Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Quest to Breed Singapore Wood Shrimp, Day 28
No news to report. Things are much the same.
I haven't shot new images or videos since last Friday, because everything looks the same. This is a shot from Friday March 13th. The only behavioral change I see if that she is not as enthusiatic about beating her pleopods, although she does do that. One thing I haven't mentioned before that I find interesting happens when I am feeding her. Since she is now in a 10 gal tank, I am feeding her using either a small piece of airline hose, when I feed her Cyclop-eeze, or a drinking straw when I am feeding her flake food. This is so I can direct the feed right to where she is instead of it disoursing everywhere. If a large quantity of food gets near the eggs, she beats her pleopods wildly to get the food away from the eggs.
Isn't nature interesting?
I am SOOOOO ready for these eggs to hatch.
Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmQ0RJP7eBk
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Singapore Wood Shrimp Reproduction Quest- Day 21
After spending about 4 days now thinking the eggs would hatch any day now, I decided to dig in for the long haul. I have had her in the 10 gal tank with about 6 gals of water for over a week now without filtration- the only water conditioning going on at all is a portion of a bio sponge tied around the air stone. This ‘one more day will be okay’ has drifted out for a week. So, I took the cool little in-tank filter that I had augmenting the new filter for the 20 gal cichlid tank, wrapped the intake area with a piece of the 35 micron screen given to be by Argent Chemical Labs, and put it in the tank. My plan is to let that run all day, then, since everything I have read indicates she will loose her eggs after the lights are out, I will turn it off with the lights. I intentionally use the term “loose” because I do not know whether they disperse as a result of hatching, or whether she will somehow knock them off of her, or what, I thought it might be something I could leave on, but watching the particulates, they get pulled into the folds of the fabric. Definitely not something I want to have happen to the larvae. 
Got some new video today- the eggs have turned a light tan color:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGj4vNTBxzQ
This photo is from March 9th, but the video is today. It has a weird fish eye effect, but at least the eggs are in focus. It's just not that easy to catch- she fans those pleopods, and you have to catch them on the open stoke. Today it seems you can see the patterns in the eggs, as if you can see not just eyes, but also the folded up body. Or maybe my eyes are playing tricks.
I got a message from someone on YouTube today, who suggested she might loose the eggs over a period of days. No indication as to whether this information is from experience or not. That will certainly be a challenging turn of events.
Got some new video today- the eggs have turned a light tan color:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGj4vNTBxzQ
This photo is from March 9th, but the video is today. It has a weird fish eye effect, but at least the eggs are in focus. It's just not that easy to catch- she fans those pleopods, and you have to catch them on the open stoke. Today it seems you can see the patterns in the eggs, as if you can see not just eyes, but also the folded up body. Or maybe my eyes are playing tricks.
I got a message from someone on YouTube today, who suggested she might loose the eggs over a period of days. No indication as to whether this information is from experience or not. That will certainly be a challenging turn of events.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Singapore Wood Shrimp Eggs day 17
Sunday, March 8, 2009
I printed out some articles to read on the plane. I found a really good one about breeding freshwater prawn. The title of it is JUVENILE PRODUCTION OF THE FRESHWATER PRAWN CRYPHIOPS CAEMENTARIUS (DECAPODA: PALAEMONIDAE) UNDER LABORATORY CONDITIONS IN COQUIMBO, CHILE available http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/gayana/v70n2/art10.pdf.
It has charts of zoea stages, the salinity they used, along with temperature and feeding schedules. I will compare this with the French Aquarist's documentary of his successful routine for Amanos at http://caridina.japonica.online.fr/English/index.html and try to find some cohesive combination. Of course, no information is available at all about what other species bears a similarity with the wood shrimp needs.
In the Prawn article they
seemed to feel that a constant temperature was very important, so yesterday I bought a small heater for that tank. They also indicated that high levels of oxygen were important. Another website I read about filter-feeding shrimp in general indicated the need for high oxygen levels, so I have mirrored the drip design to an air-tube/stone design for the bottles. I do want to make sure they aren’t so agitated with bubbles that they are damaged, so I am using enough valves to make sure there isn’t too high a flow.
Yesterday the eggs showed the baby shrimp eye spots that are characteristic of eggs about to hatch.
I watched her closely. I shot some more video (not too good, but decent), viewable at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec9Vdmy2jGk but got a decent still photo seen here.
