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A short life

When your triops reach about 1.5 to 2 inches they are grown up adults. I could not figure out the difference between males and females. But I will do some more research during the next life cycle. My triops kept digging holes and trenches until they started to die one by one. The first one died at the age of 28 days, and the oldest one lived to be 37 days.

This is a rather short life cycle. Although there are thousands of animals with an even shorter life cycle, a month is still very short compared to our life expectancy. Because of this short cycle we are able to observe many generations of triops. Besides the triops longicaudatus, which is the one sold in those packages I could not locate any other triops species. There are said to be about 15.

After the last triops died I let my aquarium dry out. I took off the cover to help the process. I wanted to simulate nature as close as I could. I was a little bit impatient and carefully took out half the water. Then I let the rest dry out by itself. If you take out water by yourself be careful not to create much turbulance. There might be eggs floating around, although I did not see any. I hope that the sand in my aquarium is filled with lots and lots of triops eggs. I will let it "rain" again at the End of August.

During this month a lot of dirt started to build up in the aquarium. I did not use a filter because I was afraid the triops would get stuck in it or the eggs would be filtered out. After it dried out the sand looked kind of clean again. But I might try some gentle filtering as soon as the triops are hatched and I can see them. This should be before they start to lay eggs.

As I mentioned in other reports I also had a lot of fairy shrimp in my aquarium. I could not observe that any triops ate them, but their number decreased slowly. Only after the triops were dead I could find dead fairy shrimp. They died shortly after. I am sure I will have them again in August because I saw them laying their eggs in the sand.