Sea Monkeys?

[new fish lover]

I saw a sea monkey set up and I am wondering are they like brine shrimp. Does anyone have any idea?

 

[NinjaSmurf]

They are brine shrimp and fish find them mighty tasty...

 

[Tempestuousfury]

Yet. Artemia.

 

[Narayan]

I once hatched seamonkeys and on the box it told me that they are actually brine shrimp.

 

[NinjaSmurf]

I found out when I was kid not because I read the box, but because I saw them at the fish store being sold as brine shrimp, and I got mad because my poor mom had spent all that money on the little seamonkey setup when we could have gotten a bag of over a hundred of them for a dollar. (I was a thrifty six year old)

Then most of mine got eaten by this little jumpy spider who found out they were easy for him to catch....

 

[Tempestuousfury]

What? How'd the spider get at the shrimp now?

 

[NinjaSmurf]

I left the lid off one the little tank thingy and my mom saw the spider grabbing seamonkeys out of it. I was pissed of at the seamonkeys anyways because they were dying no matter how hard we tried to save them, (of course, going by the directions on the box of course ) so I just started leaving the top off more and more and watching the spider come occasionally and catch them till the sick ones had all been eaten, but then the spider must have fell in because I found it floating in the tank one day, with the seamonkeys looking like they were eating it (dunno if they were, but that's what it looked like). Ah, the circle of life...

 

[Tempestuousfury]

I don't think that spiders are the brine shrimps' natural predators though

 

[NinjaSmurf]

Nope, but I'm betting that the spider was really happy with itself for finding such a rich and easy source of food. At least, until it drowned among its tasty morsels...

What a way to go, like me drowning in ice cream or soda or something.

We also once had a daddylonglegger sitting on our plate of steak filling for our philly cheese steak sandwiches, I don't think bovine are part of its natural diet either

 

[smithrc]

they are actually hybrid brine shrimp - selectivly bred for their size and their longer life. - not that fish care

 

[bshockstubb]

If you go to the great Salt lake in Utah there are billions upon billions of sea monkeys. Nothing can survive in the water exept these little creatures. They actually harvest them by net for aquarium use!

 

[NinjaSmurf]

My uncle got the bright idea to put them in this low part of our yard that filled up when it rained, and since the ground was pretty much nothing but clay about four inches underneath it stayed filled up like a shallow pond, about 30 ft long and 15ft wide, with the deepest part being about 8 inches. Well, the next year me and my brother were looking in it for toad tadpoles and then we fricking found seamonkeys swimming around! It's funny too, if you really study them you start realizing which ones are males and which are females. The males have this funny thing on their head that reminds me of a headdress (though I'll let you guess why this marked them as males ) and the females carry their eggs around in a sack that rolls back and forth on their backs, before the ends of their tails but after those little fin things they have. Since the pond dries up in fall and then fills up again in spring I think we had about two or three years worth of seamonkeys in our pond.


I think I'm gonna have to visit Utah... maybe with a really big bucket...

 

[Ben]

i wanna get some now

i had before but i miss em, its stupid to get brine shrimp because theyre not as tough as the sea monkeys are as someone previously mentioned.

i wonder what theyre bred with to make them stronger

 

[guppler]

low part of our yard that filled up when it rained, and since the ground was pretty much nothing but clay about four inches underneath it stayed filled up like a shallow pond, about 30 ft long and 15ft wide, with the deepest part being about 8 inches. Well, the next year me and my brother were looking in it for toad tadpoles and then we fricking found seamonkeys... .... the pond dries up in fall and then fills up again in spring I think we had about two or three years worth of seamonkeys in our pond.

That sounds like a vernal pool. We have those around my part of California and some of their natural inhabitants are types of fairy shrimp, some of which are endangereed or rare, so we aren't suposed to harvest them. They can dry up and come back years later. I don't think you can take them form Mono lake either. That's one of the saltiest lakes in CA and the shrimp are almost the only thing that can live in it, but the birds sure like 'em.

It seems like it shouldn't be too hard to keep a colony going in a tank once you buy some at a store. I have some that are meant to hatch and then feed to fish as babies.

 

[samthefishman]

I wonder why they call them sea MONKEYS... its weird.
I dont know if its just me... but they aint lookin like no monkey I've seen b4