Sea Monkeys Ocean Zoo - Colors May Vary

WARNING: LONG REVIEW I've had sea monkeys before, probably when I was like in first grade. I remember my dad throwing away the food, me having a huge tantrum and ignoring the sea monkeys for a good three weeks, and returning to find one solitary little sea monkey still in the tank. After showering it with love, it died and we threw everything away. Now, I'm a junior in high school, and so I thought I was responsible enough to care for some brine shrimp marketed towards little kids. I received the package on Feb. 11, and to be honest, I didn't have high hopes.My tank was this gluey mess - I could see the little deposits of glue outside where it had dripped. When I opened the lid, I found a small crack in the plastic. I was disappointed, but was still super excited to try these little things out again, so I grabbed some E6000 to quickly patch up the hole and a bottle of water to fill up to the line. Day 1: I opened the package, fixed the crack with E6000 and got started! When I opened packet 1, the water purifier packet, it was slightly green, had little blackish-red dots, and would just come out of the packet. I had to dip it into the water, swish, dump back in, and repeat. From what I remembered, packet 1 was supposed to be white powder (at least that's what I saw in first grade?) but oh well. I finished with packet 1, and put everything else aside. It was around 6:45 pm-ish when I finished. Day 2: 11:30 pm (lots of homework, what can I say?), I opened packet number 2. Again, from memory, I remember just being able to pour out white powder into the tank, but again, the "powder" was green, wet, and speckled with little black dots. I was rather disappointed but forced on, doing the swish, dump technique again. When I looked into the tank, I could see nothing moving. Day 3: (At around 10:30 pm) THERE WERE BABY SQUIRMY THINGS! I could see a grand total of... 3. Awesome. But well, it was something, I guess? I took a coffee stirrer thing (the red plastic thin straws) and blew some air in. When I finished, I couldn't find them again. Hoping that I didn't accidentally kill them, I went off to bed. Day 4: So much for three baby sea monkeys... when I checked on day 4, I could see at least 80 little babies wiggling around. Knowing I was probably going to have a mass die-off (whoever heard of raising 80 sea monkeys to adulthood?) I said my goodbyes before heading off to bed. (Day 4 was basically Day 5, it was like 1:45 am by the time I finished chemistry homework!) Day 5: When I checked, there were maybe 20 sea monkeys, but they were now big enough for me to see without having to actually focus. I couldn't see any more tiny babies, so I probably had an entire carpet of dead babies at the bottom of the tank (good thing they were so small I couldn't see them too well... that would have been horrifying.) Anyway, I fed them on day 7, and stopped keeping track around day 12. My sea monkeys grew. I probably have around 30 in my tank right now - 15 big adult ones for sure and a lot of juveniles. I saw three itty bitty babies today (they're literally the size of a period and almost impossible to see unless you know what you're looking for. Look for little white swimming commas.) and I have a lot of reddish brown specks floating around, maybe around a hundred of those. (A google search told me that brownish red specks are sea monkey eggs, so that was probably the weird stuff in the package?) I keep my sea monkey tank on my desk and they accompany me when I do homework. It's been a while since I last fed them, but they have a little colony of algae in their tank (they basically get exposed to only my desk lamp so I don't expect too much photosynthesis). I don't often oxygenate the tank. Anyway, I was originally going to give four stars because of the cracked tank, the bad glue at the bottom, and the magnifying bubbles that really do a whole bunch of nothing. But then I wasn't buying this for the tank and could have used a mason jar for a "prettier presentation." It's just important to be really patient and look hard :) I attached a picture so you can see the sea monkeys in my tank! EDIT (1/17/2016): I did eventually give up on the sea-monkeys sometime in July, as I went to Taiwan for five months and during the time, no one fed or aerated the sea monkeys. When I returned, they were gone :( So I actually purchased another sea-monkey kit and I'm beginning the process anew - I bought the Sea-Monkeys on the Moon kit and we'll see what happens! I've already had a very different experience!

