My Straw (Perlatus) baby thread

[kuza]

So now it's 10 megalopa total separated into 5 jars. And maybe 12-15 zoea that may or may not morph to megalopa stage.

[Nat_addicted to HC's]

Everything is crossed for you!

[kuza]

haha thanks! I'm doing much better keeping the water clean, and I found some seaweed (natural) that floats but will go down a bit with the flow of water that that doesn't mess up the water even if I leave it for a few hours. And I never leave or miss the mysis shrimp anymore, that was a killed last time.

I can't believe how many mistakes I made last time when I panicked because they were eating each other. If only I could go back in time to when I had dozens of megalopa to work with

This does show me that no matter how bad the zoea look in the later stages, some will still turn to megalopa if they live long enough. That's good news, so when I do get eggs again I will try again.

[Curlz]

I can't believe how many mistakes I made last time when I panicked because they were eating each other. If only I could go back in time to when I had dozens of megalopa to work with

no do not think in this way!
They could all die, even if you seperate one megalopa in one jar. There can be thousands of reasons why they dying.
It's like the adult one, they can survive 'bad keeping' a long time. Can molt, can eat.... but at one point their body can't keep on any longer. And you will never know if the 'mistakes' were made in the beginning, between or a short time ago.

I am in my 8. project. Only one (the 4th one) was successfull. In some cases they reached the last stage in one case they did not make it to last stage. Still trial and error, even I thought I do it 'like always'.

Nobody knows if a slight salt density change can cause death. Nobody knows if they get ill when they eat artemia which are older than 3 hours. (because it is said, that artemia loose nutrients after 3-4 hours). Nobody knows if they need living phytoplankton or not..... and so on.

Keep your head up. And keep trying. You made it to megalopa. The FIRST strawberry megalopa the world has seen. And sometimes it will work out in the end.

[kuza]

Thanks! I do have hope I will someday get them to land, I will try again when I have eggs again. Once papa and mamma go through this next molt, I just hope nothing goes wrong for them during this net 2 months.

I still have 8-10 megalopa eating and swimming in their jars, so no mass deaths yet.

[Careyenz]

That's great to hear, Kuza. Glad it's getting easier!


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[Skymall007]

Congrats Kuza! I just found this thread and have been reading everything. You are doing an incredible job!

I wonder if the cannibalism is important to their survival. I know this sounds terrible but perhaps separate each megalope and feed them zoea?

[kuza]

Thanks! And I did feed them zoea both times but I just didn't have many zoea left to work with this time around. I also couldn't separate them much last time since I only had room for 3-4 jars so I tried other options, which all failed. I wish I had my current setup for that try. Feeding protein isn't the big problem in this stage, it's the vegetation feeding and water quality, and they will death grip their food so sometimes you go to take all the old food out and he's still attached to it so you have to leave it in there and he keeps holding on until they both get loaded with bacteria it seems.

[kittyluvcrabby2113]

I was curious what makes it harder for breeding hermit crabs in the U.S & CAN then breeding them in GER ?? Can we not get the same equipment that they use for it?

[kuza]

Every country has different foods available to them and importing/exporting varies as well. The main thing the German girls have are kreisel tanks, which anyone can build but it takes time. Something I have very little of these days. I will build some for my next attempt for sure. So that has nothing to do with the country you live in.


NAT I got the food, you rock!!!

[Curlz]

I was curious what makes it harder for breeding hermit crabs in the U.S & CAN then breeding them in GER ?? Can we not get the same equipment that they use for it?

it is not easy in Germany
I am trying to breed (bred?) them again and again. Actually I am in the middle of my 8th experiment. Only the 4th one was successfully!
The equipment and the food are not "THE" mainpoints.

I am using INVE 430 Artemia nauplia. They are expensive but nearly the best hatching Artemia. At 26°C they hatch after 14 hours. And nearly all nauplia will hatch. I set up new Artemia INVE eggs every morning and every evening. (As far as I know INVE are farmed in the USA)

In the times when I do not have freshly hatched Artemia, I feed this: http://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Nutrition-4 ... B00176GU32

When they are at Megalopa stage I feed something like this http://www.drgsmarineaquaculture.com/kr ... h-food.cfm. In Germany we got such blister packs, too. But from a german company.

So I think these product will be available all over the world.

[Nat_addicted to HC's]

NAT I got the food, you rock!!!

Yay!!!!!!!! is it anything like what you have there?

[kuza]

Everything here has garlic in it. And I didn't think the food would be so tiny! how did you get your megalopa to even find it?

[Nat_addicted to HC's]

It will last you years even with thousands of larvae it sinks to the bottom, right where the megalopa are so finding it wasnt an issue & they seemed to learn it was the food source & would try & swim up to get it, before they took shells. The first few times i used it i did over feed.

[kuza]

awesome, I just started using it today! Sad that I only have 5 megalopa left though