So the time has finally come to move the little guys into their new home. Today we start acclimating them to the new water, and tomorrow we let them “roam free” (so to speak, as Krys would kill me if I let them out in the house – she still thinks they’ll crawl into our beds at night, like a certain blue lobster – it doesn’t matter that triops can’t live out of water).
As the day progresses I’ve been siphoning out a small bit of water from the new tank and adding it to the hatchery. The little kit says to leave them alone today and pour them out into the new tank tomorrow, but I’m going by the advice of a number of websites that we’ve found on raising triops – such as MyTriops.com.
We’ve also decided to go with a larger tank, since the one with the kit looks a little cramped for something that could grow to 4” long.
which would you prefer?
Most recommendations say that each triops needs one litre of water for best oxygenation results. However triops are bottom-dwellers, so floor space is better than ceiling height. A number of owners add triops to their freshwater tropical aquariums to help keep the substrate clean – these things are omnivores, after all.
It’s fun raising pets when the kids can see a major difference in growth on a daily basis – assuming you can get past the three-day waiting period, aka the “hatching phase”. On average these guys should live a couple months, but once they’re gone you just need to dry out the tank and let it sit for two or three weeks. Then just add water and the eggs of the next generation will spring to life.
But we’ll probably harvest the eggs out of the sand in the tank first – we’ve got some teachers that are pretty interested in this experiment for their classes as well.
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