I printed out some articles to read on the plane. I found a really good one about breeding freshwater prawn. The title of it is JUVENILE PRODUCTION OF THE FRESHWATER PRAWN CRYPHIOPS CAEMENTARIUS (DECAPODA: PALAEMONIDAE) UNDER LABORATORY CONDITIONS IN COQUIMBO, CHILE available http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/gayana/v70n2/art10.pdf.
It has charts of zoea stages, the salinity they used, along with temperature and feeding schedules. I will compare this with the French Aquarist's documentary of his successful routine for Amanos at http://caridina.japonica.online.fr/English/index.html and try to find some cohesive combination. Of course, no information is available at all about what other species bears a similarity with the wood shrimp needs.
In the Prawn article they
seemed to feel that a constant temperature was very important, so yesterday I bought a small heater for that tank. They also indicated that high levels of oxygen were important. Another website I read about filter-feeding shrimp in general indicated the need for high oxygen levels, so I have mirrored the drip design to an air-tube/stone design for the bottles. I do want to make sure they aren’t so agitated with bubbles that they are damaged, so I am using enough valves to make sure there isn’t too high a flow.Yesterday the eggs showed the baby shrimp eye spots that are characteristic of eggs about to hatch.
I watched her closely. I shot some more video (not too good, but decent), viewable at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec9Vdmy2jGk but got a decent still photo seen here. This image is a close up of the one above. She is standing on a piece of bio sponge that I have tied to an air stone. I did not want to introduce any manner of pump to this tank, because it would suck up and kill the hatchlings. She is in about 6 gallons of water alone, and I have two media bags full of used aquarium gravel, so I am comfortable that amonia levels won't build up.
Singapore Wood Shrimp Eggs day 11
Monday, March 2, 2009
(Retrospect)
I glanced at the Wood shrimp today and noticed the eggs were no longer orange, but instead had turned brown. Knowing I was about to leave town for 3 days, after much consternation, I decided to attempt to move her to the breeding tank. On the one hand, I was afraid of the stress of moving her without me to vigilantly watch her for signs of stress. On the other hand, I was rather certain that with two filter feeders in a 2 gal. tank that by the time I got home there were be few larvae if they were to hatch.
I took a little tiny Tupperware container, and moved it up next to her. With a fondue fork I often use as a tool, I gently nudged her. She took a few steps to the side, right into the Tupperware. No muss, no fuss, it was a fantastically calm move.
Last Friday, Feb 27th, at the invitation of the Argent Chemical Laboratories Representative (makers of Cyclop-eeze), I had a long talk with the representative about the Singapore Wood Shrimp dilemma. He suggested a design for a hatchling tank that held the larvae in vented cups within the larger tank, with a drip apparatus to maintain water flow. In this way, the density of plankton could be much higher surrounding the larvae, with lower risk of fouling the water.
I went to a local hardware store, and decided upon using some hardware used for drip-i
rrigation, attached to a small 30gal/hr pond pump. I can house this whole thing in one of the spare 10 gal tanks I have. The drip nozzle has 6 outlets, and I am using 3 to feed into the hang-on-the-back filter that belonged to that tank, so there will be a good water flow being mechanically filtered (not using electricity to the filter, just moving some of the drip hoses into it). Also, the drip heads are supposed to have a constant flow of ½ gal/hour (although this has not yet been my experience), and I didn’t want the extra force from the pump (although it does have an adjustable flow) to blow off the hoses. So half of the outlets will flow unabated into the filter, and the remaining 3 holes split to form 6 drip hoses. Currently, my plan is to have the larvae in 5 water bottles, and use the 6th to gradually raise and lower the salinity.
The Representative suggested I buy some freeze-dried cyclop-eeze, which could be ground to smaller sizes than the frozen product I bought, and if I did, he would include some free samples of other products that have size ranges from 20-450 microns. I gladly agreed. Our bargain also included my commitment to talk to my friends about farm-raised salmon, which I have already begun to make good on. The package arrived Monday, March 2nd, and it was just like Christmas.
He also told me to start feeding the frozen Cyclop-eeze to the berried shrimp right away, as it’s nutritional benefits are needed while she is brooding. The other shrimp I have (Red Cherries, Blueberries, Bumble bees, and a lone Tiger) really like the stuff as well, as do my little Convict Cichlid fry.
