all Sea Monkey Kits come with three pouches water purifier sea monkey eggs and growth food this three-step process is the foundation needed to establish a happy little colony of aquatic pets but you might not know that over the years there have actually been several other novelty sea Mony packets these have ranged from alternative food options that promise to make your pets grow larger to a mating powder that encourages your sea monkeys to get it on little is known about these rear extra packets though and since many of them are now discontinued it seems that nobody has ever done a proper deep dive into them to figure out what exactly they are and if they even work well I have a real treat for today's video because I'm going to be uncovering the mysteries of every single novelty seam monkey packet by taking a look at its contents under the microscope and testing them out on real sea monkeys here's a quick overview of the 12 pouches we'll be looking at in today's video packet number one sea monkey water purifier packet number two instant live sea monkey eggs packet number three SE monkey growth food packet number four plasma 3 Banana treat sea monkey dessert grow quickly sea monkey growth stimulator Cupid arero sea monkey mating powder red magic sea monkey vitamins super food food for super Health sea medic sea monkey medicine the notorious sea monkey sea diamonds and lastly a 12th packet sea monkey racing fuel some of these pouches are still made today but many of them have been discontinued in recent years I have heard Whispers that some of them are being reformulated For an upcoming re-release So for anybody who wants to experiment with their pets they should hopefully be back up for sale soon now before we get underway with the experiments I want to say a quick thank you to Todd ma Todd's the official illustrator for TR science the company behind sea monkeys and you're likely familiar with his incredible artwork which is on the packaging for the current line of Sea Monkey Kits Todd's also been collecting sea monkey products for decades so when it comes to this stuff there's really nobody who knows more about it than him Todd was not only kind enough to send me a bunch of the different pouches that I'll be testing in today's video but he's also given me a whole lot of background information and photos to share with you all so thanks again Todd for everything you've contributed to today's video because it wouldn't have been possible without your help all right let's get underway we'll start off with the three classic pouches which come with all Sea Monkey Kits first up is Packet number one the water purifier this blue and yellow pouch has the graphic of a large number one on the front and over on the back it says how to use water purifier empty this Packer into the water of sea monkey aquarium or clean glass container stir in the powder and set aside for 24 to 36 hours at 70 to 76° F do not add sea monkey eggs packet number two instant live eggs until the 24 to 36 hours have elapsed Main Ingredients assorted mixed salt so while the design of this pouch has now become quite iconic it hasn't always looked this way in fact it's gone through several changes over the years the very first sea monkey kits from the early 1960s were fairly simple and only came with a single metallic silver packet yep that's right the three-step process we're all familiar with today was a change that came a few years later so at first everything was in just one pouch this didn't look particularly appealing or interesting to Children though so once the creator of sea monkeys her Von Brun Hut had the idea in 1964 to turn his brainy creation into a multiple step process he commissioned an artist by the name of Henry Lam moth to create some illustrations for his different packets this is when packet number one was first given its blue color and it was named 30-hour sea monkey purifier with the iconic picture of Hatchy the baby sea monkey springing to life from its egg 4 years later in 1968 the illustration was simplified to a rather uninspired wave packet design though this is the first time we see it simply being called water purifier in 1970 the packet design was changed again this time by illustrator Ben Harvey who really brought the pouches to life with his depictions of humanoid looking sea monkey characters the water purifier been given an illustration of a sea monkey scientist developing a concoction of purifier in his lab 2 years later in 1972 the well-known American Artist Joe Orlando redesigned many of the packets again updating in the illustrations with more detail and flare it's these amazing artworks which have really become an iconic part of the brand helping sea monkeys to become a household name and part of the cultural Zeitgeist things changed one final time towards the end of the 1970s though when these pictures were replaced with the large number Graphics we're all familiar with today this was likely to simplify the process for young children even if it's not quite as interesting to look at so the idea is that this water purifier packet is only supposed to contain con salts to purify your water of any harmful additives like chlorine which is often found in tap water though these assorted salts serve another function too because the brine trmp you'll be hatching are of course saltwater animals salt is integral to the sea monkeyy life cycle which is why it's included in this packet I dug around a little online to see if I could find out any more information about this sachche and I came across an old Patent filed in 1970 by the Creator Harold Von bronut which outlines his method and materials used in the sea monkey packets this document lifts the veil on some of the mystery behind the sea monkey brand and how their product works it goes as far as to list which salts are used in the first two packets and their quantities as well as mentioning the addition of emia Selena eggs I'll leave a link to this patent in the video description for any of you who love nerding out over this stuff as much as I do having a look under the microscope we can get a closer look at what's in this pouch yes the vast