Remember the Sea Monkeys advertisements that used to be on the back of comic books? I always wanted to order some of my own. One perk of being a mom is finally fulfilling those childhood dreams. My daughter raised Sea Monkeys - also known as brine shrimp or Artemia - to feed to her betta fish several years ago.
Munchkin boy has been looking through his sister's old notebooks. He found her drawings of baby brine shrimp -- called nauplii when they are about 24 hours old. We liked watching them under the microscope. Seems like just yesterday to me, but when he showed me the pictures I remembered. She was only 7 or 8 at the time and he was barely three. He remembers the fact of having had brine shrimp, but he doesn't actually remember the process, all the cool things we observed.
I, the ultimate mother pack rat, was able to pull a bottle of brine shrimp eggs out of the refrigerator today. Even though they are "several" years old, Munchkin boy and I spent some time reading up on them and we have been assured that the eggs are metabolically inactive and can remain in stasis for "several" years.
He's got a tank bubbling in his room now. I think I've spent nearly as much time as he has lying on my side, one eye pressed up against a magnifying glass to see if any of those tiny eggs have hatched.
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