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.

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-irrigation, 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.

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.

The Quest- Day 4

I’d like first to follow up on the “more on this later” items.

First on the System 3: I have found the system 3 to be one of the most reliable aquariums I’ve had, even though long ago the lighting fixture died. The combination of pump flow rate and the bio wheel has been such that I have hardly ever lost anything in this tank. Most recently it has housed a beta and several of what I call “blank” guppies. I have since just moved these into my 20 gal down stairs. My intention with the system 3 was to cultivate the filamentous algae that was so prevalent in the 10 gal where I housed the Convict Cichlids. Last weekend I moved them into a 20 gal, and suspect that without the extra lighting I had on the 10 that the algal growth would diminish.

The other little shrimp tank I have, with a variety of neocaridinas (cherry, blueberry, bumblebee) is small, but I love this tank because the shape of it creates a natural magnifying glass. These shrimp LOVE algae- so prior to the move from 10 to 20 I had several clumps of plants that I rotated- letting them grow a large algal growth, then putting it into the shrimp tank. They come by the dozens to this veritable cafeteria, cleaning it is in a matter of hours.

I had planned on using the System 3 to over-light and keep up this algae rotation.

For a while last night I thought about converting it to salt. But then I realized that if I, in fact, succeed at saving some of these Singapore fry, they will need a place to live. So I decided to keep it now as an algae garden, and hopefully soon, a Singapore Wood Shrimp kindergarten.

Now about the Brackish issue. The article I read named 17 ppm as the brackish reading recommended for Amanos. I did a web search this morning about Brackish, and this seems to be the saltiest end of the range that begins much more fresh than this. I had intended to aim for 17 ppm, but had a little problem with that. I started with the 30 ppm I had used earlier, figuring if I diluted it by half that should be 15 ppm. So I used just slightly less than half fresh for the last cup-to-cup measurement. But when I measured it with the hydrometer, it measured at 23 mmp. I suspect some of the fine particle suspension from the sand is giving a false salinity reading. Now, several hours later, the reading is 21 mmp. I will continue to monitor this.

Now on make-shift pvc filters: Some time ago with the mating of cichlids, the female was so freaked out by the close quarters (at the time they were young and in a 5 gal tank) I decided to move her and the fella into the system 3 so they could have some privacy. That worked out okay until she laid the eggs- then she was so aggressive toward the male that I was afraid she would kill him- lost scales and ripped fins, and I got desperate. So I moved him into this same little jar that is now the brackish tank- but kept him near so they could see each other. Naturally, in a couple of days with just an air stone, the water got cloudy. So I thought about a little miniature filter. I cut a piece of pvc, packed it with some filter floss, and inserted an air stone. Within a couple of hours, the water had cleared. With this little make-shift filter, he was able to survive the ordeal a month or so before I re-organized everything and got all the cichlids into the 10 gal.

Here are some images of the female Singapore Wood Shrimp. As you can see they are in a small goldfish tank. They have lived in this tank for a couple of years, generally alone, just them and some snails. A month or so ago, I moved a few juvenile shrimp (probably blueberry, but without color yet, so they could actually be bumblebee). I have no idea what prompted them to mate now. Jan 4th a pair of grass shrimp I had in there showed eggs. At that point I added just a little salt (about ½ tsp. twice, two days in a row) hoping they would make it. This is a different story to follow up on, but long story short- neither parents nor offspring survived.

Shortly after, I added a small piece of wood collected at a local river. It floated for a long period of time, despite having soaked in a bucked for months. This wood finally water logged and sunk just a couple of days before the eggs. The day of the molting/eggs, I noted a lot of activity with the other young shrimp in the tank- the kind of chasing around in circles that usually has been described as related to a pheromone release- I suspect it was the wood shrimp pheromones they were reacting to.

Late that night, Feb 19th, I looked briefly in the tank as saw a shrimp was very, very red. Usually when there’s a molting the shrimp with be redder than usually, but still, it’’ more of a reddish brown. The other shrimp had molted just a couple of days earlier. It didn’t really hit me them, I thought maybe I was seeing the one who had molted before (I have a hard time telling the two of them apart). Later, though, when I went to turn out the lights- that’s when I spotted her- with those eggs. OMG! This isn’t like the little dozen eggs of the neocaridinas- these are hundreds and hundreds of little, bright orange eggs, so packed into her pleopods that they looked engorged.

I had seen a few times when looking for info on the Neocaridinas, comments about the Singapore Wood Shrimp- most sites you find say they have never been successfully bred in captivity. On this night I looked again- for hours.

This is why I’m on a quest. Most of these fascinating animals are captured in the wild for folks like you and I to buy in Pet Shops. So little is known about shrimp in general- and it seems like shrimp with the Primitive type of breeding cycle have even less info available.

As of the writing of this tonight, Feb 22nd, I’ve gotten email responses from 4 Aquariums- no-one with knowledge yet, some have offer to pass my request along to others. One reminded me to make sure I have plankton for them to eat.