majority of the contents are white salt crystals but there's a bunch of sne sneaky Brown sea monkey eggs scattered throughout the mixture too these are added into the water purifier packet to give the illusion of your sea monkeys hatching instantly when you add in the second packet the instant live eggs the following day in reality it takes at least 24 hours for Brin trim to hatch which is why they use this little slight of hand to sneak them into packet number one to test out this packet I'm going to pour the contents into the very first edition of the ocean Zoo tank which is from 1967 interestingly the tank was only available in red and didn't come with a lid of any kind I'm only going to fill this halfway with plain distilled water this is just to make sure the salinity isn't too low as I won't be adding any more salt into this tank I'll leave it for 48 hours and then give you an update at the end of this video to see if any babies have hatched despite me not adding in the egg packet let's move on to our second pouch the instant live eggs this red and yellow packet has a large number two graphic on the front with some more detailed instructions about how to use it over on the back how to hatch sea monkeys after following the instructions on packet number one water purifier add number two instant live eggs to the prepared water and stir briefly when added to the purified water you'll see monkey babies will hatch and in some cases are so small they may take up to 36 hours to grow large enough to see Main Ingredients assorted mixed salts and dmia Selena cysts SL eggs just like sachche 1 packet number two has gone through some changes over the years first being called 5 minute sea monkeys in Magic growing formula with Henry Lam moth's red line drawings of sea monkeys hatching and growing the 1968 wave packet design for this pouch changed both the name and color now calling it instant life stylized in green I really love Ben Harvey's illustration of this pouch which came a couple years later in 1970 it shows a sea monkey doctor checking on the health of some new baby hatchlings I feel like these depictions gave so much more imagination and life to the brand Joe orando refreshed this design in 1972 it's the same idea again just with more detail and character when the final change came at the end of the '70s with the large numbered graphic we have today patch number two got its final name change now being called sea monkey instant live eggs for the very first time so this patch is claimed to be both salt and eggs but I know from experience that there's also a greeny blue water soluble eye in here which is supposed to let you see your baby sea monkeys a little better by slightly coloring the water the Joe Orlando packet from 1972 also mentions there being some growth food that included in it as well so let's take a closer peek under the microscope to get a closer look just like the first pouch this one is mostly white salt crystals no surprise there but there's some colorful particles mixed in too some green and some orange my guess is that the orange pallets are a type of dissolvable food something I've also noticed in packet number number three the green bits I'm not so sure about though perhaps this is more food or maybe it's the dye I'm not really sure lastly there are indeed also sea monkey eggs in here not many though in fact ironically the first pouch had a lot more than this one does I'm going to test out this packet in a similar way to the first pouring it into the second edition of the ocean Zoo tank from 1972 this was the first ocean zoo that came with a lid definitely an improvement on that original design because I'm using purified distilled water for this test I don't believe the use of a water conditioner will be necessary to hatch the eggs in this pouch the first thing you'll notice is that the water quickly changes to a blue green color from that dye I mentioned before I'll leave this tank for 48 hours or so and check back in with you at the end of this video for an update on what happens the third PCH we'll take a look at is of course packet number three the sea monkey growth food this one is colored green and yellow which is a nice connection to the color of the actual food inside the back gives us some more detail and a guide on how to use this food feeding pet sea monkeys feed your sea monkeys one small scoop of your measuring spoon 5 to 7 days after they hatch and then once every 7 days or when the water is clear do not overfeed cloudy water indicates too much feed remains Main Ingredients assorted mixed salts and organic ground vegetable powder so the history of this pouch is pretty convoluted but I'll do my best the very first Sea Monkey Kits didn't come come with any food yeah I don't know how they was supposed to survive but that's just how it was when the wave packet designs were released in 1968 we got our very first food pouch but it didn't have a number on it instead this packet simply said sea monkey growth food on the front with a nice little illustration by Henry Lam moth of a sea monkey who looks eager for his supper when Ben Harvey did his redesigns we got a real treat because his food packet illustration was the first time we had a female sea monkey Grace the front of a pouch here she is feeding growth food to two baby sea monkeys and high chairs I have to admit that Harvey's illustrations are definitely my favorite something about those BD is so endearing Joe Orlando put his own spin on things a few years later recreating Harvey's illustration while also adding in a dog who's salivating over the prospect of getting some of the food now I should mention that while this pouch was originally purple it did get another limited print run in the ' 80s and '90s with new colors this time being yellow and green the final design change came in 1978 with the large number three graphic this was the first time the food packet was given the number three cementing it as one of the core sea monkey pouches let's take a closer look at the food you can see that it's a light green color which gives me the impression that it's most likely some kind of dried Elie it has