Artemis, Day 14 carrying eggs

[mlakers]

@renroc Love the straw idea! Didn’t I read that pantyhose helped prevent you from sucking up zoeae as well?

@mlakers you can do this! Less stress is the route!!


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Thank you, Gotbutterflies!! We'll see. With my trip away next weekend I'm thinking it's not likely they'll survive, but I'll do anything I can think to do... short off canceling my trip, which unfortunately I can't do.

[GotButterflies]

@renroc Love the straw idea! Didn’t I read that pantyhose helped prevent you from sucking up zoeae as well?

@mlakers you can do this! Less stress is the route!!


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Thank you, Gotbutterflies!! We'll see. With my trip away next weekend I'm thinking it's not likely they'll survive, but I'll do anything I can think to do... short off canceling my trip, which unfortunately I can't do.

Funny!! (In other words if you could cancel your trip you would) I totally get that!! Although we totally appreciate and thoroughly enjoy your detailed threads of your every steps, your health and sanity are the most important!

[mlakers]

Day Four, Attempt #2:

This is my current no-stress setup. I added another mason jar to the "bathwater" and divided up the zoeae in the one jar that had the most in it, just to spread them out a little and minimize waste buildup. The fourth jar on the left is plain saltwater, keeping it up to temp for the changes. I can still get the water changes done in about 20 minutes, I think, even with three jars to manage. I'm doing 30-50% changes, three times a day at the minimum, sometimes a fourth if it seems to need it.

I have a clip lamp on the right side and the jars crammed over near it--not for heat, but for light. The little led light that came with the 5 gallon tank isn't illuminating them enough. Ideally, I'd have even more light, but it's too hard to configure and I want the top on to minimize splashing as this is setup on my work desk. It's also by a window, so getting some natural light. I turn the lights all off at about 7:30pm.

The one gallon betta tank on the left has the zoeae in it that I considered "stragglers" from the water changes in the mason jars. They appear to be doing great. No clue how many are in there as I've also added some that looked lifeless but not falling apart. In my experience, very occasionally those ones will "revive." So this betta tank became my Tank of Last Chances. It also has a tiny heater, but it only heats to 78 degrees Fahrenheit--I can't adjust the temps at all. It's just a little cheap-o heater. I have barely fed them in there but the tank has been up and established for several weeks. I initially though it would be my saltwater pool in the big crab's tank, and I tried it in there for a week, but didn't like it and neither did the crabs. So I went back to my old water pools and kept this one filtering until I put the babies in, then I turned off the filter. The live sand substrate (from Drs.Foster and Smith) may be keeping the ammonia levels down. I'm occasionally swapping out some water in this tank, but not keeping to a schedule, and mostly just ignoring it and only turning the light off and on, throwing the occasional bit of food in.

I think all the zoeae that I added to the surrounding water in the 5.5 gallon tank have died. I didn't think they would do well with the jars in there, too, so I didn't put many in, and I can't see any at all now. I also checked the salinity and it was pretty high, so that may have been the issue, too. For now, I won't be adding any more to the "bathwater" but will try to keep it viable as a future saltwater tank in case I clean it up and put survivors in there when I have to go out of town next weekend (like I did before).

Still nothing in the three jars but the bubbler and the zoeae and whatever I feed them. I've been siphoning from the bottom more this time to get the chunks. I didn't do a 100% water change last night but I may still go back to some version of it just because I like to get the jars clean every couple of days. I'm not sure it's that big of an issue for them as they were doing fine in the last attempt with that as part of my schedule for 20+ days and I only had the catastrophic losses when I decided to try and let the waste build up hoping the jars would begin to cycle. So I'm keeping an eye on them and will make that decision on a day-to-day basis.

So far so good. This is still the easy part, so I'm trying to stay measured and not count my megalopa before they molt.

[aprilmay]

setup looks really neat!

[Kermie16]

Wow, mlakers!!! That is a pretty great looking set up and huge congrats on the new babies!!! We are all rooting for u!!


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[GotButterflies]

Looks great!!!

Edit: have you thought about making a kreisel? I just made one in case I ever get another chance. It wasn’t that hard.


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[mlakers]

Looks great!!!

Edit: have you thought about making a kreisel? I just made one in case I ever get another chance. It wasn’t that hard.


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I have thought about it! Mostly along the lines of, "I could never do that!"

[Renroc]

I have thought about it! Mostly along the lines of, "I could never do that!"

