Harry had a Triop World kit for his birthday. Being the geeks that we are, we decided to setup a webcam next to the tank and capture images every minute or so. On Sunday we added the water and half the pack of eggs and plant waste as instructed. By Monday evening there were quite a few barely visible creatures swimming around. By Tuesday evening it was possible to just about distinguish the different kinds of creature – several triops, a few shrimp and some water fleas. As the week went on, the number of creatures gradually decreased until this afternoon there was just a single triop who had eaten the last shrimp!

On day two, you have to scrape most of the plant matter off the top of the water and dispose of it, however I’d read that sometimes the eggs can take up to a week to hatch so rather than throw it away, we put the plant matter into a large jam jar with some more water and left it. A few days later, there are quite a few more creatures swimming around in the jar!
The triop in the main tank is now over 1cm long and easily visible as it swims around. I can’t get the camera to take the picture in time because it moves so quickly.