quite a strong smell to it too almost like a green tea or matcha fragrance let's pop it under the microscope to see what it looks like at the microscopic level you can see that there defin definitely a mixture of ingredients in here most of it is green but there's also some red colored food too I believe these are those food pets I mentioned earlier which dissolve in water making it easy for baby sea monkeys to eat there's also some salt crystals in this pouch this is likely because over time water will Splash out of the tank when you're irating it so putting a bit of salt in the food packet is an easy way to keep the tank salinity relatively consistent something really surprising is that there's actually a few sea monkey eggs in this pouch as well heard a lot of people speculate that the food has eggs in it so here's your confirmation guys the rumors are officially true so for this experiment we're going to use my personal favorite tank the ocean volcano from 2020 now we already know that this food packet works well for feeding seam monkeys but let's test out the egg theory just to make sure I'm going to fill this ocean volcano tank with regular plain salt water and add in a few scoops of the growth food I'll give you an update at the end of this video to check if we can get any of the eggs in this food packet to hatch all right now with those three out of the way we can move on to some of the more rare and interesting sea monkey pouches next up is Packet number four plasma 3 let's take a look at the back to get an idea of what exactly it is and how it's supposed to work how to use plasma 3 new plasma 3 is formulated so that 50% more young sea monkeys will grow and thrive in any ocean Zoo aquarium 10 days after hatching not before four add three large scoops of plasma 3 with the sea monkey feeding spoon Stir the Water once every 2 weeks thereafter add one large scoop until finished now I know the naming here is a little confusing but to understand why plasma 3 is Packet number four you need to know a little bit about the history of this pouch all modern Sea Monkey Kits come with three packets water purifier instant live eggs and growth food but this wasn't always the case when those wave packet designs were released in 1968 they introduced plasma for the very first time and back then packet number one was water purifier packet number two was the eggs and packet number three was the living plasma and this stuck around for quite a number of years with both Ben Harvey and Henry Lam moth illustrating plasma packets in the' 70s so the plasma pouch and the number three kind of became synonymous with each other but then in 1978 when the number graphic pouches came out trans science decided that plasma wasn't so essential and so it was dropped from that core lineup and replaced by the food packet which took the number three slot plasma was still available as a bonus pouch in some Sea Monkey Kits though so it was given the number four and the name was changed to plasma 3 at least I think that's roughly what happened I mean there was a product called plasma 2 listed for sale in the handbooks at some point as well so to be honest the timeline for this one is so muddled and confusing that getting to the bottom of it was kind of impossible so like the others this patch had a few different looks over the years but unlike every other packet we'll talk about today plasma has also come in a different size too there have been two Jumbo quart-sized living plasma packets one in 1968 and another in the early '70s with Joe Orlando Sea Monkey scientist illustration on it its function was for use and larger than normal sea monkey aquariums perhaps for those doing DIY tanks it's a pretty cool concept and something I'd love to see them re-release in the future so let's take a look at this pouch under the microscope to get a better idea of what's in it and what it does just like the water purifier packet plasma 3 contains a lot of salt crystals but also a whole bunch of sneaky sea monkey eggs which is basically how this product works it increases the tank salinity while simultaneously adding more eggs into the tank for this experiment I'm using one of the newest sea monkey tanks the ocean treasure which was first released in 2021 I filled this with low salinity salt water and nothing else my plan to put in a few scoops of the plasma 3 now and continue to slowly add more over the next few days we can check back later to see if any new babies have hatched from these eggs and appeared in the tank while the sea monkey growth food can be used exclusively for your pets there have been several other food options sold by trans science over the years most of which made the debut in 1968 the first we'll take a look at is banana treat sea monkey dessert Joe Orlando's illustration on the front shows a male sea monkey sitting a top of peeled banana while feeding a female what is assumedly some of his banana treat I'm not sure if I'm looking into this too much but I get the feeling that this image is suggesting some sort of innuendo that's going over my head over on the back of the packet it says fun food for finny friends your pets will go aped for this tasty treat it's loaded with yummy vitamin B1 thomine nasin riboflavin high protein and minerals so to find out more about this pouch I had a look in two of my vintage sea monkey handbooks both of these are full of ancient sea monkey knowledge and with a prime source of sea monkey information before the age of the internet in the back they have a parts and supplies list which tells you about each of their products on offer and how much they cost my blue one here is from the early '70s and it lists banana treat as costing only 50 while the yellow one from the'80s has bumped up the price to $2 they also provide more information about the products they banana treat is described in very much the same way that pouch does simply calling it a vitamin packed treat for your pets I've scanned high quality PDFs of these two handbooks and uploaded them to archive.org for posterity I'll leave a link in the video description for anybody who wants to read through them and experience