Sea Monkeys® are the fun lovable little creatures that are too small to hug, but are highly enjoyable. Their lifespan can be up to one year and we have had many customer who keep their Sea Monkey® colonies alive for as much as 5 years. Occasionally, we have even had customers tell us they have seen them grow to on inch, although this is rare. This creature will end up growing 1/2 to 3/4 inch in length. You might ask your county extension office (or a nearby university with a large biological sciences program) if they can refer you to a freshwater crustacean expert in your area.Well, the Sea Monkey® ,( Artemia nyos) is a relative of the brine shrimp (Artemia Salina ). I've read about some species that do not require a cycle of drought and vernal flooding to reproduce, but I don't remember the species names. Most are vernal pool species that won't survive for long in a constantly wet environment. There are freshwater Artemia species (generally known as fairy shrimp), but they're not commercially available as far as I know. Brine shrimp also are reputed to put out a lot more ammonia than you'd expect. You might be able to raise them in sea water salinity levels, but I don't know about brackish. Since they require a pretty high salinity to thrive, I'm not sure what plants other than unicellular green algae you could grow with them. The algae might have been from airborne spores or spores in the food sold for Sea Monkeys.) Those Sea Monkeys may have actually lived longer, but when we moved, I left the tank at the house. I'd removed the filter, but I left in the gravel substrate and shells. (It was a former marine tank for sea horses that had died. It survived by being utterly coated with green algae in a greenhouse. I actually had a 10 gallon tank of sea monkeys for a year or so as a teenager.

(If you get the catalog for Sea Monkeys, there is an eye dropper and water mix to do water changes in those tiny 12-16 oz tanks.) So I thought perhaps I could grow a bit of floating cabomba, some duck weed, and a nice thicket of java moss attached to some larger rocks that they cannot get lost in - no gravel or soil.Īnybody have any tips, experience, etc? I haven't really had a go at taking care of sea-monkeys properly, but I think having their tank filtered by plants would definitely be an improvement to those little boxes of death that they usually live in. but I remember as a kid putting them into a tank with gravel and having them disappear. Has anybody tried this? I was thinking of setting up an El-natural tank for them and growing a few nice plants like cabomba for them. and who's ever heard of water changes for sea-monkeys?īut, unwilling to give up my dream of sea monkeys, I've decided to provide them with the best tank I possibly can - a tank with plants and ornaments.

Apparently sea-monkeys can live for 2 years - but never really get past a few months in those tiny, unfiltered tanks.

However, whilst thinking about the sea-monkeys I used to have as a kid, I realised that the whole thing was really just novelty animal cruelty. After a conversation with a friend recently, I have decided to nurture my inner child and invest in some sea-monkeys, to keep as pets, rather than food for my fish.

Live seamonkey