On May 4th I saw something in my pools and I thought to myself “what’s going on now, do I have some type of water parasite!?” I looked over into my freshwater pool and then I realized, they’re in salt water... they are zoeae! It was so unexpected! I’m not really sure what species they are, but I’m leaning more toward, and hoping for, these to be violas. My water temperature was very high, about 88*, and my salinity was low and I was waiting to see if the salt would disintegrate more. I had mixed it using a little older IO, and it wasn’t being cooperative so I mixed it a little light to be careful. I believe it was even a full moon the night she dropped!
I checked my cameras and saw a lot of movement from Cash, my female viola, and both strawberries- however they are both confirmed females. I do have four different species in that tank, purple pincher, strawberry, viola, and Ecuadorian.
I had thought my only male was my large purple pincher, Brutus. I also think the rest are all female, and too small to breed.
It’s so crazy how everything just fell into place on accident. I had messaged Mary and told her about the zoeae as soon as I knew what we had! With the temperature difference in water she suspected they may be a different species. We talked about meeting up and we would sleep on it and see where things stood in the morning. The biggest problem was in how to transport them 4+ hours. We came up with mason jars, then the issue was still heating and air! The solution was an AC power adapter for my car, so I would have the ‘regular’ house plugs to use air stones and keep them warm with the mason jars in a box of hand warmers.
I really don’t know how Mary does this, because even getting them into the mason jars was so hard! I tried the flashlight trick, to lure them with light, there is just so many and they’re SO TINY! I got them into three different giant mason jars and marked them 1,2, and 3, three was a lot off the bottom so it may have been more dead than alive. We probably should have had more but a lot of them were in the saltwater hygrometer and didn’t get enough airflow and my filters probably took a lot but there was still soo many.
I had tested the bubbler system as soon as I got home, and it worked perfectly. However, once I got them in the car, I couldn’t get it to split like it was supposed to. So I spent every 10/20 minutes pulling the air tube out and switching between three different mason jars.... and yes, I know that’s not good to do when your driving but we made it. Mary did end up getting it to split two ways for her and used a bulb to squeeze air into the third mason jar. Ok my post is getting very long... let me try to finish up.... It was an accelerated growth compared to the purple pincher zoeae and was like taking care of a newborn baby, Mary said. They are taking shells and coming to land, I am praying for them to keep going strong and for Mary as well, she’s doing all the hard work!
Thank you Mary!Link to Mary’s Instagram for pictures and video.
https://instagram.com/akers7670?igshid=15wrsu24ccru9
