live ants along with the kit, but most kits come with a certificate for live ants that must be mailed in along with a check to cover the ants’ shipping.

We examined whether each site offered the option of ordering the ants at the same time, whether the ants come from a separate company, and whether the company offers free replacement ants if the first shipment ends up being DOA (dead on arrival).

Some kits don’t come with ants at all, but rather include a small tool for collecting native ants from outside. If you select one of these kits and don’t want to collect your own ants, you can still choose to order your own ants from an online vendor.

Some live ant sellers will only ship during certain months of the year. You may also be required to select express shipping to assure that the ants arrive as quickly as possible. Before making a final ant farm selection, you should check the specifications of the product and make sure you know what you’ll have to do when it comes time to order the ants.

Product Selection
For each ant farm store we surveyed, we looked for similar products that offer the same type of educational, animal-related enjoyment as ant farms. These kits are designed as a way to observe animals in a safe, quasi-natural environment. Equally as popular as ant farms are butterfly kits and frog kits, both of which provide the opportunity to observe metamorphosis first-hand. Some of these kit animals are designed to end up as pets, while others (like the butterflies) should be released outside at the end of the growth period.

Insects are a great candidate for this type of kit because they are small and require little space or food to maintain. In addition to ant farms, many of the sites surveyed carry praying mantis kits, ladybug kits and worm farms.

Website Features
The best websites make it easy to find, sort, browse and select products. Browsing products on a website is different from browsing at a store. On a website, shoppers can’t simply look at all the products at once; there has to be a system of organization. We examined each site’s options for browsing families of products, and for sorting products by type, price or age range. The product recommendation feature is also helpful, and highlights products you might be interested in based on what you’ve viewed so far. Product recommendations can also be based on what other customers bought together with the products you’ve viewed.

When shopping online, product listings with photographs and detailed descriptions are essential because the shopper cannot actually see the product. Equally useful are customer reviews in which other customers report on their experiences with the product in question.

We also examined whether the websites offered educational or informational content such as a blog. For a product like ant farms that requires some specialized knowledge and extra care, informational articles can be most useful and can increase people’s enjoyment of these products.

Help/Support
Finally, we looked at how easy each company makes it to get help from a customer care representative. Particularly when dealing with a product containing perishable or live components, shoppers need to make sure that they’ll be able to talk to someone if the product is dead or expired on arrival. Due to temperature changes, shipping conditions and other factors, it is not uncommon for some or all of the live ants to perish during shipping, leaving the ant farm owner to seek replacement ants.

Ant farms seem to be a simple product but buying one turns out to be a complicated process. Not only is it important to choose a reliable seller, but it is essential that you thoroughly research the specific kit you plan to buy. If you want to give an ant farm as a gift, make sure you find out beforehand whether the ants will need to be ordered separately because live ants may take up to several weeks to arrive and some sellers will only ship them from March through October.

Be sure to read our articles related to ant farms as well as our complete side-by-side comparison to see our selections of the top ant farm stores such as Amazon, Butterfly & Nature Gift Store and Insect Kits.

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