Ant farm in need of GID mod

[bridaw]

Anyone else have the AntWorks ant farm? If you like things that glow blue you might want one. It makes the entire room glow blue at night. Red and green gel/LEDs are supposed to be available later this year. The LED base is just begging for pure blue glow goo to fill space around the LEDs. I might also detail a thin line of paint around the bottom inside edge of the tank because so far it spends 50% of the time off the LED base.

The blue LEDs light up the gel and the tunnels but it is is easier to see the ants moving in the tunnels with the light off. The ants are really fun to watch. I have some macro focus movies looking through the gel behind the "rock face" while they pierce and cut the gel. Ants love LEDs. I left the LEDs on over night and they tunneled straight for the lights.

When the colony (or two) has died out they sell a product called antworks sculpture. You pour resin down the tunnels and once cured, you wash away the gel. I want to use glow resin! Has anyone already done this? Is there a medium for the glow powder that would flow better into the tunnel systems than the devcon two-ton?

click if you want larger pics




More pictures
LEDs off: IMG_1124.jpg and IMG_1137.jpg

Ants up close: IMG_1146.jpg, IMG_1153.jpg, IMG_1160.jpg
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[BIGIRON]

That's cool stuff.

Ain't CPF a great place.

 

[Flash_Gordon]

Ant farm mods? A first even for CPF, I'll guess.

 

[VidPro]

I left the LEDs on over night and they tunneled straight for the lights.

so would you if you thought it was the way OUT

 

[RonM]

I gave one of those to my nephew for his birthday. He loves it! I had it sent directly to him so I haven't seen it yet. My brother and sister-in-law of course got a kick out of my finding an antfarm with LEDs. Thanks for the pics.

 

[Ken_McE]

So, if you feed them sugared glow powder, can you get the ants to glow too?

 

[SuperNinja]

So, if you feed them sugared glow powder, can you get the ants to glow too?

No, just their poop.

 

[Skylighter]

We have a customer that bought several pounds of glow powder to feed to live fishing worms. He claims they would eat it and glow.

We always wondered if it really worked or not.

 

[BIGIRON]

Don't know the process, but green nitecrawlers are readily available commercially. Haven't tried them so don't know if they lite up or not.

 

[snakebite]

isnt glowpowder some sort of metal sulphides like crt phosphors?
seems it would kill anything that eats it.
hmmm glowing dead ants.easy to find and sweep up.

 

[LuxLuthor]

That is pretty cool. IMHO, these ants look pretty pissed off. I would have nightmares about them settling their score.

...................................

 

[greenlight]

We have a customer that bought several pounds of glow powder to feed to live fishing worms. He claims they would eat it and glow.

We always wondered if it really worked or not.

They're not 'bio-lumenescent', so the glow would likely be faint, and would need to be charged well, too. Shounds like a ruse to me.

 

[bridaw]

I did eventually mod the ant farm LED base and here are some pictures.

I ended up using green paint instead of glow-goo. I built up layers of Ultra Green Plus v9. I mixed the can too well at first but I didn't mind the air bubbles in the first layers. I rolled the can to mix the paint for the rest of the layers which resulted in less air mixed into the paint. You might notice some blue. I was going to top off the green paint with some blue glow silicon but I changed my mind and pumped it into plastic tubes instead.

Here the base is masked off and the LEDs covered with sections of drinking straw and tape. I originally thought I would fill the entire base with thick silicon goo instead of layering paint.



Here is a picture in the dark before I finished applying layers of paint.



Here is the finished product. I used a craft knife to cut around the straws so you can see the dark damaged paint particles around the LEDs. I tried the "painting with light" technique so you can see the glow and the object glowing.



When the blue LEDs are on they only charge the glow paint in a ring around the LED. I use a flashlight to give the paint a good charge. This is a 15 second exposure so the glow is deeper than real life.

 

[greenlight]

I've noticed that, too, that only the GID near the LEDs gets charged. The ant farm wil look best if charged in sunlight, I expect. I hope those ants can get some sleep!!!

Maybe next time you want to add some GID sand to the mixture, to make it all glow.