I got a cheap little tank and a length of grey poly pipe as big a diameter as I could. Cut to the inside length of the little tank. Then cut a rectangle out of it ( well a friend did the cutting) that then gets stuck with aquarium silicone into the tank with room for water underneath. The rectangular hole at the top obviously. I was going to just make 2 cuts the whole length but apparently it will not hold the shape as well if it isn’t solid all the way round on each end. I use a drinking straw and water with food dye to test the placement and angle of the inlet for the air tube that creates the circulation. It needs to be accurate and is a bit fiddle but not hard. Blue tac holds it in place till you are ready to glue when happy with the final position.


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[mlakers]

Day Five, Attempt #2

Everything appears to be going well still. (Knock on wood!)

Still only at Stage Two, as far as I can tell. I'm more convinced than ever now that my previous attempt (with multiple females spawning at the same time despite mating on different days) was a case of overlapping molt stages that led me to believe they were advancing faster than they were.

I now have about 50 or so zoeae in each jar (3 jars total) and an unknown number in the hexagonal gallon tank, but fewer than 20 in there would be my best guess. So still somewhere in the range of 200 survivors.

I've been feeding extremely small amounts this time around, but a pretty decent variety: brine shrimp eggs, chlorella, phytoplankton, betta grains, finely ground shrimp and lobster pellets and fifteen minutes before a water change I offer a tiny bit of a product called First Bites, designed for fish fry. Sounds like tons of food, but it's really the absolute tiniest amount I can add each time, like one beta grain, and the dust of chlorella tapped off a tiny plastic spoon, and whatever powder sticks to the end of a chopstick. That sort of thing.

Figured out (so simple--doh!) that I can do a partial water change but use a clean mason jar to put them in, thereby avoiding the 100% water change issue but still getting them in a clean container which was really bugging me. Don't know why it took me so long to get to that common sense fix, but it did. So I'll do that tonight, and put them to bed with non-messy food overnight.

I may try for a picture tomorrow.

[mlakers]

I got a cheap little tank and a length of grey poly pipe as big a diameter as I could. Cut to the inside length of the little tank. Then cut a rectangle out of it ( well a friend did the cutting) that then gets stuck with aquarium silicone into the tank with room for water underneath. The rectangular hole at the top obviously. I was going to just make 2 cuts the whole length but apparently it will not hold the shape as well if it isn’t solid all the way round on each end. I use a drinking straw and water with food dye to test the placement and angle of the inlet for the air tube that creates the circulation. It needs to be accurate and is a bit fiddle but not hard. Blue tac holds it in place till you are ready to glue when happy with the final position.

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Wow, that sounds awesome! And terrifying. Not sure why, when I did an ambitious build for my 125 gallon. ...but something about the cutting and aligning, and trying to get everything perfectly shaped and configured just sounds really daunting to me.

[Renroc]

Day Five, Attempt #2

Everything appears to be going well still. (Knock on wood!)

Still only at Stage Two, as far as I can tell. I'm more convinced than ever now that my previous attempt (with multiple females spawning at the same time despite mating on different days) was a case of overlapping molt stages that led me to believe they were advancing faster than they were.

I now have about 50 or so zoeae in each jar (3 jars total) and an unknown number in the hexagonal gallon tank, but fewer than 20 in there would be my best guess. So still somewhere in the range of 200 survivors.

I've been feeding extremely small amounts this time around, but a pretty decent variety: brine shrimp eggs, chlorella, phytoplankton, betta grains, finely ground shrimp and lobster pellets and fifteen minutes before a water change I offer a tiny bit of a product called First Bites, designed for fish fry. Sounds like tons of food, but it's really the absolute tiniest amount I can add each time, like one beta grain, and the dust of chlorella taped of a tiny plastic spoon, and whatever powder sticks to the end of a chopstick. That sort of thing.

Figured out (so simple--doh!) that I can do a partial water change but use a clean mason jar to put them in, thereby avoiding the 100% water change issue but still getting them in a clean container which was really bugging me. Don't know why it took me so long to get to that common sense fix, but it did. So I'll do that tonight, and put them to bed with non-messy food overnight.

I may try for a picture tomorrow.

It is a learning curve after all ! has the water quality been better with less food?

Siphoning the zoea and water out to a new jar may well be the easiest method. I hadn’t even thought of that. Will try next time. Cheers.

