My Straw (Perlatus) baby thread

[Curlz]

Some say if you have freshwater tank the brine shrimps have to be cleaned before use. Some say in saltwater tanks it is not necessary.
Some other says: the water where the brine shimps do have too much bacteria and stuff. Meant was brine shrimps stations which are not set up daily. And the brine shrimps has to be cleaned befor use.

There are several things that can lead to problems. My last two experiments fail maybe because of 'bad' eggs or bad plankton or a combination of all things. Maybe the larvae were not good, I do not know.
I only know it that it works one time. And I am sure it will work again. At the moment my experiment looks good. But it can get bad very fast.
I still try it with the "rondomatic" and "hatch directly in the Kreisel" method

if all looks good. If the larvae are eating and you have not lost a lot of larvae in a short time, keep on without changing too much.
If it do not work at the end. You can try another way next time.

[kuza]

I have a feeling I feed too much at each feeding, but to counter it right now I'm doing like 50% water changes every 6 to 12 hours for over 100% water change daily. Then every 3rd day I'm switching out the jars completely with a 75% water change on top of the regular water changes, so that 3rd day it's 175% water change.

It's a lot of work changing the water so much but the jars do get dirty quickly and it's more difficult to try to wipe the walls clean while in use. I may look for slightly larger jars next time!

[Curlz]

yes it is astounding how many 'dirt' such small larvae and nauplia can produce

I do not know if you feed to much. I even do not know it at my larvae
Better more than less?


may you try to clean one jar only 50% a day instead of 2 times a day. or round about 25%. When you clean up the dirt it could work, too.


it is a lot of work! absolutely. It took over an hour a day to check, clean, change, feed and all the things. (plus taking pictures and keeping my diary about the larvae up to date)

[kuza]

I can do 50% just as quickly as 25%, that's why i do 50%, its the most i can do before the jar starts to move around from being in water itself.

And now my outside tank is now getting so cloudy I have to change that water, yikes!

[Curlz]

we change the outside water once in a week. And we have to fill it up sometimes.

If we put out more than 50-60% the kreisel starts to swimm *g*
this happend to me the first time... *shock*. But lucky me, no larvae came out and not fresh water got into the kreisel....

[kuza]

ya I once had a jar tip over and get some of the outside water into it, luckily it was during the 75% full jar switch so I just took out 90% of the water and dumped them into the new jar. They seem to be surviving so far.

Now I take out my water holding jars before I do my water changes so the outside water drops enough that the jars don't move. So much trial and error learning!!

[Curlz]

definitely!

And maybe now you know how hard it is to explain all the things about larvae...

Hopefully you will be able to raise straws!! I WILL SEE LITTLE STRAWBERRY BABY CRABS
And this time I hope to do it successfully,too

[kuza]

Well good luck, I hope your attempt works too! It would be fun to both have them going to land around the same time!

I'm trying not to get too excited, I know things are going well now but there's still so much to do, shells, transition tank, final tank, oh my!!

[Curlz]

thank you!


Yes! a lot of things to do

round about day 20 you should have (frozen) krill or freshwater /tiger shrimps (Gammarus) ready. And very tiny shells, too.

(and maybe use an extra jar to seperate the megalopa from the larvae - because they eat the larvae)

Did you see my transition tank?
It is an Exo-Terra tank (60x45x45 cm)


we bought 3 plastic boxes / cases. Two for the water side (left) and one for the beach side (right)
The water pool is 5 liter.
The beach part is only 5 cm low. We filled in sand and coco humus.

we used plexiglas to build a frame. In this frame we put in the two big boxes. With silicone we fixed the frame with the boxes. To prevent the crabs falling down in holes. (it is sealed all around)


to have enough oxygen in the salt water, we use an air stone.



it is like the kreisel in the aquarium. A small plastic case in a bigger plastic case. Freshwater outside with a flat heater in it. The small case with saltwater stands in it.

When the stay in their shells for several hours or a day, we put them into this water pool. If all megalopa with shells are in this pool, we add a piece of wood (save for saltwater), so that they can climb onto land. Like a bridge from inside the water to the sandy beach.

[kuza]

And where are the crabs that went to land? did you put them in your big tank or are they still in that transition tank?

[Curlz]

Last time I keep them some month in this transition tank. The small terrarium for the breedings was not ready.

Now I got the small terrarium, so if it will be successfull, I will leave them some weeks or month in the transition tank. And if they are all changed to real land hermmit crabs and if they are 'strong' enough, they will be moved to the other breedings in the small terrarium.
There is still enough space.

[fraksocks]

How old and what size our your 1st babies Curlz?

[Curlz]

the first ones to explore the land was in the middle of february 2012.
I do not know when they finally transmorph to land hermit crabs. Seems to be march 2012. Now they are 15 month old (counting from going out of the water to land). Now the are using shells with length size of 2 cm.

Check my thread: http://www.hermitcrabassociation.com/ph ... 6&p=813520. There is a link to my picasa picture page.
All other questions about my breedings should be better ask there. This thread is about Kuza's experiment. We should not distrub that too much

[fraksocks]

You are right of course. I am just very curious about the whole process in general and the various methods that everyone is using. The whole thing is so exciting! Thank you for pointing me to the appropriate thread.

Please accept my apology Kuza for any side tracking I may have caused. I promise that I'm not lacking in enthusiasm for your strawberry babies. I look forward to your progress updates every time that you post them

[kuza]

haha no worries, I don't mind