Salt lakes are prevalent in Australia and predominantly temporary. These lakes support a range of endemic taxa, including giant ostracods in the subfamily Mytilocypridinae. Like most non-marine ostracods, mytilocypridines produce desiccation-resistant eggs, which are used to survive periods of drought and other unfavourable conditions. In this study, we used mytilocypridine eggs collected from sediments in salt lakes in Western Australia to analyse aspects of the ecology of these ostracods. We conducted two rehydration trials, where sediment was collected from dry lakes or the dry margins of lakes, rehydrated in a laboratory setting, and selected mytilocypridine species hatched and raised in cultures. The first trial found that the eggs of mytilocypridine species were unevenly distributed in a dry lake and could be hatched even after 27 months of dry storage with no discernible loss of viability. The second trial assessed the capacity of selected mytilocypridines to hatch and develop into adults under different salinity treatments. One species, Australocypris insularis, hatched and developed across a very wide salinity range (0 – 100 g/L). Our findings highlight the potential of using egg/sediment samples for testing the ability of mytilocypridine species to tolerate the often extreme environmental conditions in salt lakes over their entire life cycle. Egg/sediment samples could also be used for surveying the mytilocypridines in remote lakes that rarely hold water.