Sea Monkeys...?

[Mugen]

I have a question. You know how Sea Monkeys are actually shrimp? Realistically, if you were to just buy a packet of them (since you can get refills for those little Sea Monkey tanks) could you feed the young Sea Monkeys to fry? I have no idea if they are the right breed of brine shrimp or whatever.. I just know that they are shrimp.

Thanks for helping my curiosity!

 

[poopsydrew]

I have a question. You know how Sea Monkeys are actually shrimp? Realistically, if you were to just buy a packet of them (since you can get refills for those little Sea Monkey tanks) could you feed the young Sea Monkeys to fry? I have no idea if they are the right breed of brine shrimp or whatever.. I just know that they are shrimp.

Thanks for helping my curiosity!

Sea monkeys are perhaps the greatest marketing ploy ever.

But yes they are nothing but Brine shrimp. You need saltwater and an airstone to hatch the eggs, its very simple. Just run a search for "Hatching BBS" and youll find all the info you need.

If your going to be hatching some just a tip, buy rock salt from a hardware store, you can geta 50lb bag for 5 dollars, that will last you a VERY long time, and buy your BBS eggs online, theyre a lot cheaper.

Drew

 

[DarkEntity]

Sea Monkeys is just the American name for Brine Shrimp as far as i know

 

[three-fingers]

As said, sea-monkeys are just a brand name used for brine shrimp - Artemia sp.
They claim it's in some way way different from Artemia salina, but I can find no evidence of this, and indeed it seems very implausible that you can selectively breed Artemia - they have changed incredibly little since their first appearance in the fossil record over 100 million years ago.

You are much better off buying Artemia cysts off eBay or somewhere and just using kitchen rock/rea salt at about 30 grams per litre of water. You can feed them on yeast ground down to a powder ('sea-monkey' growth food is a combination of yeast and spirulina powder) or basically anything else - they are just non-selective filter feeders when it come to feeding, and they barely need to eat anything.

If your interested, this is a good site: <a href="http/www.captain.at/artemia/" target="_blank">http/www.captain.at/artemia/</a> .

 

[Reyn]

arent sea monkeys fresh water rather than salt water. arent they also called fairy shrimp. could be wrong.

 

[QuotheRaven]

Not sure if it was posted but it is a better option to hatch your own because the packaged Sea Monkeys contain no nutritional value at all for your fish

 

[Amerce]

Fairy shrimp can live in fresh water, same family as brine shrimp though.

http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_shrimp

 

[three-fingers]

arent sea monkeys fresh water rather than salt water. arent they also called fairy shrimp. could be wrong.

Nope, sea-monkeys are literally the same as brine shrimp, Artemia salina. There's lot's of recognised species, though it's under debate whether they should all count as different species. 'Fairy shrimp' is usually what freshwater anostraca species are referred to as, though by most definitions 'fairy shrimp' is the common name used for all species under the order anostraca.

You can buy a Thai species of freshwater fairy shrimp off eBay, and you can get packets of detritus containing cysts of various random American species from a few different German websites. Some of the species commonly encountered get pretty large too, I've had a few beaver tail fairy shrimp that reached nearly 3".

Not sure if it was posted but it is a better option to hatch your own because the packaged Sea Monkeys contain no nutritional value at all for your fish

Not true, sea-monkeys are the same thing - they contain the same nutritional value as all the others you can buy. The nutrition fish get from brine shrimp is apparently pretty low, though I've heard the opposite too. However, they are great if you gut-load them first, spirulina powder is ideal for this.

It's just that the sea-monkey kits are by far the least economical way to hatch brine shrimp - so it is still a better option to hatch your own.