an important piece of sea monkey history so the name for this food being banana treat sounds like it's just a reference to monkeys eating bananas because I don't believe this novelty sea monkey food packet actually has any kind of banana der the related ingredients I've never used it before though so I am hoping it is actually at least yellow in color which would be another fun tie in for the name at first glance it just looks like regular sea monkey growth food and it has that signature matcha green tea smell to it too it is a little disappointing I was hoping for something quite unique up close it definitely looks a lot like the regular growth food packet though not quite as colorful with the bulk of it just being salt crystals and that green organic material I suspected there might also be sea monkey eggs in here but after looking extensively I couldn't find any that's not to say there aren't any eggs but if there are some it's certainly only a small amount so I have an existing colony in the sea monkeys big show projector tank from 2011 who will be our test subjects for this packet I'm not really expecting too much of a reaction here but I'll give these guys some of the banana treat and check back in with you at the end of this video to see if I've observed anything interesting from this food the next pouch on our list is grow quickly sea monkey growth stimulator I really like Joe Orlando's yellow and green illustration here it shows a sea monkey mom feeding her oversized baby to grow quickly which has clearly made him grow incredibly fast there's a pit cat with three and 10A in the background too which is a nice we touch to the art I should also note that there seems to have been some rare color variance of this packet at some point though I assume it was only a limited run as I couldn't find many photos of it flipping over to the back tell tells us more about what we can expect from this novelty pouch how to use grow quickly once a week add a small scoop of grow quickly to the SE monkeyy water using the sea monkey feeding spoon you'll see spectacular growth in only 48 Hours as the sea monkey's growth cycle accelerates if you like the sound of that my sea monkey handbook makes an even Bolder Claim about this product saying that it doubles the speed of their growth and also produces larger sized adults so this is quite a dramatic assertion and when I'm a little skep of if it does work as described why not just make this pouch the standard food packet probably because it's just a gimmick with some on-brand hyperbolic sea monkey marketing anyway let's open it up to see so this also looks and smells a lot like the growth food in packet number three and the microscopic view is pretty much identical to what we just saw in the banana treat pouch I am quite impressed that these salt crystals have survived this long these packets are all a few years old now so they've clearly been kept in good condition I did spot a few sneaky sea monkey eggs in this pouch as well I don't know if they'll still be viable after all these years but they look to be nice and dry to test out this packet I've gone ahead and put some juvenile sea monkeys into this Robo diver tank from 2002 I'm going to feed them to grow quickly for a few days to see if there's any noticeable difference in their development to be honest I'm not expecting much but I'd love to be proven wrong I'll give you the update at the end of this video to see if these sea monkeys are still able to fit in their tank and now on to Cupid Arrow sea monkey mating powder this novelty pouch seems to be the one that's most intriguing to people its effects have been likened to that of Viagra or an aphrodesiac so let's see if it really works and if it doesn't work on the sea monies who knows maybe it'll work on me the front of this pouch has what is perhaps my favorite Joe Orlando packet illustration of all it shows a female sea monkey watching on as an Angelic Cupid lines up his bow to shoot an arrow into an suspecting male sea monkey flipping over to the back tells us how this mysterious powder is supposed to work how to be a monkey's uncle to encourage sea monkey mating cubid Arrow will help light their fire it may help overcome the embarrassment of young inexperienced sea monkeys to pull the bow string add a small scoop of Cupid's arrow with the sea monkey feeding spoon if you see a boy sea monkey ently hug his girlfriend and hang on tightly you'll know it's working but if more than one sea monkey grabs the the Same Girl You Used too much and your pets are losing their minds sounds like a good time to me so this Cupid's arrow is making quite the claim in my experience Brin trmp engage in mating behavior when they're happy and comfortable in their environment adequate nutrition temperature water quality that kind of thing I have no idea how any kind of powder would expedite mating but it would be super cool if it does work so let's open it up and get a closer look I'm starting to see a bit of a trend with these specialty food packets now while I don't know their exact ingredients they definitely seem to be formulated around the same base with all of them having this earthy green colored food and of course the salt crystals again the microscope helped me to spot a few eggs hiding in here I kind of wish they disclose the addition of these eggs on the actual packet ingredients but at the very least I am glad they put them in to test this pouch I'm going to use the 2023 crystal version of The Magic Castle tank which is full of sea monkeys who don't appear to be particularly interested in mating some of the females are pregnant though this has come via pathogenesis or self- fertilization rather than through sexual means I'm going to feed them small amounts of the Cupid's arom mating powder over the next few days to see if I can get any of them to pair up I'll update you guys later so we can watch them get it on in 4k one of the most well-known novelty food pouches is red magic C Monkey vitamins this is another food option which can be used interchangeably with their regular growth food the front of this packet lists the different vitamins in it and