The newest attraction on my kitchen counter is a small plastic “aquarium”, which doesn’t house fish, but instead is home to 3 small Aquasaurs. That’s the “toy name” for a critter called a Triops, which apparently dates all the way back to the dinosaur era. They are related to crabs, according to the instruction sheet.
The Aquasaurs are another Christmas present, this time for my 5-year-old son. The nice thing about this toy is that, unlike other creature toy habitats, this one actually comes with the animals. Aquasaurs lay eggs in temporary pools of water, and when they dry up, the eggs can lie dormant for up to 20 years. So you just drop them back in a new puddle (or plastic tub filled with spring water, in our case!) and out they come. Kinda like those old capsules that dissolved in water and produced a foam outline of an animal, except the Aquasaurs are real. 
So last Saturday we set everything up. I went to the grocery store and picked up two gallons of spring water, since you can’t use tap water without risking Aquasauricide. Rinsed everything out, filled the aquarium, dumped in 1/2 of the Aquasaur eggs, and waited.
36 hours later we were able to find two VERY small Aquasaurs swimming around. We’ve been checking them each day, until yesterday when it was finally time to start feeding them. I crushed up two food pellets and let my son dump them into the water. We watched for awhile, which is more fun now that the Aquasaurs are bigger and easier to see. We finally discovered that we have 3 of them, not just 2! One is about 20% bigger than the other two…maybe he’s the Alpha Aquasaur.
Tonight I get to go home and change out the water. What fun… but it’s better than cleaning a kitty litter box, and it sounds pretty easy, because we only have to empty 1/2 the water and replace it with fresh water. Hopefully I can keep all 3 of the little guys safe, and not accidentally wash them down the garbage disposal.
Approximate Retail: $19.95
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Comments 5
We would LOVE to have this at our house to add to the “zoo” we’ve already got!
Posted 18 Jan 2008 at 6:49 pm ¶Maybe you can have mine, along with the leftover eggs. It seems I have committed Aquasaur-cide. I didn’t leave proper enough instructions to the dog sitter when we went out of town, and she didn’t know to crush the food. The poor things starved to death (or so I assume). Bummer!
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 10:05 pm ¶We got ours last week and set it up Saturday - we’ve spotted one, but so far, that’s it. At least you got a few to hatch - I just seem to have a lot of “stuff” sitting on top of the water! However, the experience has been quite inspirational, writing-wise!
Posted 24 Mar 2008 at 12:53 pm ¶Wanted to let you know ours lasted two weeks before we found him belly-up. I think he used up his energy and just ran out of oomph. The thing would swim at 900 miles an hour and do flips - just seemed REALLY active. We’re doing the second set of egg hatching tomorrow.
Posted 14 Apr 2008 at 10:45 pm ¶Not too bad! Another friend said hers lived for months though - I’m not sure how she did it.
Posted 15 Apr 2008 at 8:32 am ¶Post a Comment