Are Sea Monkeys Cruel? Maybe To Each Other

Sea Monkeys, which are really just a hyped-up form of hybrid shrimp can seem like different things in different people’s eyes.

To some, they are just a novelty pet that can be tossed aside, but to others, they seem like living creatures with feelings that can feel pain.

This wide array of perspectives leads one to ask if Sea Monkeys are cruel?

There is now one way to answer this question and it depends on if the asker is asking if it is cruel to keep Sea Monkeys in a tank or if Sea Monkeys are cruel to each other…

It is not cruel to keep Sea Monkeys in a tank as long as you feed the Sea Monkeys once a week and keep the water clean and free of ammonia and nitrites. However, male Sea Monkeys are cruel to each other when they both want to breed with the same female because they will grab each other with their long arms and try to crush each other to death until one gives up or they both die.

This is a simple answer so let’s explore the question in more detail…

Is It Cruel To Keep Sea Monkeys In An Aquarium?

First things first. Sea Monkeys don’t have much of a brain in the first place, which is the control center for pain.

Sea Monkeys aka brine shrimps original purpose was to be a living filter for bodies of saltwater like the great salt lake in Utah.

Their brain and body mainly consist of reflexive actions which serve to eat algae and phytoplankton when they come across it which filters it out of the water and keeps the water clean.

They can’t really feel or think anything in the first place and normal brine shrimp only live for 3 months, although Sea Monkeys live for up to a year since they are hybrid, so you could say it’s not really cruel to keep them in an unclean aquarium.

However, if you believe anything that moves has feelings then it is certainly not cruel to keep them in a clean aquarium.

If you keep your Sea Monkeys in a tiny aquarium without a filter, it needs to have the proper mix of purified water with salt.

Here are the water parameters for Sea-Monkeys:

To prepare the salt water for your Sea Monkeys, just add 2 tablespoons of non-iodized salt for every quarter gallon of water.

You can feed your Sea Monkeys once every five days. You can feed them brine shrimp food or the branded Sea Monkey food that you can get online at Sea Monkeys.com or on Amazon.

You should test the water in your Sea Monkey tank with API water test strips. They come with instructions that are easy to follow.

If the toxic readings are too high you can buy a filter or change the water by replacing about 25 percent of the total water in the aquarium with clean purified saltwater with the proper salinity.

If you buy one of the Sea Monkey kits, you can just follow the directions that come with the kit.

Are Sea Monkeys Cruel To Each Other?

Sea Monkey males can be very cruel to each other.

Male Sea Monkeys have very long claw-like antennas that they use to hold the female when they are breeding. Male Sea Monkeys also use these long antennas to compete with each other when they desire the same female.

The two males will grab each other and try to crush each other to the death until one of them gives up but sometimes both of the males end up dying.

You can tell if they are both males if they have whiskers under their chin but you will need a magnifying glass.

If two Sea Monkeys are stuck together and one of them doesn’t have whiskers then they are mating and may remain like this for days.

Conclusion

I think we have shown that male Sea Monkeys are certainly cruel to each other but it is hard to be cruel to Sea Monkeys in general from a human standpoint since they don’t have much of a brain.

The only feasible way to be cruel to Sea Monkeys in an aquarium would be to have filthy water to the point that the Sea Monkeys get ill or die before a year which is how long they usually live.