Sad to say, my earlier batch of baby sea monkeys hatched from brine shrimp eggs did not survive into adulthood. It may be due to several reasons why they die a premature death:-

(1) Poor water quality - cloudy water was one thing; another was that 30 g aquarium salt cannot be fully dissolved at room temperature. Some of the salt settled to the bottom; undissolved.

(2) Biochemical reasons - The mini-oxygen balls which I have planted at the bottom of the tank gave the salt water a blue discoloration. I have rinsed them several times before use, but the water is still blue. Whatever chemicals present in those blue balls must have killed the poor sea monkeys

Anyway, I bought a pack of adult sea monkeys at one dollar from a neighbourhood aquarium shop and tadda, my new colony of sea monkeys!

This time, you can see the swimming creatures very clearly from afar. No need to press your nose to your computer screen And notice the beautiful set-up? The center-piece is a resin ornament I have picked up from the same aquarium shop. The colourful pebbles just make my day - only 80 cents! The same things would have cost a bomb at a you-know-where aquarium inside a popular shopping mall.

I am so happy with the design of my sea monkey castle. It also has a matching hello kitty LED lamp illuminating from above. There’s a plastic lid (not in picture) to reduce evaporation and keep the flying insects away from the water.

The next day, some sea monkeys gave birth to live babies! The bottom photo shows two sea monkeys clinging onto each other - mating. They can remain in this position for days, and you can see two of them swimming around everywhere like some conjoint twins. How fascinating!

This time, I boiled my de-chlorinated water for several minutes and kept stirring in the aquarium salt and bicarbonate soda (added as a buffer to increase the pH; sea monkeys like alkaline water). I left the brine mixture to cool overnight and sift the water through a fine mesh net to get rid of whatever undissolved salt. The water is much clearer after the painstaking preparation. Hopefully, the colony is able to thrive for at least 2 weeks to make me happy before I feed them to my pair of gluttony goldfishes - Wally and Molly. I have read on some websites that people kept generations after generations of sea monkeys for more than a few years!

I have dropped a few sea monkeys into the fish tank, much to the anticipation of Wally and Molly. Their eyes lit up when they saw the live food wriggling in the water. As usual, Molly was the big winner of the day - eating twice as much sea monkeys as Wally. Those adorable babies. Heh.

This post is filed under Pet Shop.