I came across that one, he is the one that uses phytoplankton to raise the shrimp from day 4 through metamorphasis. I am on a terribly tight budget, and have decided to abort these few shrimp that i have and work on the hatchrate of the next batch due in about 10 days. I did find that i could get a Fw/Sw species of algae from Florida aqua farms w/ a specialized fertilizer for about 20 dollars.
The largest of the that is now 22 days is about small still 3-5mm long, and if i'm not mistaken i think i see legs on his thorax. I hope he'll live the next week into metamorphasis so I can get a visual queue for when he's ready for freshwater. I raised them using kent's phytoplex, and decapsulated brine shrimp in the past week.
Interesting thing was one of the brine shrimp hatched at least i think. Though i can't imagine that an egg was viable after having been through the decapsulation treatment and frozen for the last year. Well something hitchhiked in at any rate =)
Amano hatch rate
Next batch started hatching today, first noticed the berried female on 5/1 -> first mysid is out on 5/21. The female molted early this morning and the first one hatched in the last hour. I'm going to try tumbling them with a 2L brineshrimp setup to get a better hatchout rate with a little turbulence from a air pump.
I finally think i understand what happened on the first go around having seen this one go so successfully. On the first attempt the female dropped her egg clusters almost immediately, while this time she held them 4 days past the main event. So what I thought was a bad hatch was actually my fault for catching her late I believe. Tumbling probably didn't help this time, and I think that my female is less healthy for having endured that.
The hatchout started, I believe on saturday, I estimate about 100 were swimming around and 20-40 each day after. I'm not sure how many I really have, but it's definately 100-200. Day 8/9, Salinity dropped to 1.016 killed all off in about 12 hours.
I finally think i understand what happened on the first go around having seen this one go so successfully. On the first attempt the female dropped her egg clusters almost immediately, while this time she held them 4 days past the main event. So what I thought was a bad hatch was actually my fault for catching her late I believe. Tumbling probably didn't help this time, and I think that my female is less healthy for having endured that.
The hatchout started, I believe on saturday, I estimate about 100 were swimming around and 20-40 each day after. I'm not sure how many I really have, but it's definately 100-200. Day 8/9, Salinity dropped to 1.016 killed all off in about 12 hours.
I've now failed to get shrimp past day 9 seven times, only once I got them to day 18-25 but they were stuck in an early larval stage they didn't appear to grow. I took some spiruela kelp flake and blended that for 20 mins then condensed it hopefully it will provide a better diet, and just maybe this 8th attempt will go better.
I would really like to try it, I have debated ordering a culture from florida-aquafarms through the last two attempts. I think that the stability of the phytoculture maybe at least partially responsible for the shrimp surviving. Also they may have a ministage in the freshwater cycle that i'm skipping by dunking them too fast. These are two of the really vague ideas i've heard.
Do you keep your culture going on the Guilliard f/2 fertilizer or do you have another method?
Do you keep your culture going on the Guilliard f/2 fertilizer or do you have another method?
