Sea Monkeys!

Here's a blast from the past: Sea Monkeys! Sea Monkeys were "invented" in 1957 by Harold von Braunhut, who also invented X-ray glasses. The concept is you put packets of powder in tap water, leave it for a day, then put in the tiny eggs packet and they hatch instantly! I never had sea monkeys growing up (I went for the ant farm), but I'm sure a lot of you recognize the little colored packets.

This is my setup: I decided to forego the traditional 12 oz (1.5 cup) plastic tank in favor of a larger and rather prettier glass jar that could hold 8-10 cups of water. I filled it with 7.5 cups of boiled water with dissolved sea salt, and 1.5 cups of plain boiled water, since the packet contains some salt. I figured it would be cheaper than buying 8 sets of packets. Hopefully the sea monkeys will survive! The two rocks at the bottom have veins of opal in them-- I got them from Australia for a few dollars and thought they would be a nice decoration and be a place where algae could grow.

I found the information on salt concentration online. I also found a resource saying that if you use boiled or bottled water instead of plain tap water, you can just put the water purifier #1 and eggs #2 in at the same time. Apparently the whole reason you wait 24 hours between #1 and #2 is to give the appearance of "instant life." There are some eggs in #1 and those are the sea monkeys that hatch over the course of the first day and that you see swimming around on day two. So since I don't need to see instantaneous life, I dumped them both in.



Packet #2 with the eggs looked like a green powder! It colored the water green after I dumped it in... must be to add to the sea monkey mood. Interesting.



Top view of the tank. I put a small lamp next to the tank so that it would add extra warmth. Sea monkeys need a water temperature of 76 degrees F for ideal hatching conditions.



Good night!