What is in those little extra packets they sell on the website–“Sea-Diamonds”? Do they actually “play” with these as the website claims? It seems unlikely–do they swim around the Sea-Diamonds looking for food or shelter? What is the stuff that makes them grow quickly? Is their growth just limited by how much food is in their tank? Do they really need vitamins?
What kind of behaviors or interesting features should I be looking out for in the Sea-Monkeys? I have already been informed, to my great dismay, that they will not actually wear crowns or swim trunks.
Tell me everything! I get to add my instant-hatch eggs to the brine tomorrow. I am very excited.
Actually, if you follow the “Sea Monkeys” link in the brine shrimp article, you will find everything (apparently) you ever wanted to know about your new creatures. Honestly, I didn’t think you could write so much on Sea Monkeys.
I don’t know about sea diamonds, though. I just had a little plastic tank to which I added the “magic powder”. Within about 3 days there were easily identifiable specks floating around in the water, and within a week, they were easily identified as being vaguely shrimplike.
The best thing about sea monkeys was, even when they were all dead (as they were when I went on vacation for two weeks) I simply added water to the mostly dried out tank, and within a week I had a fairly healthy little population going again. Forget cockroaches - when the nuclear holocaust comes, the world will be ruled by little brine shrimp bearing crowns and tridents
Thanks, but the Wikipedia article basically just regurgitates the Sea-Monkey marketing copy. I was hoping for some more scientific or first-hand observer commentary–instead of “Gro-Kwikly helps your Sea-Monkeys grow at an amazing rate!” I’d love some kind of explanation like “Brine shrimp growth is regulated by chemical X and the Gro-Kwikly powder acts to stimulate production of chemical X”–or however it works.
Or “When you see them swimming in pairs, they’re not surfing, they’re making baby Sea-Monkeys.”
The ‘special sea monkey food’, sold in tiny little packets for quite a high price, is just baker’s yeast; in the wild, these creatures graze on phytoplankton; yeast isn’t the same thing, but it’s close enough.
Sea Monkeys, were invented by Harold von Braunhut who died last year. His obituary was in the Telegraph. He introduced Artemia nyos tot eh world in 1960 as ‘Instant life,’ but changed the name to Sea Monkey in 1962, and sales soared.
They were a bit of a craze. Their are Sea Monkey fan clubs, a Sea Monkey video game, and CBS once had a Sea Monkey animated series.
He died at age 77 in Maryland where he was working on a pet lobster and an instant frog.
Brine Shrimp live in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. If you go there you’ll find yourself swimming in tepid water containing hundreds of the damned things in every cubic foot. THey look like little feathers from your pillow with two little black specks at the end for eyes. The shrimp evidently eat the phytoplankton that can live in high salt content water. The shrimp die and end up on the shores, which have a dense cloud of black flies who I presume are eating the shrimp. There are also seagulls eating, I presume, the flies. Part of that Great Circle of Life.
You can go to the GSL and scoop up all the shrimp you want. You can go to pet supply stores and buy containers of dry brine shrimp eggs (people rasise them to feed fish). Or you can buy Sea Monkeys.
There are/were companies selling sealed glass spheres with a little bit of plant material and some brine shrimp. Supposed to be self contained, all it needed was some light, but not sunlight I’d guess. :eek:
Any dopers have experience with one of these/ How long did the brine shrimp survive?
I had one of the sealed shrimp-spheres. The shrimp were about the same size as brine shimp, but they were bright red. I think they lived for about five years on a shelf, with no maintenance at all.
The show Amazing Live Sea Monkeys was not animated. It was live action with three actors in prosthetics playing Sea Monkeys. It also had Howie Mandell as the scientist whose ray grew them to human size.
