Adventures in home archeaology: The Resurrection Fish Tank!

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If some of you have been following some of my posts, I am in the process of removing years of accumulation from my house. Most of this is from my mom who never threw anything away and some from my own "ignore it and it'll go away" attitude..

A couple of days ago I heard a humming noise coming from under a particularly high pile of junk. I finally sorted out the pile to discover my saltwater aquarium from around 25 years ago.. while the pump was still running (amazing in itself) the aquarium had totally dried up to a salt crystal (and fish fossil) wonderland... I initially started to try to clean it, but decided it would be easier to put some warm water in it to dissolve the salt. I moved it out on the back screen porch fearing it would start to smell when reconstituted and I filled it about a third of the way up with warm water..

Today.. a "miracle!" when I went to check on it, the fish tank was swarming with life! Brine shrimp, to be exact, (they used to be sold out of the back of comic books as "Sea Monkeys") long ago, I would buy bags of these from the pet store and feed my fish with them(some of the fish wouldn't eat something that didn't move)

Somehow, some of them had left behind eggs in the dry salt and revived when I added the water.. after 25 years!

Thanks for that, Omnicognic. I hope one of these days when life doesn't seem so hot, I'll remember your brine shrimps' long, dark,salty wait for their turn at it.

That is Totally Awesome!

...You're lucky the house didn't burn down, btw!

I think that it's cool how those eggs survived all those years.

That is really amazing.

Oh wow! That's so awesome! I guess fish are much tougher than I could ever have thought.lol