Sea Monkeys? Sea MONKEYS? yeah, right
I tried raising the infamous sea monkeys many times as a child. Once they even hatched... then Mom dumped 'em down the sink beacuse "eww, the water was all green..."
"What have I done wrong, O god of monkeys that inhabit the Sea?"
I didn't actually have a successful 'sea monkey' experience until I got into raising fresh water fish - the brine shrimp were needed as fry food.
I noticed that the brine shrip seemed to need some specific conditions: clean water, proper sea salt (no iodine added, etc) oxygenated water (air stone/bubbler). Of course the 'sea monkey' packages never seemed to mention this as I recall.
In retrospect -
I place a harty vote for Triops!
I purchased some eggs from an on-line vendor about 8 years ago. I followed the directions (use rain water!) and had great results. Six Triops longicaudatus hatched from the 1/2 package used. They lived for about 90 days, got pretty big (1.5 inches) and were nasty 'wee devils' becuase they started eating each other! Muahahahaha.
I was pleased that the package of 'eggs' also contained ostracoda, daphnia, rotifier, fairy shrimp and a quite a few other fun little critters.
One other thing to note. I only used 1/2 of the package of eggs 8 years ago... last December I re-discovered the package and dropped a portion of the remainder of the eggs into a jar of rainwater set in my lowland tank. Many fairy shrip, daphnia and ostracods hatched. The population quickly dwindled however - I don't think I used a large enough jar! The last fairy shrimp just died about a week ago.
I purchased from this fellows shop - kinda strange advertising but a good deal at
$4:
http://www.rocksandminerals.com/fossil/triops.htm
- Mike