# Triops?



## Yukiharu (May 3, 2014)

I've kept them but not in a 30 gallon tank. I would recommend starting them in a container with water from the main tank so they can find infusoria to feed on. When they are big enough you can then transfer them to the main tank. Be careful as they are cannibalistic and if they are in the small container too long they will eat each other. They also eat plants (floating plants like elodea are a great food source for them).
Be wary of starting them with floaters like frogbit as they need to be in direct light to hatch.


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## mindy (Dec 22, 2010)

Thanks! I can't decide what to do. I think they would be a lot of fun but I worry a little, too. 

Can I just take some sand and eggs from the tank and dry that to hatch more eggs? I mean, while the other triops are still alive? I read that I should break down the tank between generations to get some eggs. 

Will they do OK with fake plants? Terrible, I know, but the closest lfs to me closed (200+ km away) and I can't get plants shipped in the winter. 

Thanks!


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## Yukiharu (May 3, 2014)

They will be fine with sand and yes if you dry it out for a month. Fake plants are okay but real plants are much better for them, as they eat plant and animal matter and having real plants on hand makes it much easier to feed them when they are still young.


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## ichthyogeek (Jul 9, 2014)

They also eat daphnia and fairy shrimp eggs. So....maybe feed them frozen daphnia/brine shrimp nauplii as a treat and crushed flake food/pellets for staple? Just me rambling here, but I think a sandy tank with a large footprint would be good for the triops. However, their short lifespan would result in a mass die-off every 3 months (or whatever their lifespan is). At that point, you'd wait a week (to allow for infusoria to develop), remove the bodies, scrape the glass, drain the water to a thin layer above the sand (to allow the infusoria to lay ephippia/go dormant), wait a month , then add freshwater again to restart the cycle. So basically an indoor vernal pool.


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## auban (Jun 23, 2012)

you can stir their eggs up in the wet sand and stimulate quite a few to hatch that way. all you really need to do is stir the sand around. it will kick up detritus into the water column, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  they need the dirty water for the first few days anyway.


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## mindy (Dec 22, 2010)

Thank you both. I am still thinking about what I plan to do. I'm excited about them but really on the fence about all the death with my 3 yo. I know it's great learning opportunity. Ugh. I have to keep thinking about it. 

I have brine shrimp eggs so I can hatch those. I can feed kelp and other veggies as well. I would like live plants but it's just not in the cards to be shipped to rural Newfoundland in the dead of winter. Haha!


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## auban (Jun 23, 2012)

my daughter didnt have much problems with them dying. i just explained to her that triops dont live very long. 
at the time, it seemed to my daughter that they would live forever(she was also three when she first saw them). for a three year old, three months is a very long time. 

anyway, i start mine in a tank with a light left on it 24/7. basically, i let the tank grow lots of algae, then once its nice and green, i soak the triops eggs in a bottle of distilled water for about ten hours. i shake it up several times to make sure they dont just float and stick to the edges of the bottle the whole time. that gets the hatching process started. after soaking for ten hours, i pour the bottle, with the eggs, into the tank with all the algae. 

i like to use a small five or two and a half gallon tank to get them started. i leave the light on until they are about a centemeter long, and then transfer the triops into whatever tank i want to keep them in. 

here is a video of a 75 gallon tank that i had triops in. i mainly used them as a way to have something interesting to look at while the tank cycled. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYyDyKJz5fs


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## mindy (Dec 22, 2010)

Thanks! 

My plan is to set up the tank (30 tall) and do a fishless cycle. I'm going to use play sand so I'll also use that time to rinse out as much dust as I can. I plan to put in a little water and swirl it and drain it some and repeat that a bunch of times over a week or so. I tried to rinse sand before and I found there was always more dust every time the fish disturbed the sand so I really want to make sure I do it good. Maybe that's not the most efficient way to do it but I tried the bucket way last time and it didn't work out well. 

I have to use fake plants until I can get real ones shipped. 

After the tank is cycled then I will put the triops in. 

Hopefully that is a good plan. That way if I decide against triops I can pretty much put in whatever I want.


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## Kittylovekitkat (Feb 5, 2017)

*triops diet*

Can triops eat halos?


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