Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

WARNING: LONG REVIEW I've had sea monkeys before, probably when I was like in first grade. I remember my dad throwing away the food, me having a huge tantrum and ignoring the sea monkeys for a good three weeks, and returning to find one solitary little sea monkey still in the tank. After showering it with love, it died and we threw everything away. Now, I'm a junior in high school, and so I thought I was responsible enough to care for some brine shrimp marketed towards little kids. I received the package on Feb. 11, and to be honest, I didn't have high hopes.My tank was this gluey mess - I could see the little deposits of glue outside where it had dripped. When I opened the lid, I found a small crack in the plastic. I was disappointed, but was still super excited to try these little things out again, so I grabbed some E6000 to quickly patch up the hole and a bottle of water to fill up to the line. Day 1: I opened the package, fixed the crack with E6000 and got started! When I opened packet 1, the water purifier packet, it was slightly green, had little blackish-red dots, and would just come out of the packet. I had to dip it into the water, swish, dump back in, and repeat. From what I remembered, packet 1 was supposed to be white powder (at least that's what I saw in first grade?) but oh well. I finished with packet 1, and put everything else aside. It was around 6:45 pm-ish when I finished. Day 2: 11:30 pm (lots of homework, what can I say?), I opened packet number 2. Again, from memory, I remember just being able to pour out white powder into the tank, but again, the "powder" was green, wet, and speckled with little black dots. I was rather disappointed but forced on, doing the swish, dump technique again. When I looked into the tank, I could see nothing moving. Day 3: (At around 10:30 pm) THERE WERE BABY SQUIRMY THINGS! I could see a grand total of... 3. Awesome. But well, it was something, I guess? I took a coffee stirrer thing (the red plastic thin straws) and blew some air in. When I finished, I couldn't find them again. Hoping that I didn't accidentally kill them, I went off to bed. Day 4: So much for three baby sea monkeys... when I checked on day 4, I could see at least 80 little babies wiggling around. Knowing I was probably going to have a mass die-off (whoever heard of raising 80 sea monkeys to adulthood?) I said my goodbyes before heading off to bed. (Day 4 was basically Day 5, it was like 1:45 am by the time I finished chemistry homework!) Day 5: When I checked, there were maybe 20 sea monkeys, but they were now big enough for me to see without having to actually focus. I couldn't see any more tiny babies, so I probably had an entire carpet of dead babies at the bottom of the tank (good thing they were so small I couldn't see them too well... that would have been horrifying.) Anyway, I fed them on day 7, and stopped keeping track around day 12. My sea monkeys grew. I probably have around 30 in my tank right now - 15 big adult ones for sure and a lot of juveniles. I saw three itty bitty babies today (they're literally the size of a period and almost impossible to see unless you know what you're looking for. Look for little white swimming commas.) and I have a lot of reddish brown specks floating around, maybe around a hundred of those. (A google search told me that brownish red specks are sea monkey eggs, so that was probably the weird stuff in the package?) I keep my sea monkey tank on my desk and they accompany me when I do homework. It's been a while since I last fed them, but they have a little colony of algae in their tank (they basically get exposed to only my desk lamp so I don't expect too much photosynthesis). I don't often oxygenate the tank. Anyway, I was originally going to give four stars because of the cracked tank, the bad glue at the bottom, and the magnifying bubbles that really do a whole bunch of nothing. But then I wasn't buying this for the tank and could have used a mason jar for a "prettier presentation." It's just important to be really patient and look hard :) I attached a picture so you can see the sea monkeys in my tank! EDIT (1/17/2016): I did eventually give up on the sea-monkeys sometime in July, as I went to Taiwan for five months and during the time, no one fed or aerated the sea monkeys. When I returned, they were gone :( So I actually purchased another sea-monkey kit and I'm beginning the process anew - I bought the Sea-Monkeys on the Moon kit and we'll see what happens! I've already had a very different experience!