(Retrospect)
I glanced at the Wood shrimp today and noticed the eggs were no longer orange, but instead had turned brown. Knowing I was about to leave town for 3 days, after much consternation, I decided to attempt to move her to the breeding tank. On the one hand, I was afraid of the stress of moving her without me to vigilantly watch her for signs of stress. On the other hand, I was rather certain that with two filter feeders in a 2 gal. tank that by the time I got home there were be few larvae if they were to hatch.
I took a little tiny Tupperware container, and moved it up next to her. With a fondue fork I often use as a tool, I gently nudged her. She took a few steps to the side, right into the Tupperware. No muss, no fuss, it was a fantastically calm move.
Last Friday, Feb 27th, at the invitation of the Argent Chemical Laboratories Representative (makers of Cyclop-eeze), I had a long talk with the representative about the Singapore Wood Shrimp dilemma. He suggested a design for a hatchling tank that held the larvae in vented cups within the larger tank, with a drip apparatus to maintain water flow. In this way, the density of plankton could be much higher surrounding the larvae, with lower risk of fouling the water.
I went to a local hardware store, and decided upon using some hardware used for drip-i
rrigation, attached to a small 30gal/hr pond pump. I can house this whole thing in one of the spare 10 gal tanks I have. The drip nozzle has 6 outlets, and I am using 3 to feed into the hang-on-the-back filter that belonged to that tank, so there will be a good water flow being mechanically filtered (not using electricity to the filter, just moving some of the drip hoses into it). Also, the drip heads are supposed to have a constant flow of ½ gal/hour (although this has not yet been my experience), and I didn’t want the extra force from the pump (although it does have an adjustable flow) to blow off the hoses. So half of the outlets will flow unabated into the filter, and the remaining 3 holes split to form 6 drip hoses. Currently, my plan is to have the larvae in 5 water bottles, and use the 6th to gradually raise and lower the salinity.The Representative suggested I buy some freeze-dried cyclop-eeze, which could be ground to smaller sizes than the frozen product I bought, and if I did, he would include some free samples of other products that have size ranges from 20-450 microns. I gladly agreed. Our bargain also included my commitment to talk to my friends about farm-raised salmon, which I have already begun to make good on. The package arrived Monday, March 2nd, and it was just like Christmas.
He also told me to start feeding the frozen Cyclop-eeze to the berried shrimp right away, as it’s nutritional benefits are needed while she is brooding. The other shrimp I have (Red Cherries, Blueberries, Bumble bees, and a lone Tiger) really like the stuff as well, as do my little Convict Cichlid fry.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Quest for Atyopsis moluccensis-Singapore wood shrimp offspring- Day 7
I lost a mollie this morning.
To follow up, I had in mind to get several sail fin mollies at the local pet store. The plan was to use them to keep the holding tanks cycled, then, once the shrimp have hatched and are ready to move into the salt, move the mollies into the 20 gallon aquarium downstairs. The state of affairs at the pet store was atrocious. I was at first annoyed that they had one molly- count them- one “Balloon Mollie.” Then, as I looked around, wondering if they had anything else that could tolerate salt, I saw just about every manner, save anchor worms of fish disease known to mankind. The place should be shut down.
So I drove the extra 15 miles to the sister store in Snohomish. These tanks, too, were despicable, but not quite as many diseased fish. I found the tank of mollies. Dalmatians, mostly, and a few cross-breeds. I really needed these fish. But I couldn’t bring myself to buy them until I had inspected the pluming in the tanks and verified they were each individually operated, and not connected by common plumbing.
It took a lot longer to move the mollies to salt than I would have imagined. Not being a salt-water tanker, I had no idea, really, how much salt is in salt water. I started by super-saturating about a pint of water, and added a couple of tablespoons at a time to the bucket with 2 gals of water. I did this every 15 minutes, Much to my chagrin, this barely moved the hydrometer at all. After 3-4 hours like this, I started upping the dosage to about 4 tablespoons at a time. When I finally got to 17 ppt, and moved one molly then into the Brackish jar, I removed over half the water in the bucket. Seemed like a terrible waste of salt, and I really wanted to get the mollies into the tank so they didn’t have to spend another night in a bucket with an air-stone.
