Category: Sea-Monkeys

Well! My casual threat last week to consign the Sea-Monkeys to the local sewer system met with more outrage than I could have imagined. Of course I was kidding. That’s the best thing about godlike powers over the lives of others: you don’t have to exercise them to appreciate them.

Even without any malign influence from me, my Sea-Monkey population continues to dwindle. I am down to three females and two males. There are still a few babies clinging valiantly to life, but I try not to get my hopes up about them anymore. I put some more Sea-Monkey Medicine in the tank this week but, as you know, I have little faith in it.

There is a new threat to the blissful Ocean-Zoo community this week: a swarm of carpenter ants. Every afternoon hundreds of winged ants find their way in around the window frame and seethe over every inch of my windowsill. My great fear is that one will get into the tank through one of the ventilation holes and drown in the water, poisoning the Sea-Monkeys with formic acid in the process. Keep in mind that I also have a persistent fear that one day I will be ironing and drop the iron on my bare foot. It’s never happened, but you never know…

Anyway, the cure to the ant problem is to bring in an exterminator, but I’m not sure what effect bug poison will have on the Sea-Monkeys, who are bug-like in the extreme. I may have to take them on a little field trip outside the office when the bug man comes. I hesitate to take them home, though, since at least one of my cats enjoys tipping over anything filled with water. I don’t want her to have a nice shrimp-flavored beverage at my Sea-Monkeys’ expense.

So that’s the drama-filled life of my Sea-Monkeys this week. Right now they are doing the Sea-Monkey Somersaults of Joy, no doubt to thank all of you for your continued interest in their interchangeable well-being.

My Sea-Monkey population is slowly dwindling. There are now five females, two males, and a few hard-to-spot babies. One male expired over the weekend. If I were a Sea-Monkey male, I’d be very, very concerned.

However, when you have a brain that can be measured in molecules, worry is not a concept that comes into play. But if worry is an alien concept to the Sea-Monkey, irritation is not. There’s a pattern of behavior emerging wherein single Sea-Monkeys will deliberately bump into mating pairs. This sets off a spasm of violent, annoyed “get the Hell away from us” wriggling by the disturbed couple. Is it jealousy? Mischievousness? Only Jerry Springer could tell us for sure.

Otherwise, life proceeds as usual for the little brine shrimp. Their water has been a trifle cloudy of late, so I’ve cut back on feedings. The Ocean-Zoo is about a half-inch low on water, but I don’t think there’s any hurry about topping it off. Yawn.

Since my little tank of water bugs is getting to be less and less interesting of late, I have decided to place an order for Sea-Diamonds. Yes, they sound like a lame gimmick, but I’m interested in anything that might jazz up the whole Sea-Monkey experience (for me, not for them).

Anything to help me resist the impulse to flush them all down the toilet and move on to a new hobby!

Sadly, the Labor Day Weekend was not kind to the baby Sea-Monkeys. Upon my return to work I discovered that their numbers have dropped to the single digits again.

A song from my childhood serves as a touching funeral dirge for the departed baby Sea-Monkeys:

I went to the Animal Fair
The birds and the bees were there
A big baboon, by the light of the moon,
Was combing his auburn hair
The monkey, he got drunk
And stepped on the elephant’s trunk
The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees
And that was the end of the monk, the monk, the monk
And that was the end of the monk!

Thanks to my sister for finding enough of the words online to refresh my memory of the song beyond “And that was the end of the monk…”. Boos and hisses to the Web site that cleaned up the song for the kiddies by changing line 5 to “the monkey fell out of his bunk.” Heaven forbid that a fictional monkey should be drunk and suffer the consequences!

Anyway, that was the end of a lot of my little Sea-Monks. I suspected that there was Sea-Monkey danger looming last week when a couple of adults died (I used the “finger over the straw” method to suck them out of the tank this time). To stave off further expirations, I used a scoop of “Sea-Monkey Medicine,” which I can now report is USELESS! Just so you know. The rest of the adults are as healthy, happy and horny as ever, and the remaining babies are churning along like everything’s okay.

Let’s hope the surviving babies will be part of a brave, new generation of vigorous Sea-Monkeys. If not, I’m sure there are plenty of as-yet-unhatched eggs waiting to spawn the next group.

Wowee! Putting the Sea-Monkeys on a windowsill has had unforeseen benefits!

The Sea-Monkey Handbook mentions that a little sunlight is good for the Sea-Monkeys because it encourages algae growth, which in turn adds additional oxygen to the water. The extra oxygen is supposed to keep all the Sea-Monkeys happy and active – especially the babies.

That would be an understatement. The little critters have been boogieing around the tank non-stop since the move. I no longer have to periodically rescue them from their logy Sea-Monkey funk with the aerator.

On top of that, we have BABIES GALORE! There are a bazillion new Sea-Monkey babies of varying sizes in the tank. I have about a dozen adults and a good fifty or so babies right now. They are flourishing in the sunlight, and can be seen doing their happy baby spirals all throughout the tank.

