Happy National Sea-Monkey Day! In keeping with my first post about Sea-Monkeys, I'll post some unrelated cats1...
1: It's Caturday anyway...
« Showing posts with label Sea-Monkeys. Show all posts »
Saturday, May 16, 2009
«Caturday: Missed God Intrigued»
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
«I Got My Sea-Monkey Card»
My Sea-Monkey debit card just arrived in the mail. Like I said before, I would have preferred the FSM card design. (That's a popular post of mine, at 2,173 views so far.)
If you're planning on submitting a custom card design with Wells Fargo, I suggest you increase the contrast before submitting it. The picture included in this post is the preview, not the actual card. The actual card seems to be a little washed-out and is a bit more yellow than the picture I submitted. Even seems a little blurry. But, I'm still happy with it. Like I keep saying, it's better than the default stagecoach picture.
As a side-note, I just noticed I've been blessed by the Prophet Bobby Henderson himself. He edited the FSM Bank Card post over at the Official FSM Church website to include the comment I made there. I feel so special now...
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
«Still Better Than Stagecoaches»
Well, my Flying Spaghetti Monster design was denied, but my second submission was accepted. While such a card would be, to say the least, a thing of beauty, it's kind of good it was rejected, if it was rejected for the reason you suppose. In that case, this is just more public acceptance of pastafarianism as a religion.
Presenting the Sea-Monkey Wells Fargo card1:
You may recognize the picture from my recent post about my Sea-Monkey food order. I would of course have preferred the FSM, but at least this way I have something unique. I get to carry around a picture of my sea-monkeys. And like the title says, it's better than the default stagecoaches.
I like what one of the comments said on the FSM card post:
If something as crazy as Scientology gets to be an official religion, then Pastafarianism should have no trouble. Seriously, I think I'd convert if Pastafarianism were an official religion (at least for the purpose of census polls.)
1: Sample version only. Not an actual card; not a valid card number or name.
Friday, March 6, 2009
«Sea-Monkey Order Arrived»
What is it about sea-monkeys? Whenever I mention them in a post, they seem to hijack the comments; it's all anyone ever talks about then. Not to mention one of my most popular posts (ever) is about sea-monkeys. I've noticed a similar thing on other blogs that have talked about sea-monkeys. Even if it's just a single short sentence, all the comments will be about sea-monkeys and totally ignore the rest of the post. The image to the right was taken just yesterday (March 5th), and is 2 of my adult male sea-monkeys. Click it to view full.
As some of you may remember from an old post, I've had sea-monkeys for a very long time, easily 11 years now. I started to run low on food, and instead of buying another starter kit again for just the food packet, I decided to order directly from Transcience Corporation.
I decided upon the Medicine Chest kit and a packet of Super Food. The Medicine Chest included 4 packets; Gro-Kwikly, Plasma III, Red Magic Vitamins, and Sea-Medic Medicine. I was most interested in the Red Magic Vitamins. It's suppose to turn the sea-monkeys red, so I thought maybe they will be easier to see.
Here's the fronts and backs of each of the 5 sea-monkey packets.
Click image to view full
All these different packets could just be a gimmick like my dad said. How I look at it is, I needed more food anyway, and these special packets cost just as much as a packet of regular food. So even if it is all the same stuff in the packets I'm not out anything. I'll keep an eye on my sea-monkeys and see if there's any change.
I mailed out my order on the night of 18th of January. It probably didn't get sent out until the 20th due to Martin Juther King, Jr's day on the 19th. It just arrived arrived on March 2nd. They say on their website to allow 28-35 days for delivery. Mine took 41-42 days (depending on how you want to calculate in the holiday).
One thing that was a bit upsetting is they didn't give it enough postage. I paid $4.00 shipping, the very least they could have did was put enough postage on the damn thing. I had to pay an extra $0.20 postage due because it was "non standard mail".
This is the envelope it came in, complete with "Postage Due" and "non standard mail" stamps.
Click image to view full
I also expected it to come in one of those bubble-wrap manila envelopes rather than just a standard envelope. It's really not too much to ask when you pay $4.00 shipping.
For more information about sea-monkeys themselves and how to care for them, check out my More About Sea-Monkeys post.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
«First Blogoversary»
January 21st may not be a holiday for anyone else, but it's a personal holiday for me. 1 year ago I started this blog. That's right, I've been rambling on for a year now. Someone must care; across my 404 posts, I've accumulated 1,313 comments so far.
Across my entire site (not just the blog) I've had over 200,000 visits and 400,500 pageviews during this past year. Not too bad, I suppose.
My 10 personal favorite posts are (in order of date posted):
Well, here's to another year of blogging!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
«More About Sea-Monkeys»
Because of an unusual interest shown by my readers, I'm talking about sea-monkeys again. I was going to wait until May 16th (that's National Sea-Monkey Day) to talk about them again. I've had mine for at least 10 years, so whatever I'm doing must be working.