also has a cool illustration by Joe Orlando which shows an energetic young sea monkey bouncing around the house and annoying his dad after consuming red magic while the back of the packet tells us a bit more about how we can use it red magic keeps sea monkeys in the pink in the Pink's an expression which describes a state of good health or well-being it's a good pun you can alternate your sea monkey feeding program with red magic C Monkey vitamins instead of their regular food just remember to avoid overfeeding by choosing one or the other never use both at the same time and don't feed more often than recommended in the handbook so while the information on here doesn't mention anything about this food changing the color of your sea monkeys I had a look in my vintage sea monkey handbooks which both list red magic as a product in their parts and supplies list they give the same info about the vitamins in this packet but they also go on to make the claim that red magic does indeed turn your sea monkeys red with continued use now longtime Watchers of the channel will know I love changing the color of my brine shrimp with different foods so this will be a lot of fun if it works let's open it up and check it out to be honest cutting these open feels a little bit weird since most of them aren't made anymore it seems a shame to ruin them but at least I can share this experience with you guys so the red magic has a different smell to it to the other ones I've opened it's still earthy but has a spicier fragrance it seems to look pretty similar to the others though but let's have a look under the microscope to make sure okay this one is definitely a little different it has the salt and green food particles but there's also some green and orange granules as well perhaps there is some truth to that claim of turning your sea monkeys red with prolonged use again I had to do a bit of searching here but I did indeed find some more sea monkey eggs which is now starting to seem like a pretty standard edition in these pouches okay let's test it out I have a colony in this year 2000 C monkeys on Mars tank who are all fairly green in color because of the growth food and oie they've been eating I think that'd suit this tank much better if they were a martian red color though so I'm going to feed them exclusively red magic for the next week to see if I can get their color to change I'll give you an update at the end of this video to see if the red magic had any effect on their color or behavior the next packet will take a look at is sea monkey superfood I really like the graphic on the front here it shows a small juvenile transforming into a jacked super Schwarzenegger sea monkey I'm a big fan of the Retro color palette for this one too I love to see some of these designs on t-shirts someday let me know down in the comments if you think this is something trans science should start selling on their website so again the back of the superfood pouch tells us more about what this is and how we can use it with our sea monkeys using superfood for super Health occasionally instead of feeding your sea monkeys growth food only you can improve their diet with a small scoop of Rich superfood using the sea monkey feeding spoon you'll notice even the lazy ones get friskier on this G sea monkey food so my blue handbook here says that the superfood contains a concentration of essential CA monkey vitamins but it also mentions that superfood contains red magic vitamin A extract so you get some extra bang for your buck this patch is unique for another reason too and that's because it's actually come in three different color variants over the years from 1972 to 1996 the patch was predominantly purple and gold but exploratory changed the colors to the baby blue and yellow one I have here when they got the license for the sea monkey brand in the late 1990s there was a short print run of a rare yellow and red variant at some point too I believe the contents of all three of these superfood pouches were exactly the same but it's cool that they switched the colors up a little with this packet over the years as far as I can tell there's nothing all that special about this food though other than a claiming to make your sea monkeys more frisky so so it kind of just seems like an alternative to the regular growth food so let's open it up and see how it looks each time I cut one of these open they seem to release a strong buildup of fragrant gas that's clearly been trapped in these packets for far too many years we're back to that green tea smell again and the superfood is looking a lot like the others too green particles with plenty of salt putting these under the microscope now just feels like a hunt for sea monkey eggs they don't include many so it's fun trying to find them I had a good search here and couldn't positively identify any though but I did find something that kind of resembled an egg I'm not really sure I guess we'll just have to test this packet out to see if any babies appear I'm going to try feeding the superfood to this colony in my Explorer sub sea monkey tank from 2001 I don't expect to see any dramatic change in their behavior or health from eating this stuff but I'll update you on how things are going at the end of this video to let you know what I've observed next up we have SE medic sea monkey medicine this novelty pouch is designed for those pets who are doing a little poorly when sea monkeys are unwell it's usually most obvious by a significant slowing in the movement of their thoracopods or legs so this stuff is supposed to help put a little Vigor back in their step or stroke again Joel Lando has done a great job with the illustration it shows a sick sea monkey resting in bed with a doctor and nurse at his bedside taking his pulse the bedside table appears to show a drink with a straw perhaps there's some cic in there to help him get better I'm not a huge fan of the colors Joe's chosen for this packet though the purple yellow and orange don't complement each other particularly well and the empty white space on top feels a little soulless and sterile though perhaps this was intentional to help communicate