It was about 5 pm when I finally got them up to 30 ppt and got them into the tank. They seemed okay, was happy to eat, and their posture was good. This morning when I turned the light on, I didn’t see the dead one, but it is possible it had already died, my visual processing isn’t too good before coffee. When I came into the office, it was dead. A second in the salt tank looked like it was knocking on deaths door, swinging from side to side. Clearly under distress. The third looked fine. The one in brackish water looked fine, and the two in the System 3 fresh tank were also fine.
I thought about it for a couple of hours, and decided to move the salt level down. I finally reasoned that it was more important to get the tanks cycled good than to have the salt at 30ppt, since I would have to be acclimating larval shrimp anyway. So I drained out about half a gallon, and stated adding fresh water in. By about noon, I got the salt down to 23 ppt. An hour later the fish stopped that sad side-to-side motion, and started calming down, fins not so clamped and so on. By this evening, the two fished behaved relatively the same.
It makes me wonder whether the Singapore Wood Shrimp Larvae will tolerate full salt or not. I sure hope they’re big enough to see and watch, and siphon.
Meanwhile, the excellent new is that after my terrible experience with the local Pet Stores, I called Blue Sierra in Issaquah and asked about plankton. The man was very knowledgeable, and willing to talk through the issue. While it’s an hours’ drive each way from here, Angie works just a few blocks from there. We finally decided on 2 products. First called Cyclop-eeze (http://www.cyclop-eeze.com/product_info.php). The Pet store fella said it had sizes 15-800 micron. The package however says average size 800 micron, and the website says 800-1200 microns. So I’m going to have to look into that. (Suddenly I’m not feeling so comfortable). It says Freeze-Dried CYCLOP-EEZE® may be sized to the desired range by rubbing over the appropriate mesh screening. Naturally I have the frozen kind, but imagine I can figure out something.
The second product is called Concentrated Phyto Feast, which he said is a live algae. I am hoping between the two, there will be a wide range of feeding opportunities. Info on Phyto feast says :algae we use in Phyto-Feast: Isochrysis, Pavlova, Tetraselmis, Thalassiosira and Nannochloropsis. * Wide nutritional diversity - Phyto-Feast" contains golden-brown, green, yellow-green, blue-green and brown algae.”
And I also have brine shrimp eggs.
To follow up, I had in mind to get several sail fin mollies at the local pet store. The plan was to use them to keep the holding tanks cycled, then, once the shrimp have hatched and are ready to move into the salt, move the mollies into the 20 gallon aquarium downstairs. The state of affairs at the pet store was atrocious. I was at first annoyed that they had one molly- count them- one “Balloon Mollie.” Then, as I looked around, wondering if they had anything else that could tolerate salt, I saw just about every manner, save anchor worms of fish disease known to mankind. The place should be shut down.
So I drove the extra 15 miles to the sister store in Snohomish. These tanks, too, were despicable, but not quite as many diseased fish. I found the tank of mollies. Dalmatians, mostly, and a few cross-breeds. I really needed these fish. But I couldn’t bring myself to buy them until I had inspected the pluming in the tanks and verified they were each individually operated, and not connected by common plumbing.
It took a lot longer to move the mollies to salt than I would have imagined. Not being a salt-water tanker, I had no idea, really, how much salt is in salt water. I started by super-saturating about a pint of water, and added a couple of tablespoons at a time to the bucket with 2 gals of water. I did this every 15 minutes, Much to my chagrin, this barely moved the hydrometer at all. After 3-4 hours like this, I started upping the dosage to about 4 tablespoons at a time. When I finally got to 17 ppt, and moved one molly then into the Brackish jar, I removed over half the water in the bucket. Seemed like a terrible waste of salt, and I really wanted to get the mollies into the tank so they didn’t have to spend another night in a bucket with an air-stone.
It was about 5 pm when I finally got them up to 30 ppt and got them into the tank. They seemed okay, was happy to eat, and their posture was good. This morning when I turned the light on, I didn’t see the dead one, but it is possible it had already died, my visual processing isn’t too good before coffee. When I came into the office, it was dead. A second in the salt tank looked like it was knocking on deaths door, swinging from side to side. Clearly under distress. The third looked fine. The one in brackish water looked fine, and the two in the System 3 fresh tank were also fine.
I thought about it for a couple of hours, and decided to move the salt level down. I finally reasoned that it was more important to get the tanks cycled good than to have the salt at 30ppt, since I would have to be acclimating larval shrimp anyway. So I drained out about half a gallon, and stated adding fresh water in. By about noon, I got the salt down to 23 ppt. An hour later the fish stopped that sad side-to-side motion, and started calming down, fins not so clamped and so on. By this evening, the two fished behaved relatively the same.
