Birth! Glorious Birth. The sea monkeys started had hatched and were swimming around. There seems to be like 30 of those little bastards in the tank, they just swim non stop. I feed them the weird green powder, 5 days after they hatched like the instructions said. Them Monkeys ate it up! Well I assume, they did. They look bigger and stronger every day. I wanted to name them, but realized I am an idiot, and didn't. Sometimes I jut sit and stare at them as they play their wacky Sea Monkey games..
Overall, I am happy I got them. I keep them on my desk at work, and its a good conversation piece. Sure its a bit cheesy, but we have to enjoy the little things... right?
Pros:
-Easy to setup
-Comes with detailed instructions (I learned more about sea monkeys then I ever thought I would)
-Comes with food and Plasma III
-Sea Monkeys will love you
Cons:
-Magnifying glass top/lid that comes with it doesn't really magnify too much.
-Food packs not great because, well they are paper packets
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I admit that I was a comic book geek when I was a kid (and as an older kid too) and in the 70's and early 80's, the back page of my comics either had advertisements for the "X-Ray Glasses", novelty items (such as snezing powder, joy buzzer, etc), or "Sea Monkeys". I wanted the X-Ray Glasses bad so bad I just about sent off in the mail for them until my mom told me that stuff you see in advertisements are not always what they appear to be especially in a $0.50 comic book. So with my bubble officially burst, I never bothered to waste any money on the stupid Sea Monkeys either even though I thought they looked cool.Flash forward 30 years and my wife and I were looking for a nice little Christmas present for my 6 year old daughter. While looking at the "science oriented" gifts at one of the big box toy stores, I happened to see the "Sea Monkeys Magic Castle" and figured "What the heck at the very worst nothing happens and I'm only out $12". Secretly, of course, I was hoping that they wouldn't be a ripoff and that I could steal back a moment of my childhood. So Christmas comes and after opening the present we find out that the water has to be "purified" for a day before seeding the Sea Monkeys and I'm thinking "this is not looking good my daughter is already upset". A few days pass and we put in the Sea Monkeys and then we see NOTHING FOR SIX DAYS and now I'm thinking "I wonder how soon we can admit this was really just a ripoff and throw it out before my daughter has a complete fit..."
And then one morning we took the little aquarium down and I saw something. A little teeny, tiny speck was moving. I was so amazed I actually yelled out "Holy Cow This stuff actually works?!?!". We later learned that since our house was somewhat cool (December in Ohio), the Sea Monkeys take longer to hatch. Well after that, my daughter (and the whole family) have just had a ball raising our Sea Monkeys and there are dozens of them. Slowly over time they have gotten bigger and bigger and we haven't done anything besides give them regular feedings (if you go on the company's website you can buy all kinds of adders like "super growth food", "First Aid medication", and some kind of chemical that will make some of the Sea Monkeys change sex so that you can have little baby Sea Monkeys). As they have gotten larger, the Sea Monkeys are very apparently brine shrimp (my daughter was still disappointed when she didn't see the little faces and crowns...), but that hasn't made them any less fascinating. Some of them have super long tales and they swim around like crazy after you aerate the water a little bit (I think they are going around eating all the excess food that fell to the bottom).
2 1/2 months later, we still have Sea Monkeys and they are going strong. I keep waiting for the mass die-off and it hasn't happened yet so I'm thinking that as long as we take somewhat decent care of them, we may have a serious over-crowding problem in another couple months, but that's a problem for another day. Overall, I consider this a great little toy as they are basically idiot proof AS LONG AS you follow the initial instructions. The only thing that you have to have is PATIENCE because it could be about a week before you see anything if the place where you set the aquarium is somewhat cool. If its summer time or you sit them in a sunny window, you could cut the "germination time" to only a day or two. My daughter also liked the little castle inside as it gave the Sea Monkeys a place to swim around.
********** UPDATE **********
We had our original colony of Sea Monkeys for about 4 months. Little by little they died off and finally the last one (which was very large by then) also died. I suppose we could have bought one of the packets to make babies, but we didn't feel like it. A year later, we purchased another package of "starter kit" and used the same Magic Castle acquarium. This time, we had to use the warranty as nothing hatched. It was very simple and a couple weeks later, another packet of sea monkeys arrived (keep your packet of food). Similar to last time, our colder house temperature kept the Sea Monkeys from hatching until 8-9 days after we started them. a month later, we have maybe 15-20 Sea Monkeys happily swimming around. My girls LOVE them!!!
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I bought this for my boy and I to "hatch" while staying at the lake this year. Even after the novelty wore off he still likes to check in on his sea monkeys sometimes, and they need so little maintenance at this point they're always waiting. I think one of them is actually "pregnant" (I *think* the big dark spot near the tail is an egg sac...) which is fun too.The plastic billowy thing included is an aqua leash. For the first weeks after hatching your sea monkeys you will want to use this to blow bubbles into the water (maybe 10-15 times) every day. It is *not* the million bubble pump that only needs 1 blow to aerate the water. If you're doing this with a kid they'll probably get a kick out of blowing the bubbles themselves. The baby sea monkeys need this air badly since at first there is nothing else in the water creating oxygen. It also makes the toy more interactive which is nice because they're easy to overfeed if that's the only way your kid can interact with them. Over time though the water will grow micro algae or whatever that generates O2, which in our case worked out to be about the time the initial novelty had kind of worn off anyway so that was finewe slowly quit aerating and everything was fine. Now we have 3 big sea monkeys that seem content with the occasional (at best) aeration to supplement whatever flora that is growing in their (which they also eat).
Depending on the age of your kid this toy is either a decent opportunity for education in terms of what the sea monkeys are, what/how they eat, etc or if you have a very young one they can get into imaginative play. If you look online you can even find short "sea monkey radio" episodes where the host interviews a sea monkey character. There is a surprisingly large sea monkey subculture out there actually!
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