that uneasy and uncomfortable feeling the hospitals often seem to have there was a nicer orange and pink print run off this packet at some point too though that one doesn't appear to have been particularly common turning over to the back gives us some more detail about how the Miracle powder is supposed to work sea monkey ambulance in a bag here's a sea monkey doctor's bag of help to overcome any Health crisis add one scoop of SE medic with the small end of the spoon that's it if your pet is not too far gone this can save its life but if it goes to sea monkey Heaven please don't grieve for long your sea monkey life insurance policy is good for more so this isn't particularly satisfying because it doesn't really tell us too much but the yellow sea Mony handbook from the 80s does give us a little bit more insight about it in its parts and supplies list for C medic it says a must for emergencies if sickness strikes sea medic is the only medicine available for sea monkeys it kills oxygen depleting bacteria in their water without harming the sea monkeys it can cure Afflicted sea monkeys if given in time keeping sea medic on hand if needed in a hurry is almost as good as having a team of sea monkey doctors standing by in the ER so this stuff is supposed to prevent bacterial Blooms from getting out of control in your tank and bring your sluggish sea monkeys back to life I have no idea what's in here so I'm interested to see how this one works okay so the cic is definitely something a little different not a food pouch like the others but rather almost entirely salts my guess is that it's supposed to increase the Tank's water salinity to hopefully make it inhospitable for any unwanted bacteria under the microscope it looks quite similar to packet number two there's a ton of salt crystal in here and also some yellow granules which I honestly can't identify unsurprisingly there's sea monkey eggs in here too and a lot of them I guess this makes sense if you're using sea medic it probably means your sea monkey Colony isn't doing great so adding in a bunch of new babies is likely in part what you're looking for to test out the sea medic I've gone ahead and put a bunch of poorly looking sea monkeys into this 2018 Ocean Adventure tank just like these sea monkeys on the verge of death this tank didn't have a particularly long commercial run I'm going to feed these guys small amounts of C medic over the next few days to see if we can bring them back to life hopefully they're not too far gone as with all the others I'll give an update at the end of this video moving on now to our second toas pouch the notorious sea diamonds of all the hyperbolic and exaggerated sea monkey marketing there's no doubt that this Takes the Cake in fact it's so bad it's verging on being a scam sea diamonds were first released in the late 1970s a few years after most of the other pouches on this list so the packet never got a creative Jo Orlando Sea Monkey illustration instead the front of this one simply shows the graphic of a finely cut diamond over on the back it says and please prepare yourself how to use Sea diamonds these sparkling sea gems make sea monkeys Happy by providing them with play toys but as the water evaporates don't Stir It and a miracle occurs the diamonds will rise from the bottom and float halfway up in the water Defying Gravity then watch the sea monkeys toss their sea diamonds around like jeweled beach balls or even ride them like surfboards they get the exercise and play they need for a long healthy life best of all it's absolutely non-toxic and safe you know they say the formula for happiness in life is reality minus expectations basically people are generally happier when situations are better than they anticipate well I don't know about you but these sea diamonds have set my expectations way High which is why the come down hits hard when you open them and see that your diamonds are really just small pieces of discarded cut up plastic yeah not quite what I was expecting when I first read this but maybe they can redeem themselves with how well they function perhaps the sea monkeys really will ride them like surfboards here's one under the microscope I don't know why I'm showing you this it's just clear plastic now the reason this packet was already opened was because I've actually reviewed sea diamonds on the channel in the past in my ocean of fun kit review but I'll give you another look today this time in the Nessa space Shadow tank from 1998 I'm hoping that if they don't look like jeweled beach balls at the very least maybe they'll look like twinkling stars so it seems they've mostly sunk to the bottom of the tank or remained floating at the surface not a great start but maybe we can encourage them to hover in the middle by increasing the water salinity to make the plastic more buoyant I'm going to use the plasma 3 packet to add in some extra salt to see if we can get some of them to float okay so this took me bit of work to get right but now a few of them are somewhat suspended the sea monkeys definitely don't appear to actively want to play with them though instead it seems they occasionally just accidentally bump into them rather than riding them like surfboards so yeah they're a bit of a letd Down but I do still appreciate the creativity behind the marketing even if it is wildly misleading and last but not least let's take a look at sea monkey racing fuel which is perhaps the rarest packet of the lot here and it's it's likely you've never heard of it either that's because unlike the others the racing fuel pouch was never made available for individual sale instead it was only ever included as part of the sea monkey racetrack sets I got this one from my exploratory sea monkey Speedway which I reviewed on the channel a little while ago the back of this packet says sea monkey racing fuel when mixed with one cart of water this powder provides an ideal fluid for all sea monke races games and sports the color of the fuel can on the front is the color of the fuel harmless to sea monkeys in the plastic playing tracks it helps them to swim faster than the ordinary water may be reused many times until