May I present: Two triops

Now that I've been looking after my triops for more than a week, here comes an update. There are two of them, Bertie and Jocelyn (I am told that there are always more female than male triops, but Bertie looks and behaves very male to me). Bertie is almost a centimetre long now, while Jocelyn is about seven millimetres. She's at least two days younger, although it's hard to tell, because she hid in the 'teabag' that was maintaining the water quality and I only found her yesterday.

Bertie.

Bertie, swimming on his back.

It's surprisingly exiting to watch them swim around. Bertie races through the market place, always swimming as fast as possible. Jocelyn stays closer to the ground, nibbling on algae that grow on the stones. I've noticed that when the light doesn't come directly from above, the two little swimmers don't seem to know where is up and where is down. If the light is coming from below, they start swimming on their backs - very cute :)

Jocelyn, hiding in a corner.

Today, I made 'triops city' a little more homely. I added stones and sand to the different 'rooms'. For now, the two triops are staying in the central market place area, but they seem to explore their changed home step by step.

The triops' new home.

I'm quite happy that they haven't eaten each other yet :)

Once they're a little bigger, I will add some protein-rich food to the special triops food, this is supposed to help against cannibalism in the aquarium.

Update 13th May: Poor Jocelyn died a few days ago. Bertie is growing rapidly, he's more than two centimetres tall by now. He's shedding his skin almost every day, which is the only way they can grow (and it's quite a good way of measuring his growth). I hope he's actually female, so that I get some triops eggs after all :)