Getting a nursery tank ready for triops

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If you're like me, you just ordered some triop eggs and are now waiting for them to be delivered. I just checked my mailbox, and no they're not here yet, but I'm getting ready for them by preparing their nursery tank.

First of all, let's be clear here, triops are very, very, very small. If you've seen pictures of them, or videos, you may not realize it because (and I've done this myself quite often), most of the time the views are greatly magnified. And this is a good thing as you don't need a lot of space to grow them. In fact, I use the space right here on my desk next to my computer, and when I first started out I used the top of a small nightstand that I have in my workout room (at that time I thought that I would need more room).

The nursery tank you're looking at here is about six inches wide. I got it when I ordered triops for the first time, but then after that all I've needed to order a package of eggs and food. The pictures of the dinosaurs you see there are just taped on the back, and it comes in handy when the triops start to hatch, as they're very tiny, and white (you could also do just a solid black background to help you see them better).


I just read the instructions a bit more carefully and apparently I wasn't supposed to use distilled water, which I had been doing in the past. I poured some ordinary tap water into a container in the kitchen and will let it sit there overnight, which should clear out the chlorine, making the water ready for the triop eggs.

Oh yeah, in case you're wondering, that's a trilobite fossil there in the foreground. I've always liked trilobites, but they're extinct, so triops are as close as I can get. Trilobites have been gone since the Great Dying, but triops have been on earth since the Triassic (which is before most dinosaurs, like the T-Rex).

Triops grow very fast, but only live for a few weeks. The eggs are so tiny that they're almost invisible to the naked eye, and even when they hatch it's kinda hard to tell if you're looking at a floating speck of dust or new life. But the new life moves, and grows, and in a couple of days there'll be no doubt.

When the eggs arrive, which will be mixed with sand, you just drop them in. While we wait, here's a short video of triops that I raised in the past:




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