Triops vs tadpoles

November 3, 2010 at 7:30 am | Posted in homeschool, totally random | Leave a comment

My son was gifted a pack of triops eggs a few weeks ago, and a pickle jar to grow them in. This is like the fourth time J’s come home from papa’s house with something alive… and of course we had to hatch them immediately. Triops are a small shrimp, and are similar to sea monkeys in that they are marketed to children as pets.

Waiting for the eggs to hatch

We followed the directions on the packaging and poured the eggs into a clean pickle jar with 1 liter (4 cups) of bottled water. The package said that the triops would hatch in 18-30 hours. That is a very long time for a little boy to wait! We put the eggs into the jar at 10:00 am, so I assumed that something would happen by the next afternoon. Nope. Our cat was fascinated by J’s fascination with the jar, and they both spent a long time staring into it. Just before J went to bed the second day I noticed a tiny white speck moving around. It was way too small to photograph (although I did try.)

When I checked the jar the following morning I was glad to see several more of the tiny little triops. They were slightly larger than a grain of sand. I took several photos, but you don’t want to see them. Even on macro mode, my camera wouldn’t focus on the tiny little buggars.

The triops really did double in size every day. By the 5th day they were much easier to see – they look like little tadpoles.

Little Triops day 6

After a week the triops are quite easy to see, in the bottom of the jar. J stuck his hand in the jar while I was out of the room (no surprise there.) He must have had something on his hand, because with one exception, all of the triops died. The survivor was relocated to a smaller jar.

I would not buy triops, and I hope we don’t receive any more as gifts, lol. It is interesting to watch things grow and change, but tadpoles and beta fish are hardier and easier to actually watch. I really enjoyed watching our tadpoles change into frogs, even though it took much longer than I was expecting.

I believe we had our tadople/frog for around two months before he was ready to release. After a few weeks, when I realized that mr.tadpole would be with us for a while, I moved him from a pickle jar into an aquarium. Here are some pictures, they are far more interesting in my opinion: