Triop (5 of 5)

I love watching these guys go about their daily lives, constantly digging for, I can only assume nourishment. Their structure is truly remarkable, they really do look like horse shoe crabs.

They love to dig and are pretty good at it, making furrows in the sand and digging under objects. One of the props I have in the tank is but berried.

They have no concerns with eating each other if they get the chance. This particular one is the last of 2 large adults I had, which are coming up to 7 weeks old. I say had because this particular one literally ate every piece of his roommate. As they don’t sit around if one bites the other I can only assume the other must have come to the end of its life span and this guy took advantage of a large free meal.

They are incredibly agile and have grown pretty large considering their eggs are pretty much impossible to see with the naked eye. This particular subject is about 3in long including its tale. They are incredibly adapted as evidence by their incredibility long lived designs some species hardly changing for 100million years and can be tracked as far back as 300million years. Their reproduction mechanisms vary even within the same species, below a snippet from the Wiki:

"Reproduction
A typical vernal pool during the wet season
Another vernal pool, this one dried out

Triops longicaudatus displays several reproductive strategies. Individuals may reproduce sexually, but this is rare, as most populations are highly male- or female-biased. Parthenogenesis (development from unfertilized eggs) is the most common reproductive strategy. Some populations, however, consist of hermaphrodites who fertilize each other. Different populations display different strategies or combinations of strategies, and may therefore, be considered separate species or subspecies in the future.

In females, the eleventh pair of legs is modified into egg sacs, where the eggs are carried for several hours. The eggs are released in batches, have a thick shell, and can stand freezing temperatures as well as drought, enabling the population to survive from one season to the next. The eggs have to dry out completely before being submerged in water again in order to hatch successfully; they may remain in a state of diapause for up to 20 years. These eggs may have helped Triops longicaudatus, as well as other notostracans, to survive the various natural disasters and mass extinctions to date."

This document goes into more detail http://www.nesc.ac.uk/talks/1090/Mathers.pdf