So here's my task for today: cleaning out the kids' little Sea Monkey tanks.
Let's just say I'm glad I'm not a Sea Monkey. They, um, swim around in their own poop, for heaven sake. POOP.
I'm OK with the algae, because that is supposedly what they eat. J's tank has a nice layer of green at the bottom (but not A's - it's a little strange since both tanks have gotten identical treatment and sun exposure). Not only that, the algae doesn't go floating around in the tank, making the water all cloudy, with the... you guessed it. Poop. (Watching them poop was slightly amusing at first but having to finally clean up after it is not).
Here's the dilemma. They need their same, treated water, so I can't simply refill the tanks with new stuff. What I've done instead is dumped the monkeys, grungy water and all, into a clean bowl, and am waiting for all the floaties to settle to the bottom. Then I ever so carefully, scoop by scoop, return the monkeys and their treated water back to the tanks.
The problem is, every time I scoop, it stirs up the gunk at the bottom and re-mixes it with the water. I can only do about 2-3 scoops before I have to walk away and let it sit again for about half an hour.
This might take all day. If anyone has any alternate suggestions that might work, feel free to leave a comment :)
(translation.... heeeelllp!!)
lol
Mar 10, 2009
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i haven't tried this yet so check with your local pet shop. sea monkeys are brine shrimp and can live in a wide range of concentrations of salt water. since they can be eaten easily by other animals that live in salt water they are rarely found there, but rather in super salty water that other animals can't live in. my assumption has been that they can live in the salt water that you can purchase at a pet shop. so i'm hoping to take my kids' sea monkeys and put them in a larger tank with fresh salt water. this should improve the longevity of the monkeys. untested as of yet but i'm hoping it will work. fyi, found this blog post by searching twitter for 'sea monkey' :) good luck. http://twitter.com/chrysanthalbee
ReplyDeleteThanks!! I've thought about doing that too - simply salinating some new room temp. distilled water. I might try it.
ReplyDeleteWhat I ended up doing was straining the water through a paper towel - the tanks are really clean and the sea monkeys seem really happy now (zipping around like mad). The only problem with this (I thought of this later) is that I may have strained out new eggs that were too small to see. Oh well, hopefully they'll lay more...
)= Twitter
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