So, I’ve got a set of sea monkeys to keep me entertained. I’ve had them for about 3 weeks, and I just looked over and noticed one on top of the other one, and them swimming around erratically. For some reason, I thought sea monkeys would mate much like fish. The female would lay the eggs, and then the male would come along and fertalize them. So, were my sea monkeys fighting, or were they just f*cking?
Yeah, this was supposed to be in GQ…how’d I muddle that up.
I’m not sure about the whole mating thing… I had a bunch of sea monkeys die, until there was only one left in the tank. Weeks later, there were suddenly a batch of brand new sea monkeys. Maybe the one was already fertilized? I dunno. Confusing little buggers.
(Then I went on vacation for two and a half weeks. My cube neighbor fed them a coupla times, but all but 4 were dead when I came back. Now there’s only one; I’m waiting to see if s/he spontaneously reproduces, too.)
Brine shrimp lay eggs, so it’s possible that a bunch of fertilized eggs were just laying around in the tank somewhere.
According to the manual as I remember it, your Sea Monkeys were doing the reproduction dance.
If you look at a lady Sea Monkey you’ll see a dark mass in her abdomen if she’s knocked up. Again per the manual, the eggs can be dormant for a while and then suddenly hatch. That is after all how the Sea Monkeys get to you in the first place; dormant fertilized eggs get shipped out in the kit. I have a tank where all the Sea Monkeys shuffled off this mortal coil and then a week or so later I had an active tank again. Later the tank died out again and I’ve been patiently waiting for it to spring forth anew but alas it has yet to happen.
Have you let the water evaporate, and then rehydrate the tank? That’s what you’re supposed to do.
First, just to clear up one misconception, while some fish are egg-layers, many others are “live-bearers,” such as mollies and guppies. In the case of sea monkeys, apparently they can mate both sexually and asexually!
As for what your sea monkeys were doing, indeed they were mating. Here’s a cute web page that has videos of sea monkeys mating so you can compare the behavior to what you saw: http://www.seamonkeyworship.com/smvideos.htm
I’ve been evaporating for months. Not sure why it’s such slow going.
Did you take the lid off?
Hey now, I’m pretty sure that violates the two click rule 
No, no, no . . .
[sigh]
Let me explain things to you. If you look at a lady Sea Monkey you’ll see a blonde flip hairdo. If you look at a male Sea Monkey, you’ll see a crown, and he may be tolding a trident, too.
::slowly takes the pamphlet out of Eve’s hands::
(I think my kids were expecting exactly that, though)
It would be a mistake at this point to mention that I feed brine shrimp to my Killifish, wouldn’t it?
Big deal. I used to feed the little seamonkeys to several different varieties of tropical fish.
Then I can count on you.
So, has anyone besides this guy tried to replicate Cartman’s famous experiment with sea monkeys?
A blonde flip doesn’t preclude her having a dark mass in her belly. Look at Samantha on Bewitched.
No, and if you try to come over and jizm in my Sea Monkeys, bad things will happen.
Bad, bad things.