I originally bought these for my little sister as my mum was going OTT saying " Your not allowed anymore pets" as we already had a rabbit and a hamster. My sister desperately wanted a goldfish but as mum had said no I took the initiative and bought her a sea monkey kit from amazon for about £9. I thought they were like fish as they swam around, you could watch them through the glass.

Anyway, the product arrived as directed, and you get a A4 cardboard sheet with the instructions on, a tank which is basically a plastic bottle with a lid, my sisters set was purple, with a purple lid and a purple stand, you got one sachet of powder to put into the water to insure it was suitable for the sea monkeys to live in, and the other sachet is what contained the sea monkeys, i am assuming in an egg-like form. Another small sachet also contained the sea monkeys food, which we gave them every two days, but once the numbers had depleted, we changed that down to once a week.

Once we had sterilized the water, we emptied the sea monkey packet into the tank and we waited. After about a week we had I would say getting on for about 80 sea monkeys in the tank, as they do breed a lot, this number was then cut down to about 30, with one being a lot bigger than the others, I think the sea monkeys also eat the younger members of the group, this is why the number available also decreases.

As said above we fed the sea monkeys every two days when we had approximately 80 and once a week when the numbers had dropped to around thirty, because the sea monkeys lived for so long, I think my sister had them for close to a year, my mum had to purchase some more food for the sea monkeys which were also purchased from Amazon. That is one down side to the product, it does not come with enough food for the time scale that the sea monkeys live for.

The sea monkeys tank towards the end also got dirty and began to get slightly mouldy so in the end my Dad had to get rid of the sea monkeys which my sister found quite sad but they couldnt live in dirty water in a mildew tank. However when my Dad had got rid of the sea monkeys only the large one was left, so it wasnt so bad. My Dad did however top up the water every so often as it evaporated, because you have to keep the sea monkeys where there is light so that they are able to grow and in a warm environment.

Overall this is a good purchase for a ten year old as it keeps them entertained and they feel like they are feeding a pet, although they are alive I would not class them as pets. My sister took endless joy out of watching the big sea monkey swim around as he was about the only one that the magnifier could pick out, as they are not terribly good. However when you are 20 like I was you lose interest rather quickly and the novelty does indeed ware off like it does with many things in life. I would however recommend this product for the fun, interest and novelty of the whole thing. Worth a try.