Sexy shrimp breeding adventure

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#22
Day 7, there are still many left (despite a definite hit around day 5) and definitely bigger. At least one molt / larval stage has passed for sure, I need to familiarize myself with the stages better. Photos today are just after reupping phyto so that's why its got color.

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#23
this guy got them with just bbs.

A varied diet is better, and it seems like yours are progressing quite well. An awesome feat, congrats :D I believe like lysmata they still have about the same number of stages (like 10-11 ish?).

can you describe your setup here? i haven't seen one like this
 
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#24
this guy got them with just bbs.

A varied diet is better, and it seems like yours are progressing quite well. An awesome feat, congrats :D I believe like lysmata they still have about the same number of stages (like 10-11 ish?).

can you describe your setup here? i haven't seen one like this
Nice link, thank you. Yeah I'm planning on all BBS. I have some tisbe and tigriopus copepods growing that i could add but have read these reports of all BBS and now that these larvae are like 3mm I suspect those are too small and would just cause co-culture issues.

I'm trying to minimize water change, so hoping live phyto helps keep uneven BBS from starving and dying and causing more issues, and maybe also sucking up some nutrients.

This is just a 1gal ice cream container (or 3qt? forget) inside a blue 5gal bucket. logic being opaque/dark outer bucket to minimize light issues, and the outer bucket lets me keep heater outside. And if I need for water changes, I can pretty easily get an emergency 50% water change by adding water outside, equilibrating temperature etc, then dumping inner bucket into the outer bucket.

This was a very quick and dirty assembly, for the Lysmata larvae attempt i had a similar ice cream bucket on a small pedestal inside a bucket, with holes and sand in the bottom and an airlift type pump bubbling water from the outside bucket in through the side of the inner ice cream bucket. Sort of like the shellfish hatchery or marine lab type setup if you're familiar. I usually keep a system like that running just with a cycled sponge and some random macroalgae, but I had to use that holding tank for a failed sick fish rescue attempt so it was broken down for cleaning, this was the quick replacement. so the outer water currently isn't actually communicating with the inner water, it's basically just a water bath for heating.
 
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#26
Oops sorry didn't mention those. Black thing is the sponge part of a sponge filter, when this is running in 'sump' style (outer bucket water coming in through the side of ice cream container, than gently out through the sand below), I keep an ordinary sponge filter in the outer section to help with filtration.

I had to tear down and sanitize the setup they were in, and the system wasn't re-set up long enough honestly, and I didn't have the sump bucket set up. So this is just sponge, no current through it except ambient, hoping it is marginally useful. And an airline on a bubbler for water movement.

Airline is just with a bubbler (no stone) has a little bit of an extender tube, maybe 2", so airline is 1" off the bottom and at a slight angle, but the extender tub (maybe 1/2" diameter?) exaggerates the angle flow wise so it helps it be more rotational than just uplift if that makes sense.
 
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#27
Sadly the first run is at an end, there were 2 before I left for a trip partway through last week (friend was adding BBS daily) and today on checking the system there are none. So I would guess it was about 18-19 days this first run.

I'm keeping the system going and will get it updated to be the circular flow setup since I think that will work better. One of my females seems fairly far along, so hoping will be able to start a new batch soon. Will update on this thread to keep track of how things go differently.

Observations: Mortality events were around day 5 going from innumberable to many 10s, then around day 12 (didn't take good notes so just going off memory on this one) there was another dropoff to maybe 20-30, then relatively consistently they started dropping except for the two that made it. This was about the time the brine shrimp started clearing faster, so I wonder if nutrition was an issue. Or one particular zoeal stage that I was bad at keeping them afloat or protected for.

Goals for next one:
* fewer water changes - there was a bit water change around day 10 that wasnt immediately before the middle pain point but i suspect it may have been an issue. Goal is keep more consistent live phyto, outer sump with sponge filter (and keep up amquel).
* reduce uneaten brine shrimp. unsure how to remove, but i think that contributed to nutrition issues. maybe careful siphoning?
* try adding some prepared foods (like the 100-200um golden pearls)
 

drexel

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#28
Sorry to hear, but it sounds like you have a solid plan going forward. I think we're all cheering you on for the next round. Good luck!
 
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#29
And we're back! The other female (i think it was the other one) released eggs last night (Weds 17 Sept), I was able to catch several. It was an interesting process watching the egg release, the other time the female just flicked them off in the current a few at a time, continuously. This one waited, then did a somersault like 5" in front of my gyre, timed perfectly with the gyre going, released a full explosion of babies, then went back to chilling.

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#34
how did you prepare the tub - are there any feeds in it?
Feeds are baby brine shrimp (keeping tinted with nannochloropsis more consistently this go around). Added BBS the night I added the larvae. For the last week or two, I'm also adding more 100-200um golden pearls and this week started adding some 300-500um golden pearls.

The tub is just an ice cream tub with a small hole in the side, with a poor-man's bulkhead: street 90 on the inside, threaded barb on the outside, just tightened until they pinch the thin wall good enough to not leak. There is a cluster holes in the bottom of the tub underneath the sand for the drain, located kind of in front of the return
 
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