Sea-monkeys are little brine shrimp on the order of ½ - ¾ inch long as adults. They can be found in most toy stores in sealed freeze-dried packages like the one pictured to the right. It's also possible to buy them with a tank included, but you can use any 12 ounce (354.5 ml) container. Or, of you use more than one package, you can have a bigger container. I think the plastic cashew container I have mine in is 48 ounces, so I used 4 packages.
When you start, it's best to use bottled or rain water, all the chemicals like chlorine in tap water is not good for them. Pour packet #1 into the water and stir until dissolved. Then let that sit for 24 hours. Packet #1 neutralizes harmful chemicals and metals in the water, and also has the salt the sea-monkeys need. They are brine shrimp, after all.
After the 24 hours, open and pour in packet #2, and stir gently. Packet #2 is the eggs and a little food. Some of the eggs will hatch once they hit water, thus they call it “instant life”. Although you may not see them right away, they are extremely small, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. If I were you, I wouldn't expect to see them until a day or two pass.
About 5 days after you put in the eggs, it's time to start your feeding. You feed them once a week from the green food packet, with the small end of the yellow plastic spoon that came with them. Just one level small spoon-full a week is all they need. Any more and their water will get cloudy, and they could die. If their water gets cloudy, stop feeding until it clears up. On adults, you can tell if they're getting enough food by looking at the dark strip on their underside that runs the length of their body. This is their digestive track, and as long as it's dark they're just fine.
When their water level evaporates down about 2 inches, re-fill their tank with bottled or rain water. You never need to use another packet #1, because the salt remains in the tank and doesn't evaporate with the water. As the water level goes down, the salt content of the remaining water gets a little higher and causes the sea-monkys to molt (shed a layer of skin) so they can grow more. So it's important to allow the tank level to evaporate down before re-filling. Never change the water... You'd throw the babies out with the bath water so-to-speak. There's also no need to clean out molted skin or dead sea-monkeys.
A sea-monkey colony is a little unstable until you get the clumpy blue-green algae to grow. This will take a while. I think this algae comes from their food packet. Once it takes hold, you can all but stop feeding them; the algae will provide for them. The picture to the left is of my tank (click the image for full sized), about 11 months ago. The red circles are around visible sea-monkeys in the picture. As you can see, I have a fair amount of algae.
There are 2 types of algae that can grow in a sea-monkey tank, one good, one bad. The good type is the clumpy blue-green algae I spoke of above. The bad type is a green slime. If you're getting the slime, the tank is getting too much sun light and could cause an algae bloom. The slime grows fast, and much of it dies in the night and is eaten by bacteria, and that consumes the oxygen in the water that the sea-monkeys need, so they will suffocate.
I recommend a moderate amount of sunlight. The temperature of mine is anywhere from 62-75. 62 is probably a little cold. For the most part whatever temperature the room is at is fine.
So that's the basics of caring for them. Long-term care on the order of years requires progressively less feeding as the algae grows. I only dump the small end of the feeding spoon every other month or so with mine now.
You'll notice the blue-green clumpy algae will create bubbles and float to the surface when it's in the sun. Those are oxygen bubbles, and as long as the algae sinks again afterwards, there's no harm in it floating. However, you don't want it to always be floating. Sea-monkeys do need to reach the surface from time-to-time, and they can't if there's too much algae floating. This is why I cleaned my tank just the other day. There weren't too many adults left...
Eventually, you'll get too much of the clumpy algae (like I did) and you'll want to fish out some of it with a wire. I used a bent paper clip. Don't remove all the algae, because they've become dependent on it. A nice layer covering the bottom is what you want. One thing I did was mix up a batch of packet #1 and replace the volume of algae I took out. I figured the algae I took some of the salts with it, so I wanted to replace that.
I already have tons of babies flourishing since I've cleaned the tank, so I think my colony is going to last a while longer. They survived a move into this house a few years ago. I'm gentle when I move their tank, and I make sure I don't knock it over. If I knocked over their tank or dropped it, that would be their end.
For any more information, go to the Sea Monkey Worship Page or the Official Sea-Monkey Site.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
«Sea-Monkey Tank Cleaning»
I finally cleaned my sea-monkey tank today. When I say tank, I mean the plastic cashew container I've got them in. There was a lot of excess algae growing and floating to the top. You want some in there, it provides food and oxygen for them. I pulled some of that out with a paper clip, and used a toothbrush to clean the sides of the tank. The water is murky right now because I stirred everything up, but it should clear. I think I've did this cleaning twice before.
Looks like there's still a few of those things alive in there. I've had them for years. I'm not sure on the exact time, but I'd say 10 years or so... I've never had to repopulate the tank. The lifespan of a sea-monkey is 3 months at most, but they reproduce.
A sea-monkey is just a little brine shrimp, about ¼ - ½ inch long. When they hatch, they're hardly big enough to see at all, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. They just swim around in circles, nothing too exciting.
Totally unrelated, here's a cat for Caturday:
Photoshopped? Definitely. But still cool looking.
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