no longer clean made and printed 1975 so the racing fuel packets came in a few different colors my one here has a Joe Orlando illustration of a green fuel can on the front which means it should produce green liquid though Todd was kind enough to share a photo with me from his collection which shows that it was also produced in Orange blue and purple as you can see my pouch isn't in great condition it appears to have accumulated a lot of moisture over the years but hopefully it still works okay something interesting about this pouch is that exploratory actually commissioned Todd in the late 1990s to redesign and replace the picture of the fuel can on the front for whatever reason Todd's design which showed a racing sea monke having his gokart refueled unfortunately never ended up being used other than in a small print on the instruction sheet that came with exploratory sea monkey racetrack it's a damn shame this was never printed because it looks so good okay I think it's time we open this up and test it out as I suspected some moisture has definitely got into this packet but the salt crystals are still somewhat intact they have a strong greeny blue color too which is pretty much what I was expecting there's no smell to this packet other than the mustiness that comes with its Advanced age under the microscope reveals something a little unexpected among those blue salts some other colored particles my best guess is that this is small pieces of food kind of similar to what's found in packet number one perhaps to give your SE monkeys some extra energy when racing I'm going to follow the instructions and mix it up with a cart of water which is the equivalent of about 1 lit I've just realized that the salinity of this mixture will be pretty low once we pour the racing fuel salts in which isn't ideal for sea monkeys long term but they'd be fine swimming in it for a few hours maybe that's how it makes them swim faster there's definitely a lot of D in here because it's done a great job of turning this water green I'm going to go ahead and pour it into the speedway so we can see how it would look for an actual sea monkey race to be honest the color doesn't look all that obvious once it's in the actual Speedway maybe the yellow plastic is disguising it a bit I imagine it would look more obvious in some of the older RAC trck kits which were made of a white plastic instead it probably would have been better if I'd only mixed the racing fuel with 500 M of water that way the green color would be more concentrated and the salinity would be higher for the sea monkeys too overall while this packet may not be entirely necessary it's a nice touch of extra fun for these racetrack kits all right so it's finally time for us to follow up on the results of the different packet experiments we'll take a look at each pouch in the same order we did earlier and see what we can observe so for packet number one the water purifier we simply poured it into plain distilled water to test whether this pouch actually does have sea monkey eggs in it it's been almost 2 days since adding it in and you can see that there's plenty of baby sea monkeys swimming around in the tank so even though we already saw the eggs under the microscope this one's confirmed once and for all moving on to packet number two the instant live eggs we tested this pouch in a very similar way to the first adding it into plain distilled water I wanted to see just how many eggs were present in this sache and while the water's still a little murky from that green die I can see a few sea monkey babies swimming about not quite as many as they were in the first packet though which confirms my suspicion that packet number one does indeed have the vast majority of the eggs one thing I want to quickly mention here just to avoid any confusion is that for anybody that's setting up a sea monkey tank for the first time it's essential that you use both packets number one and two for your sea monkey tank the combination of the salts found in both of these pouches are essential to bring the water in your 12 oz tank to the correct salinity for your sea monkeys to thrive all right now for packet number three the growth food for this pouch we also wanted to see if it contains sea monkey eggs I added a couple Scoops into plain salt water and you can see that a few babies have indeed hatched so if your sea monkey colony is dwindling in numbers perhaps you could try adding a little food into their tank and you might see a few new hatchlings appear though you'd be far better off trying out the next packet for that purpose instead plasma 3 from looking at this one under the microscope it looked very similar to the water purifier packet and that it appeared to be just salt and eggs now one thing I want to mention here is that brine trmp eggs typically only remain viable in these packets for a few years after that it's unlikely that many if any at all will still manage to hatch so while a bunch of the older packets we looked at under the microscope do have eggs in them it's possible that many of those eggs are no longer hatchable that being said the plasma 3 experiment was successful I've been slowly adding it into this ocean treaser tank over the last couple of days and it's now got a bunch of babies in there so it seems that the magic of plasma 3 helping more sea monkeys to hatch and grow the simply because it gives you a whole bunch of extra eggs moving on now to our different food packets first up is banana treat the fun food for finny friends I've been giving these dancing sea monkeys a sprinkling of my banana treat every day for the last week or so I was a little concerned that giving them food which is several years old might not be good for them but they seem to be doing really well in fact I haven't noticed any change in their behavior whatsoever this tank is mostly full of pregnant females which is why there's so many babies in here and overall they ALS seem really healthy next up is the results from the grow quickly packet which we feed to juvenile sea monkeys in the robo diver tank this stuff was supposed to expedite their growth to double speed and to be