It makes me wonder whether the Singapore Wood Shrimp Larvae will tolerate full salt or not. I sure hope they’re big enough to see and watch, and siphon.
Meanwhile, the excellent new is that after my terrible experience with the local Pet Stores, I called Blue Sierra in Issaquah and asked about plankton. The man was very knowledgeable, and willing to talk through the issue. While it’s an hours’ drive each way from here, Angie works just a few blocks from there. We finally decided on 2 products. First called Cyclop-eeze (http://www.cyclop-eeze.com/product_info.php). The Pet store fella said it had sizes 15-800 micron. The package however says average size 800 micron, and the website says 800-1200 microns. So I’m going to have to look into that. (Suddenly I’m not feeling so comfortable). It says Freeze-Dried CYCLOP-EEZE® may be sized to the desired range by rubbing over the appropriate mesh screening. Naturally I have the frozen kind, but imagine I can figure out something.
The second product is called Concentrated Phyto Feast, which he said is a live algae. I am hoping between the two, there will be a wide range of feeding opportunities. Info on Phyto feast says :algae we use in Phyto-Feast: Isochrysis, Pavlova, Tetraselmis, Thalassiosira and Nannochloropsis. * Wide nutritional diversity - Phyto-Feast" contains golden-brown, green, yellow-green, blue-green and brown algae.”
And I also have brine shrimp eggs.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Quest, Day 6
I’m beginning to understand why people don’t have success with breeding Singapore Wood Shrimp! Lack of funds, lack of knowledge, lack of time.
Brian Dorn Husbandry Curator at North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores has been a great sport- while he says he knows little or nothing about breeding Singapore Wood Shrimp, we’ve exchanged several emails that have been quite helpful to me. I am only moderately knowledgeable about the kinds of life-forms I work with in my home, but underneath that is a whole layer of microscopic life forms and chemistry of which I was somewhat aware, but blissfully ignorant.
He suggested http://www.aquaticeco.com/ a company in Florida that sells all manner of things related to plankton (and other things). One option is a larval diet- a mixture of processed foods for fish and invertebrate larvae. The smallest amount available is $25 plus shipping. The other route, to purchase rotifer cysts ($15) and algae culture ($15) would get me started with culturing live food. Brian said that tech support was great- so I called.
We talked for a long time, and Brian was right, tech support was very knowledgeable and patient with all my questions. He, too, indicated that if I had a tub of algae outside, the zoo-plankton would follow.
As of yesterday, I couldn’t really decide what to do. But late last night I was reading two excellent articles in the Advanced Aquarists Online Magazine about culturing rotifers. Not only did it start sounding like something I could easily fail at (thus having no food for the larvae), but there was a reference that rotifers might actually be too large for some fish fry. Well if they’re too large for some fish fry, I would well imagine they could well be too large for shrimp fry. In the next article (http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/oct2002/breeder.htm) he was talking about other ciliates.
While it didn’t exactly tell me where to get the ciliates, he did provide a nice recipe for something to feed the ciliates, using vegetable juice and some vitamins I have around the house. Also, the Aquatic Eco guy was talking about how careful you had to be with your algae culture that it didn’t get contaminated with ciliates. Hmm, I thought, this is sounding more like what might work. Just then, as I reading the end of the article, I got another message Jirkalib of the Czech Republic. He and I have been emailing almost daily. I found him back when I was doing google searches for information. He had found himself in the same predicament about 10 months ago- and posted questions about what to do, and got no good answers. As it happened, he posted an excellent video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYsnA-RCJE4&feature=channel_page, and since I have a YouTube account, I was able to message him.
He had no success with his larvae, but I have been asking as many questions as I can to learn what I can from his experience. More on this later. But he had mentioned the prior day that he had plankton to feed them with, and just as I was finishing the article I got a message from him that it was a culture he grew with just regular straw and water. So that is what I’m going to try. So, as of today, my basic food strategy is:
- Hope for an algae bloom in the tanks I’m putting mollies in- I at least know I have algae around
- Start a straw-water culture
- Buy some plankton food meant for corals and the like
- Have brine shrimp eggs on hand
Today I’m acclimating mollies. It’s taking a lot longer than I thought.
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