We Have Life!

At this point it's reeaaaally hard to tell, with the eggs floating around constantly in the water, but I can tell by the spazzy movements of some of the flecks that some sea monkeys have hatched! There's no way to tell how many...






I'm going to take the advice of the aquarticle on raising "large brine shrimp" and wait 24 hours to feed them. I plan to grind up the spriulina flakes into a fine powder and do as he suggested, wetting the tip of a match (or in my case probably a chopstick or something) and dipping it in the spirulina powder, then swishing it around in the water. He suggests to do this twice a day, but since they are so tiny and I'm not raising a huge crop of them, I think I will do it once a day for now until I can better assess how many there are.

So excited!!!

Tough Little Guys

Sea monkeys are incredibly tough little guys. Even though most of my population was wiped out immediately when I transferred them to the new tank, I've been seeing 2-3 sea monkeys at a time moving around in there until yesterday, when I'm sorry to say the last one must have died.

It's amazing to think of what they can endure. I hate that they were suffering...I had a little water left in the old tank, and I considered trying to rescue them. However, on the advice of a responsible fish owner, I decided not to shock them again by moving them a second time, even if it was to more hospitable conditions.

I still can't bring myself quite yet to turn the pump off, just in case there are one or two still alive hidden in the fake plant. I am going away this weekend, and I will be picking up some brine shrimp eggs and aquarium or sea salt (since there seems to be no preference, I will just get whatever is cheaper). Next week I begin setting up the tank again!

Sea Monkeys, 1 month old

These are some pictures of my sea monkeys taken June 13th, so they were about a month or so old. Unfortunately, due to over-hasty and under-informed movement to the new tank, they are no more. :( I am really upset about this, since they were just getting big enough to really see and enjoy, and for it to really feel like a loss. Poor little guys. I'll do better next time.

Sea Monkeys FTW!

I really like sea monkeys, or brine shrimp, or whatever you want to call them. Unfortunately it seems very hard to find information on sea monkeys OR brine shrimp (the official sea monkey site claims there is a distinct difference, but I have yet to see proof of this).

Most information on brine shrimp all relates to how to hatch them so you can feed them to your "real" pets. Well, these are my "real" pets. They are really cool! I put my sea monkey eggs in water May 18, 2011, so they're about 3 weeks old, now. The largest ones are about half a centimeter long.

Anyway, I'll get into the specifics in another post. The point is, I made this blog so that the next time someone went looking for information on sea monkeys, they would find more than I did. I don't really know what I'm doing, so there's going to be a lot of trial and error. But my goal is to have a healthy, sustainable sea monkey population that lasts at least a few years.