My package arrived promptly in and in good condition. I followed the directions, and in 48 hours I had tiny shrimp swimming around my tank. I may have overfed them at first, but it seemed to do no harm. It's been over 3 weeks, and my monkeys are thriving. They are, of course, tiny shrimp, so don't order these expecting some sort of aquatic ape. I find them quite soothing to watch as they are very active around the tank. Follow the directions, and you will get what's advertised. Only downside is this kit should really come with a small air pump so you don't have to stir the tank to aerate until the algae grows. I'm hoping for babies soon! I would recommend this as a gift for anyone with and interest in biology who doesn't have a lot of time to commit to tank. If for some reason your eggs don't hatch, there's a 2 year guarantee.

To anyone who has purchased sea monkeys in the last year or so, here is an explanation as to why they are not working. Transcience is currently in a lawsuit against the current distributor of sea monkey sets. If you have bought a set in the last year, you may have noticed that the packets look different. The packets 1, 2 and 3 now have a cheap paper thin look to them and the contents inside have changed. This is due to the fact that the distributor quit paying royalties due to transcience and they stopped purchasing packets from them. After they stopped paying transcience they continue to produce and sell sea monkey kits as their own. They are selling a rip off version of the packets that are currently in stores. Its easy to tell these rip off versions from the new cheap quality look and feel of the sea monkey packets. I would avoid buying any kits sold in stores and online until this lawsuit mess is over. I personally bought about 3 kits in the last year and all were duds. If you want real high quality sea monkeys that will hatch, send in a mail order to transcience. This is the only way to guarantee you will get eggs that hatch!!

Great!!! A++++++

Habe jetzt seit einem halben Jahr die Urzeitkrebse, Es sind noch 6 und die sind putzmunter. Bei mir hat es super geklappt, muss jetzt sogar Futter nach bestellen. Als nächstes stehen Triobs auf dem Programm!

T/his was the best kit ever. The kit hatched close to a healthy babies, and are still going strong. I put them in a north facing window and they thrived with that amount of light. I also made my own bubble wand by taking a good quality straw and punched it full of little holes, cheap and works great. Now my big concern is if I got ripped off when I ordered extra supplies from the company, time will tell. Hope this helps. Also you have to remember that the water temperature will dictate how many will hatch. Also if you run out of food to to your health food store of pharmacy and buy blue green algae powder.

My daughter always wanted a pet but we live in a flat and could never have one, so this Sea Monkey idea sounded like a good plan. We got it about a month ago, and my daughter was very patient and precise with all the instructions and readings in prep-for the great experiment - we got the spring mineral water and the warm spot, and followed closely all the instructions. My daughter is now genuinely happy with her new pets, and we're all amazed at the pace of their growing, and minimal care required... Within 1 month-ish the biggest ones are nearly 1cm and there are small ones too, indicating that reproduction may have happened. They are the dream pet, feed them once every 5 days, oxigen the water by blowing with a straw (which most children love to do) and have fun!!! But careful! Follow closely the instructions, as per my daughter's advice on video: Tap water is bad and will kill your pets! You need spring/mineral water!!

I followed the instructions correctly and to the point where I added the eggs and from then on it was a waiting game i waited two weeks before I saw a sign of life and that what a while ago from now but at the moment I have been feeding the when I think they need it and they are breeding like mad there must be at least 100 babies in the tank now, but all in all its s really good product but for some people it dosent work like mine did so it is a bit hit and miss but it's all really good

I had purchased a cheap replica off of eBay for my class (I teach kindergarten) and we were very disappointed when nothing hatched. I decided to pay more for this real kit instead and we were amazed! A few days after doing the first two packets we had tiny little sea monkeys swimming around. The kids loved to watch them grow. Now we have a whole bunch and they are breeding so we will continue to have lots. They are really easy to maintain, only need to be fed every few days which is great since we don't have school on weekends. Fun for kids and adults!