In their lively and energetic new Sea-Monkey lifestyle by the window, the grown-ups no longer seem to take such a Tolstoy-esque view of their existence. Mating is spontaneous – no more grim, week-long marathons. Meals are joyful, mid-somersault surface-skims. Early death no longer seems a certainty.

My shiny, happy Sea-Monkey Ocean-Zoo now produces as much interesting movement as my Lava Lamp!

The Sea-Simians and I have moved to a new cubicle! Their Ocean-Zoo now sits in a sunny windowsill, which has led to increased frolicking on the part of my little invertebrates. I am keeping a close eye on the tilt of the blinds, lest I inadvertently parboil my pets at high noon.

Meanwhile, I have discovered another Sea-Monkey colony in the billing department at my office. They were hatched a few weeks ago, so all of them are much smaller than mine. The Billing Sea-Monkeys have a Day-Glo yellow tank that came with a package of Sea-Diamonds – I’m so jealous!

What are Sea-Diamonds, you ask? Only the hallowed “Official Sea-Monkey Handbook” can do justice in describing them: “This heap of sparking ‘sea gems’ make Sea-Monkeys happy by giving them toys that they will really play with! So pretty they might as well be REAL, watch the Sea-Monkeys have fun by tossing Sea-Diamonds around like beachballs! They even ‘learn’ to climb up and ride them as if they were surfboards and get much-needed ‘exercise.’ But MOST AMAZING, as the water level drops Sea-Diamonds RISE UP from the bottom and FLOAT MIDWATER IN DEFIANCE OF THE LAW OF GRAVITY! The Sea-Monkeys now wend their way among the mysteriously suspended gems swimming in and out of the enchanted ‘maze.’ So fantastic, it MUST be seen to be believed!”

Once again I feel the need to examine some of the Handbook’s statements in more detail.

1. Although I have never observed Sea-Diamonds in action, my Sea-Monkeys don’t seem interested in playing anything but “doctor.”
2. What on earth does gravity have to do with something floating?!
3. Can you tell I’m starting to use the Handbook’s breathless descriptions as a cheap humor crutch when nothing very exciting is happening?

Anyway, my colony seems happy and healthy. I’ve noticed a lot more babies swimming around, but it’s difficult to tell if I’m observing the same ones day after day, or if they keep dying and being replaced by new hatchlings. Time will tell.

No deaths to report this week, plus the longest Sea-Monkey is getting close to the half-inch mark. Maybe the Red-Magic Vitamins are more effective than I thought!

It’s clearly not for lack of trying, but the Sea-Monkeys are not having a great deal of success when it comes to reproduction. At one point last week I glimpsed two babies in the tank. Now I can only find one, but it seems to be fairly vigorous.

I have been using the “Million-Bubble Air Pump” on a daily basis to ensure that the little larvae get enough oxygen. It’s sort of like a manual aquarium bubbler without an intake. A plastic squeeze bulb sends air through a piece of blue pumice (or something very like it). You have to take the air pump out of the tank between squeezes and pump out the water it has gathered. I think the old straw method was probably just as good.

Here’s my report on the “Red-Magic Sea-Monkey Vitamins”: LAME! Basically they’re just a packet of algae dust that appears indistinguishable from regular Sea-Monkey food. Supposedly it contains extra vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12 and C, although you’d think that if the little creatures really needed those vitamins, they would be in the regular food. Anyway, the day you feed them the vitamins, a few Sea-Monkeys do look sort of pinkish, but the effect is minimal and temporary.

My favorite feature of the Red-Magic packaging is its attempt to upsell you to a package of Sea-Monkey aphrodisiacs. I think you will appreciate this best via a direct quote from the back of the packet: “RED-MAGIC KEEPS SEA-MONKEYS ‘IN THE PINK’ You can alternate your Sea-Monkeys feeding program with ‘Red Magic,’ Sea-Monkey vitamins instead of their regular food… Now, with all that extra health, put them in the mood for love and breeding with ‘Cupid’s Arrow’ (item 84). It can turn a Sea-Monkey aquarium into a regular ‘love boat’!”

Let’s examine this a bit:

1. “Extra health”? I thought “health” was a superlative. Who would have thought you could have extra? “I’m feeling so good today, I think I’ll tuck some of my extra health away for cold and flu season!”
2. Why is the TranScience Corporation so enamored of hyphens?
3. Judging by the behavior of my Sea-Monkeys, I can’t imagine anyone seeing a need for MORE breeding activity. My Sea-Monkey aquarium isn’t a ‘love boat,’ it’s a Roman orgy!

If I thought that Sea-Monkey Spanish fly would increase the number of surviving babies, I might give it a try. However, my little colony seems to be amorous enough to quell my worries about succeeding generations. We’ll just have to give them a little time.

I hadn’t expected to report again so soon, but there have been some significant developments in Sea-Monkey Land since yesterday.

First, and most important, we have babies! I only see a couple of them, but they seem to be hardy little swimmers. They prefer the surface of the tank, and they can be glimpsed valiantly chugging through the water among the gargantuan adults.

