Project Orange

James

looking back through this, I think you've only said "salt" when referring to the makeup of the brackish and ocean level waters.

Are you using plain / table / "aquarium" salt (straight NaCl), or a natural or artificial "sea salt" ? If the former, and with your soft well water (isn't that an oxymoron? but I digress) it could be that the zoe need the other mineral salts supplied by natural saline water, which you could get in the complex salt blends.

alternately, you could selectively boost calcium by adding white (coral) sand or crushed shells / coral to the bottom of the tank, or add a parakeet cuttlebone (without the aluminum hanger!)
 
wesleydnunder said:
Do you think it's possible that the additional osmotic pressure happens in too large a step? Can you take your existing brack tanks that they're doing well in and gradually raise the salinity to full salt?
Click to expand...

This is one thing I am considering in the future. I'm still researching but all roads starting to point to the fact that they don't hit a pure salt area.


pbeemer said:
Are you using plain / table / "aquarium" salt (straight NaCl), or a natural or artificial "sea salt" ? If the former, and with your soft well water (isn't that an oxymoron? but I digress)
Click to expand...

I am using the Instant Ocean sea salt.
 
Test #2 at low salinity level has begun. There wasn't a whole lot of zoea from this hatching so the test group will be small. I'm only going to focus on the low salinity for this group with the small size. I'll go back later this evening to try and fish out the rest of the zoea.

Salt tanks currently sitting at 74F. I moved the light to the side of the tanks instead of hovering over top. This has seemed to put the temp right at the target level.
 
More zoea than I originally thought. Kewlness. Makes a larger testing group. No casulties witnessed in the past couple of hours. That's a better sign than last attempt. They seem to huddle in the middle of tank near the light. This is leading me to think temperature is playing a bigger role.

Now the next question will be feeding. Right now, I have added 2 tbsp of Nanno. The water has light green tint to it. I think what I'll do this time instead of using the dropper to mix up the water, I will extend the air tube down further and use it. This would keep the same amount of current in the tank at the same time as stirring up the plankton that settles on the bottom. I have increased the air flow just a tad from last time.
 
Interesting find. The female in isolation has practically hatched out all her eggs. The odd thing, I can only find a few zoea. I'm thinking I may have had her in there too long and the water quality wasn't as good as it should have been. Grrrrr.

I have another female who is just days away so I will clean out the chamber and place her in there.

Salt tanks have been prepped with fresh water and phyto. Added a bit of Micro Algae grow to encourage the phyto to continue to grow with the zoea.

New Rotifers came in today. These are live specimens instead of the dry eggs I received last time. I'll get their bottle set up in the culture station tomorrow. I also received some decapsulated brine shrimp. May give them a whirl too.
 
How's the first batch of larvae doing? I'm really interested in how your process might apply to rearing some of the amphidromous fish in the hobby. Thanks for the excellent notes. This thread has the makings to become a major resource for people trying to repeat this process in the future.
 
Thanks.

I've gotten as far as two weeks with the zoea then had a die off. My thoughts on that was the food source.

The zoea also don't appear to tolerate change well. I've conducted a couple of experiments involving small water changes and adding new phyto. They seemed to die off shortly after. This go around, the tanks will be almost full and full suppliment of phyto with ferts in there and just let it sit.

I have a whole gambit of varrying tests lined up.
 
And the Rotifers are started. Since I couldn't find out at what SG the Rotifers were cultured at from the vendor, I am slowly drip acclimating them to 1.014. From what I have read, this is a good salinity for breeding them.

P1151297.jpg


Prior to starting the drip, I feed about 4ml Nannochloropsis. I will feed some more once acclimation is complete.

This is one culture that I have to stay on top of because they say you need to harvest about 25% of it daily since they breed so fast. I believe they last about 8-10 days according to my research.

On the shrimp front, the next female is starting to drop larvae. Same thing as last one though in which there are only a couple in the water. I will be doing a water change today on the tank and try and determine the water quality issue. Two other females are berried and ready to go as well.

At least the rearing tanks should be all thoroughly aged and ready. This next round of testing, I'm looking at 1.014 and 1.005 on the limits.
 
Have a lot of zoea to work with from this female. I didn't think there was going to be that many when I first noticed the hatching yesterday. Today, I noticed that they all hatched out. I went to put the female back in the tank and I obviously stirred them all up.

I'm going to go two days with this group and then place them in the salt water. So far as it seems with this first wave of tests, the zoea that are placed in the salt tanks within the first 24 hours have been the ones to survive the longest. Keep in mind there have only been a few test groups to date and still have a long way to go.

There will be plenty of food available from this point on. The Nannochloropsis phyto's have done really well at all salinities. I've got some Tetraselmis going at 1.014 as well. Rotifers seem to be doing well with first harvest there around Tuesday. I'm not really sure how to go about that yet though. Not sure if I just pour them into an alternate bottle or if they need to be filtered out. I believe the filtering might just be when feeding so as to not add their water to the tank.

One of the other females has dropped her eggs and I'm sure that was my doing. When I went to put the latest female in isolation, I managed to get the wrong one. I'm sure that is the one that dropped her eggs. One other egg carrying female in line and should be going into isolation at the end of the week.
 
Transfer to salt is beginning. I just moved over a majority of the zoea to the brack tank...unintentionally. lol. When the lights are out, they seem to huddle in one spot. I was surprised with how many I got on the first attempt. Luckily, there is still an ample amount to transfer to the low end salt.

My only issue at this time, is that the phyto didn't really take off in the tanks as I was hoping. Might be an issue so I'll have to monitor that closely. I did add about 20ml to each tank prior to adding the zoea.
 
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