You are doing well and learning while still keeping them going. I tried a biological filter in one jar in my first attempt and killed every single one in that jar. That’s why I keep a number of different jars. To reduce death due to my stupid actions


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[mlakers]

It is a learning curve after all ! has the water quality been better with less food?

Siphoning the zoea and water out to a new jar may well be the easiest method. I hadn’t even thought of that. Will try next time. Cheers.

You are doing well and learning while still keeping them going. I tried a biological filter in one jar in my first attempt and killed every single one in that jar. That’s why I keep a number of different jars. To reduce death due to my stupid actions

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Yes! The water quality has been a lot better with less food--glad I followed your suggestion. Also, I have far fewer zoeae in each jar this time. Last time I had three females successfully spawn in the saltwater pool. It was thousands of zoeae and even with five jars it was super crowded and hard to keep clean. This time, one female spawning on the sand reduced the numbers without me having to discard them, so dropping them on the sand probably helped in a weird way, too.

I know exactly what you mean about several jars. That third jar I added was only partly to spread them out for water quality...mostly it was to make sure if I did something stupid in one jar I'd still have some remaining.

It really is SO easy to lose focus for just a minute and forget to replace a bubbler or mix up the jars or forget to use Prime or knock something over...or or or. The possibilities for a screwup are endless.

[GotButterflies]

I have thought about it! Mostly along the lines of, "I could never do that!"

I got a cheap little tank and a length of grey poly pipe as big a diameter as I could. Cut to the inside length of the little tank. Then cut a rectangle out of it ( well a friend did the cutting) that then gets stuck with aquarium silicone into the tank with room for water underneath. The rectangular hole at the top obviously. I was going to just make 2 cuts the whole length but apparently it will not hold the shape as well if it isn’t solid all the way round on each end. I use a drinking straw and water with food dye to test the placement and angle of the inlet for the air tube that creates the circulation. It needs to be accurate and is a bit fiddle but not hard. Blue tac holds it in place till you are ready to glue when happy with the final position.


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Do you mind posting a picture of your kreisel tank? I'm wondering if you have a rectangle hole with mesh on it for the water to flow out of it. Thank you!

[GotButterflies]

I'm so thrilled that all is going well!! Thank you for your updates!! They make my day!!

[mlakers]

Day Seven, Attempt #2

Forgot to post yesterday, but there wasn't much that was new so you didn't miss anything.

By the way, I'm listing the day and the attempt at the top of each post because when I have gone back to study other threads, it's been really frustrating trying to figure out what day the zoeae are on for matching their progress to the comments. I've been trying to track my progress against others and had to go back to the start and subtract days to figure out the day more than once. So this way, someone trying with PPs can flip through the thread pages and see right away what day the zoeae are at in each of my comments. I've actually gone back to my own first attempt to track the progress of this batch against that one, so I've been glad I did it that way, too.

The zoeae seem to be doing really well. No obvious deaths (or the dead are being eaten, but I'm not seeing partial carcasses either). They aren't getting very pink, but they seem healthy and active so I'm not going to worry about their color yet. I'm using a clean jar every other day to combat the gunk that builds up at the bottom, and tonight was a clean-jar night. I siphoned them into the clean jar along with about 50% of the water (avoiding the gunky bottom), then poured the remaining water into my usual sorting bowl and picked any stragglers out with a flashlight and medicine dropper. They are getting harder to spot, mostly because they are clinging to food now and also staying very still--most likely trying to avoid being eaten.

I gave frozen brine shrimp today at noon for the first time. I'm going to use it very sparingly, but I do think they are nibbling on it. I did have a really good sign after the water change: I took some of the betta grains and ground them up extra fine and added those instead of the shrimp and lobster pellets and the zoeae seemed to jump right on them. It was important to have ground them up because the betta pellets are designed to float at the top, but the zoeae don't go to the surface to eat. Once the pellets were ground, they sank really well and the zoeae seemed to swarm them. I haven't had that positive a reaction to any food so far, so that made me happy. It was also really easy to see what they were eating because the jar was freshly cleaned and that was the only food (beside brine shrimp eggs) that was in the jar.

Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my iPhone camera lens set (macro, wide angle, and fish-eye). I'm so bummed. I looked everywhere yesterday and today--even in the trash, just in case. And I cannot find them anywhere, so no pictures.

I've also been giving a lot of thought to what I will do with them when I have to be gone for two days. I'm not looking forward to it, but I can't stay at home. Other people are involved. I do have a plan, and I think I'll still come home to some survivors at least. I'll detail that more in a future update.