Hello again,
I've not blogged anything for a while but I have a new project on the go now. Triops! I know this is a fishkeeping website but triop care isn't that different and so here is FK's first triop blog and rough guide.

The story so far...
I never had triops as a kid and have always been fascinated by the weird and wonderful so last Christmas my wife surprised me with a box called Triop World. Billing itself and everything I would need to keep triops it contained a pamphlet, a clear plastic yoghurt pot (maybe 500ml) and a three sachets.
The sachets turned out to be one of sand - about 50g. One of food, looks like standard fish feed pellets, and one of eggs and food.

The instructions tell you to fill the pot with bottled water (because chlorine and chloride are not liked by triops)
Wait until the water is at room temperature then add the eggs. Feed daily. Add the sand after three weeks. Do a partial water change every two weeks.

I decided to do some online research and found that most of this was pandering to the "make it easy or people wont buy it" line of thinking .

With the assistance of sites like http://mytriops.com and a few others that I can't find any more I learned that what I really wanted was a small aquarium of 4L per adult triop. A filter that would be considered safe for fry and somewhere to put it.

My credit with the wife had all but expired so rather than spending money I got on with redecorating the living room and fitting a 47" HD LCD to the wall. This pleased the wife but left an awkward empty gap next to the sofa... what would we put there?

A visit to Ikea saw the purchase of a sturdy chest of drawers which we could keep the remote controls and game controllers in... something tells me that if you need a chest of drawers for your remote controls technology really has taken over your life!

During this time my daughter made a new friend, when her parents came round they spotted the multiple tanks and asked if I would take theirs off their hands as they'd lost patience and where feeling guilty about the fish. These guys:-



Seen here fully recovered in my tank they where sadly homed in a 30L mess that was opaque with blackish slime algae. The filter had broken months before, several dead fish kept them company and the water was so murky I couldn't tell what they where until after I'd bagged them up, even then their poor frail bodies made them hard to identify.

The good news is that these poor little fishies are now much happier in my 220L planted tank and I have a 30L tank hood and light.

Thanks to work hours giving me no time at all to go round the lfs it took me ages to then find that none of the lfs sell a simple sponge filter. I bought an Eheim Pickup 2008 and stretched the toe of some tights over the inlet strainer.

It took another week to get back to a lfs that sold sand, maidenhead wanted £25 for a 25kg bag of sand. Not impressed guys. I rode the extra 50 yards to Wydales garden center and collected a 25kg bag of playsand instead for £3.99. Same stuff minus the little fishies on the bag! Seriously, what a racket.


Rinsed the sand, filled the tank with RO and a dash of tap/remineraliser making the TDS around 80ppm. Triops like very soft water and they spawn in fresh rainfall. Dropped in a couple of bits of bogwood that I had lying around too. Now when it clears I'll add the plants.



So that's it. Thanks for reading and now we are up to date I'll try to be a little more concise next time