I’ll be the first to admit it, I don’t seem to have much of a green thumb. I have to work hard (see the growth mindset there) at successfully growing plants, especially from seeds, even though in nature they seem to grow just fine. Something about me meddling or maybe over thinking it.
I also don’t seem to be able to hatch things very well. I struggle with getting brine shrimp (aka sea monkeys) to hatch, especially this year where I tried to hatch a batch of eggs twice with not a single egg hatching. My 8th graders conducted an experiment using the brine shrimp eggs and they had the same results as I did where typically the eggs hatch so I’m concluding that I no longer have viable eggs. They are old so maybe they all died?
One of my 8th graders brought in a box of Triops. I had never heard of those but they have eggs very similar to brine shrimp eggs and their early stages of development resemble brine shrimp. Unlike brine shrimp, triops (aka tadpole shrimp) grow in fresh water and they exist pretty much as they did millions of years ago. Seemed like we had a save!
So I setup the fresh water and put half the eggs in there. Waited. Waited. Nothing. Hmm. The second time I decided to use creek water (the water they need has very specific guidelines, can’t be deionized or distilled, so I figured what’s better than actual fresh water from a creek!). I committed myself by putting all the remainder of the eggs in the creek water. I checked it everyday and checked the temperature to make sure the triops had the best chance at hatching. They need a lot of light so I put a lamp near the water so they had everything they needed.
A week passed and nothing. We checked and stared. The eggs were there but nothing hatched. I gave up on it and started thinking ahead to next year and making sure I buy fresher eggs whether I use brine shrimp or tadpole shrimp. Yesterday, I noticed the water had a bunch of dead plant matter in it so I figured it was time to dump it. I was getting ready to dump it when I saw something dart around. It looked like a tadpole shrimp!
One lone shrimp managed to hatch and survive all on its own without any help from me! I even had baby food all ready to feed the little babies and nurse them to adulthood but this little shrimp did it all on its own with just whatever was in the water from the creek. Yeah, again nature worked best when I stepped out of the way.
So here’s what a tadpole shrimp looks like after about two weeks:
And here’s what it looked like the very next day after the above video:
This little shrimp is doing fine and we are taking care of him as the lone survivor of a whole batch of about 40 to 50 eggs. Way to go little guy!
