First my update, then all the questions.
Day 62 for the older ones:
Only 11 left.
5 are still without shell and megalopa.
4 are megalopa in shells.
2 are little crabs in shells, mostly under water, seldom for a few minutes on land.
Two of the oldes died on land. :headshake:
This is one of them. The '3' is 2,5 mm high.
This is the oldes little crab:
Day 29 for the younger ones:
Since day 24 megalopa, megalopa,... 177 separated till now. About 2000 larvae (stage 3-5) left.
Renroc wrote:naalide may I ask if the water in the transition tank is in a container or all over the bottom of the tank with deeper sand on the beach part? Love your rocks for them to climb up and out on. That's where I lost a heap on my first attempt as they couldn't (didn't) get out of the water.
There is a box with sand for the land. All very wet.
I tried to give them several options, to walk or climb on shore.
If one of the little crabs stay at land, I will put it in a small terrarium.
mlakers wrote:This thread is SO helpful!! Thank you, naalide. I can't believe, though, that I hadn't noticed all the new posts! I was missing out on so much good information!! Right now, I'm really struggling over what to do for the ones I have at megalopa stage. They are dying before taking shells.
Well, I still have the same problem. Mostly because they eat each other. I try to feed them with different things, like brine shrimp (alive and dead), food pellets and even died larvae from my kreisel tanks.
mlakers wrote:It looks like you have a reef tank AND a transition tank... Super interesting. I was thinking mine would go from the kreisel to the transition tank, but I like the idea of moving the megalopa to keep them developing separately from the zoeae that are still at stage five. I may try to set that up today.
With several of the in-between tanks it's even possible to separate younger ans older megalopa from each other. Older ones seldom eat others. And this way they won't be eaten by younger ones.
mlakers wrote: I know you said your transition tank was only 5-8cm deep, but how deep do you keep your reef tank? I really, really want this transition to work, but their changing needs are making me feel so inadequate!!
I'm at a loss, and know from past experience that when I get anxious and start trying too many things, I'm more likely to upset the balance I've got going and lose all of them. Gah!
The water in my reef-tank (in-between tank) is as high as the transition tank.
For all tanks and Kreisels I use tubes with an air pump.
I clean all the tanks with a tube or a pipette.
As for the Kreisels I drain the water each week. With megalopa each day, to catch them. I use a big tube an filter the water and the larvae with a sieve (those for artemia/brine shrimps). Then I put all larvae from the sieve on a plate, where I can separate or just count them, while caching them with my pipette.
I clean the Kreisel use some old and some new water to refill it and let the larvae back into it.
Counting mostly means, I guess if there are 5, 10, 15 or 20 in the pipette and summate the number for each Kreisel.
If I have to much time
or there are only a few hundred left, I count each larvae!
By the way my reeftank in the terrarium for the big crabs is filled with about 30 litre (about 8 US Gallon or 6,5 UK Gallon) and it's 20 cm (8 inch) high. There I use a pump and a skimmer.