Second, Juliet is now free of Romeo. I’m pretty sure he’s dead. We have a couple of new lifeless husks at the bottom, and he’s probably one of them. They’re really rather creepy with their little black pinpoint eyes staring lifelessly as the current gently lifts and drops their stiffened corpses. (Stephen King, eat your heart out!)

News flash number three: My Sea-Monkey supplies came in the mail! I now have extra food (probably enough to sustain ten generations of the little buggers), Red Magic vitamins (to turn them pink – woohoo!), a “Million-Bubble Air Pump” (to make sure I don’t accidentally drink Sea-Monkey soup one day when I’m trying to improve their oxygen supply), and a packet of “Sea Medic” Sea-Monkey medicine (in case I become alarmed at the mortality rate and feel something must be done).

At this point I think I can count, among the larger Sea-Monkeys, five females (I can’t tell Juliet from the others anymore) and four or five males. There are some littler ones, too, but I’m not sure of their gender. Natural selection is winnowing them down to the apex of Sea-Monkey evolution.

So that’s the status of the little colony. It’s the story of life: birth, sex, death, and everything in between. What more could you ask for?!

Gazing into my tank, watching the Sea-Monkeys glide by in a random minuet, they remind me of a school of…bugs. But I digress.

All in all, the Sea-Monkeys have done little of interest since the onset of maturity. There have been no babies and apparently no deaths since last week.

Romeo is still grasping Juliet about the hindquarters, but his own nether regions are not in proximity to hers. He’s stuck playing piggyback in the Twilight Zone, and I’m guessing the game stopped being fun a LONG time ago. Since Juliet is by far the larger of the pair, I’m sure she regards him as no more than a trailing nuisance at this point.

The rest of the Sea-Monkeys are going about their little lives as usual. Males and females appear in roughly equal numbers. Muck rooting is still the favored pastime, followed by surface skimming. Food does not seem to particularly excite them, although a good bubbling with a straw stirs them into increased activity for a number of hours.

The Dr. Spock of Sea-Monkey rearing, The Sea-Monkey Worship Site

So, you see, Sea-Monkey husbandry is not the thrill-a-minute lifestyle you might imagine. But it’s a noble one.

You will all be impressed (or repulsed) to know that the Sea-Monkey mating pair mentioned on Monday – let’s call them Romeo and Juliet – is STILL at it! Juliet now sports an impressive egg sac, but Romeo is disinclined to rest on his laurels. Maybe he has claw cramps and can’t let go. Whatever his motivation, all I can think when I look at her is a sympathetic “ouch.”

On to the flip side of all this frenzied activity: Sea-Monkey mortality. I noticed earlier this week that we have a growing number of hollowed-out Sea-Monkey corpses collecting at the bottom of the tank. The Sea-Monkey Worship Site opines that mating may be hazardous to the males’ health. I haven’t examined the deaders to see whether they are male or female, but their demise did coincide with the appearance of spectacular egg sacs on several females.

Sea-Monkeys are not cannibals, so nobody is interested in the dead ones except as algae-encouragers. If I had ordered a $2.00 Sea-Monkey Aqua-Leash (“Here is a MUCH-NEEDED tool to SAFELY handle Sea-Monkeys! Over 8 ½” long, it’s a Sea-Monkey ‘picker-upper’ that works by suction, and cannot injure even the biggest Sea-Monkeys that you can grow. BEST OF ALL, when not used to catch a little rascal to move him to another tank or for other reasons, it DOUBLES as a ‘vacuum cleaner’ to suction up the ‘yuck’ that settles on the bottom. Easy to operate, and SO USEFUL, you’ll thank the day you got it.”), I could remove them. Since I neglected to include one in my order of Sea-Monkey supplies (which has not yet arrived anyway), I think I’ll just leave the little victims to the mercy of the microorganism food chain and see what happens. (Is it just me, or does the Aqua-Leash sound suspiciously like a turkey baster?)

The Sea-Monkey is a versatile breeder: viviparous or oviparous depending upon the circumstances. In the absence of males, they are even parthenogenic. It seems nothing can stop the proliferation of the Sea-Monkey species. Since no babies have appeared so far, I guess their gestation period is longer than you’d expect for a creature that grows to sexual maturity in three weeks.

Next week, when the tank water is a little clearer, I’ll start taking the Ocean-Zoo to the window for periodic baby checks. I’m sure we all remember how difficult it was to view the current population in its infancy. Stay tuned!

My little Sea-Monkeys are all grown up! They may not have reached full size yet (according to the literature, they can grow up to 3/4″ long), but adulthood has nevertheless fallen upon the larger individuals of the Sea-Monkey colony.

Over the weekend, several of the females developed the distinctive egg sac that differentiates them from the males. In addition, one couple is shamelessly engaged in a prolonged session of hot Sea-Monkey lovin’ (so much for the solitary life of the Sea-Monkey!).

One female in particular has such a large and prominent egg sac that I’ll probably be able to tell her apart from the rest indefinitely. Baby got Sea-Monkey back, is really the only way to describe it (especially since they swim upside down).

Of course, we all know where this is heading: more babies! The great Disneyesque circle of life is taking place right on my desk.