honest it does seem to have worked the sea monkeys have grown a lot in the last week since I first fed them to test out this packet I removed all of the adults from this tank and filled it exclusively with juveniles essentially creating a nursery in these conditions the younger sea monkeys haven't had to compete with larger and more capable adults meaning that food and other resources have been plentiful these are ideal growing conditions so it's difficult to say to what extent this fast growth has been the effect of the grow quickly and how much of it can simply be attributed to the ideal environmental conditions but there is one thing to note which is definitely due to their special food there are now several babies in this tank which can only have come from the grow quickly packet which confirms our observation of the eggs under the microscope overall I don't really know if this stuff does exactly what it says it does but it's fun to use nonetheless moving on now to Cupid zero our sea monkey afrodesiac I've been keeping a close eye on this one because I was really curious to see if it worked now while it definitely hasn't produced any spectacular orgies I am pleased to say that there are now two mating peers in the tank and a whole lot of new babies is this the result of the Cupid zero again it's difficult to say I've never really had trouble getting my sing monkeys to mate given enough time in the right conditions they'll eventually get it on without being prompted the new babies in this tank could be from the eggs we saw in the food or it might just be from all of the pregnant females in here either way the Magic Castle was doing really well I guess the next test is for me to try it on myself to see if I can cure my chronic impotence moving on now to the Mars tank with the results of our red magic experiment did it keep our sea monkeys in the Pink as promised it did indeed the sea monkeys in this tank are all doing great as for turning them red though I'm still not entirely convinced I haven't noticed any significant color change but perhaps after another few weeks it might start to have some effect I'll continue feeding these guys to Read Magic and let you know down in the comments if I notice any changes as for the eggs we saw in here under the microscope it appears theyve helped to boost the population in here as there's now a whole lot of new babies swimming around so overall the red magic has kept this red planet Lively our next experiment was in the Explorer subtank with the superfood superfood for super Health this novelty food packet promised to improve the diet of our sea monkeys and make even the lazy ones get frisky so what have I noticed well not much to be honest nothing looks to have really changed in the Explorer sub over the last week the sea monkeys are all doing well but I haven't observed any differences in their health or mating behavior I haven't noticed any new babies in here either so it seems like this stuff might just be an alternative food for you to try out if you feel like switching things up and now for the results from our last experiment the sea medic sea monkey medicine out of all of the different packets this one has surprised me the most we tested this out on some sickly looking sea monkeys in the ocean adventure tank to see if we could bring any of them back from the brink of demise and believe it or not it actually seems like this one has worked exactly how it said it would almost all of the sea monkeys are still alive and they're now swimming much better than before indicating a vast Improvement in their health unfortunately one of the female sea monkeys has passed away though with her body starting to turn black from decomposition perhaps her health was just a little too far gone while this is always a little sad seeing her under the microscope Prov provides us with a different perspective her body is now supporting its own mini ecosystem of thousands of tiny Pilates who are slowly consuming her energy transferring from her body to theirs these thriving microorganisms are essential to the well-being of the colony and the aquarium as a whole so even though it's sad there's a poetic element to her passing I've also noticed the presence of several new babies in this tank over the last couple of days which is almost certainly from the eggs and the seic pouch so now we have some healthy adults and a new generation of babies to care for which completes the cycle of life so I hope today's video helped to answer some of the questions you had about these novelty packets I know I've been curious about them for years so it was really fun to finally do a deep dive and test them out now while not all of them may work exactly as advertised or intended I think it's important to remember what they're really about these extra sea monkey packets exist to capture the imaginations of children and help bring the fantasy world of their little aquatic pets into reality really they're about having fun and they all achieve that objective perfectly even the crappy sea diamonds a lot of credit needs to go to Joe Orlando for his fabulous illustrations which have made these fanciful packets so iconic toddm actually recreated a lot of his different pouch artworks a few years ago so he could appreciate them in high quality many of which were used for the 2023 SE Monkey calendar these Recreations also appear on greeting cards which are available over on the official sea monkey website so as you can probably imagine it took a lot of work to put this video together so I'd really appreciate if you guys could give the video a like if you enjoyed it I want to say a big thank you again to Todd for his huge contribution too I must have messaged him a 100 times with questions trying to wrap my head around all of this stuff so he's been a massive help go give him a follow on Instagram at GBL babbles to for the best look into the Brand's history and his one-of a kind collection if you'd like to learn more about any of the different tanks I showed in this video I have full length reviews for each of them over on my channel so go check those out and I'll catch you in the next video