I'll buy that. I was actually thinking red or blue. Patterns would be nice but it's pretty reasonable to have it fall out without a pattern. If it was too patternized then you could be accused of airbrushing, lol.
So any kind of hippy dippy surrealistic whatever is cool. However it falls out. Why would purple or black be harder?
Pfft, so help me if people accuse me of airbrushing, I'll send them some eggs to hatch if they think I am enhancing the color. Funnily enough, the pictures taken by my garbage camera have their color somewhat muted, so the images are going to err in the less colorful direction.
Purple and black would be less likely, because the Triops don't produce any purple or black pigments, in the case of the species I am using for "attempting to hatch, take two". Red is a color mutation that has appeared in at least 2 different species before, so there is a decent chance that the mutation that causes it is rather simple and on a shared gene between all members of the genus. Same goes with green, albeit with just a specific population of a different species. Triops do produce a blue pigment... in their muscles, so it is possible for a mutation to cause that to be expressed in their exoskeletons.
Basically, purple would be an entirely new color for which there isn't any precedent in this species of Triops, so the presence of this color would have to be caused by a unique mutation, and black contrasts the most with the color they start out as.
I have so much going on in my life right now that there's no way I could hope to be able to set up tanks and care for little tadpole dudes. Maybe later some time when things stabilize more for me (if they do!) I could, but right now it'd be asking too much and I know it. You however are on top of it and all setup already and so we'll go with you and your setup.
I don't blame you on that; while Triops aren't demanding to take care of, they must be fed at least 3 times a day to avoid a notable risk of cannibalism. Unless you use Triops cancriformis, like I tried to do originally (eggs wouldn't hatch). I really wish those eggs had hatched, because using a gendered species makes me very stressed about their potential to eat each other.
Could you perhaps post a pic or three of your tank setups? That would be kind of cool to see your setup. Perhaps even a general idea of how much a setup would cost, because, I like experimenting, and it might be cool for something to do in the future. Or maybe I could start collecting a piece at a time or something in prep.
I will do that later; unfortunately for me, two of the tanks I bought have bad seals and leak, so I have to fix them. However, this image is representative of a bare-bones Triops tank (no filter, no heater)
https://fotoalbum.dds.nl/vagevuur/aquarium/medium/IMG_2858.JPG . If one keeps it under 70 degrees in their house at any point, they should use a heater, because I found out the hard way that Triops eggs, even of the most cold tolerant species easily available, will not hatch at 65 degrees. That's 21 and 18 degrees Celsius, respectively. I'm going to be using distilled water, even though adults can tolerate tap water that's treated to remove the chlorine and other stuff they don't like, since that's actually cheaper than treating the water is and babies won't hatch in tap water with as high of a ppm as I have. I use baking soda to control the pH (distilled water is acidic), and you can buy pH strips at any pet store. As long as the pH is greater than 6 and less than 10, it's all good (though, they prefer it if it is 7-9). A ridiculously generous range for an aquatic organism.
My tanks will look more like this, since I decided to have heaters and filters, and I am not huge on decorations for the tank (aside from a marimo or two)
http://i.imgur.com/AFGEbKQ.jpg . For organisms like this, I highly recommend double sponge filters like the one in the picture. It's the same as the one I am going to use, and the benefit of having two sponges is that you can clean one at a time to prevent the tank from cycling again, and they're fairly cheap.
You've probably already posted this, but my memory isn't so great (too many years as a pothead I guess), so let me ask you, what is your end goal in this experiment? What do you hope to achieve?
I hope I get to watch evolution in action, I suppose. Though, I would be fine with there being absolutely no change in the Triops. The purpose was more to design an evolution experiment anyone could do which didn't involve bacteria than to want a specific outcome. No high-end, expensive equipment. No high maintenance organisms. No waiting a lifetime for results, and no need for a huge amount of space. Would it be awesome to have three 100 gallon tanks dedicated to this, and would it make for better results? Absolutely, but who has the time and money to throw around for that? I certainly don't. Heck, I'll lay out the costs of all the stuff I got right now, in USD:
eggs: $5-20, depends on species and number of eggs. $5 will get you 50 eggs of the most common species. I spent about $13 for 150 Triops granarius eggs, which also included enough food for 2 months. Do note that only 1/4 Triops eggs usually hatch, so it's a bad idea to just buy 10 eggs, which is what the kits for kids usually come with.
tanks: about $36 for three 10 gallon tanks. If I went through yard sales, I'd probably find bigger ones cheaper, because the resale value of tanks is garbage.
filter: $10 for the filter parts, about $20 for the air pumps and tubes needed to get the filters to work (DX argggh, why aren't they sold together?!)
50 watt tank heaters: $21 for three adjustable ones with a range of 65-88 degrees F, 18-31 degrees C.
sand: $15 for enough to last years, possibly the duration of the experiment.
So, that makes my personal total about $115 for the whole set up, but I am going above and beyond. Considering that heaters aren't inherently necessary for everyone to get the eggs to hatch, and considering that filters are never an absolute necessity, it could have been as low as $64. That, and plenty of people probably have some leftover tank stuff from pets they've had before.
I find it a little odd that you've had a hard time getting participation from creationists. This is very cool, and whatever the outcome, we're all bound to learn something.
I have no idea why they don't want to vote for traits. Yes, 10 years is a long time, I doubt most of them will still be active by the time the experiment is completed, but based on some basic math, it's likely that the experimental population will be noticeably different from the control group in less than 2 years. That's a pretty short amount of time for an evolution experiment, honestly. Especially for a multicellular organism; most of those span multiple decades and are indefinitely ongoing.