For Christmas 2010 Scott gave me a Triops kit. I’m always fascinated by complex biological systems and in a way, this is my gay tropical fish phase without the fish. The kit was small and cute and meant for 7 year olds. I of course have a little money to spend so for fun, why not give these prehistoric precursors to horseshoe crabs a tank full of paradise? So off to the pet store we went. Two gallon glass tank was $7 bucks (yay discount rack!), fancy food was $4, sand $3, tank ornaments $5. We waited for a while, letting the dust settle from our holiday travels and a few days ago I set up the tank, filled the bottom with sand, placed the ornaments and filled the tank with distilled water. Then I followed the great instructions from the Smithsonian (which boxes up the kit) and opened the Triops eggs and put half of the container into the tank. It looks like someone emptied a tobacco pipe into a big goldfish bowl.

We watched for two days and nothing really of measure was happening. At the end of the second day I spied a Triops nymph swimming about. I did some reading and found out that cold water can slow down their development, so I remembered that I had a heat-lamp in the garage (from last winters kitty-visitor) and I went out and got it. I got the lamp set up and pointed it at the tank and let it run for a while. Everything warmed up nicely, the tank got into the 80’s and the water was nice and warm. Then I saw two more nymphs in the water, totalling 3. I dropped in some pellet food and this morning gave the tank a good stir.

These little guys are voracious, even if they are the size of a flea. Everything I’ve read states that they’ll consume 40% of their body mass in food per day and grow in just a week to several centimeters. As they develop I’ll see if I can get pictures of them to share. Science is just grand. 🙂