Unfortunately over yesterday and today the zoea have dwindled down to fine few. I am researching into what the problem may have been in case there is another batch coming up soon. I think it could have been a mixture between not doing water changes and not enough food- the brine were too big and I'm not sure I added enough phytoplankton. Because of this I moved one of the zoea into a glass with a bubbler identical to my brine shrimp hatching setups to try to give it access to more concentrated food and care for it individually. I am researching rotifer cultivating as a possible better food source for the younger zoea. I think my test strips were not accurate enough and I may need to look into the liquid test type, which gives more specifics. Also, I'm not sure my tank was the correct sort of setup, and am looking into the kriesel tank, which a German crab keeper successfully used to raise her zoea. It keeps the delicate zoea suspended in the water, which they seem to need as they are not good swimmers just like any type of plankton. I have heard these special tank designs are usually used for raising delicate jellyfish or young seahorses. Will keep updated on how this goes! |
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The zoea are still alive. They are odd little creatures that just drift with the bubbling of the sponge filter and only jerk their tails and move by their own force if they bump into something. (True definition of plankton: cannot swim against the current) looks like they don't bother to try either! I tried feeding some freshly hatched brine shrimp napulii today, but I don't think they're ready to eat prey like that yet. I thought I saw one hermit baby grab a brine, but I'm not sure as none of the others reacted.
I discovered another Australian who successfully raised baby crabs to a year old (and still growing) and she mentioned that the stage 1 & 2 zoea didn't eat a lot, so I'm going to wait on more brine until later and stick with the daily doses of phytoplankton. Here is a link to her thread of conversation on Hermit Crab Association: http://www.hermitcrabassociation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=91033&hilit=captive+breeding Rice is still showing interest in the other female. He has been holding onto her shell and not letting her go anywhere all day. Hermit 'courting' is rather odd- hold onto the lady crab's shell for days until she gives in? They haven't even moved all yesterday, last night or today! Nothing serous yet, but it is looking possible that there may be another batch of babies coming up, which is unreal! Hi Everybody! The zoea are still alive so far, and I am feeding them about a 1/2 teaspoon of live phytoplankton a day. They molted last night and all a small size bigger (2nd instar). I am working on hatching some baby brine to start feeding them. Rice has actually shown interest in another female today, so I'll have to see if anything comes of it! Here is some footage I compiled on the baby hermits: After years of hopeful waiting, larval hermit crabs,(also known as zoea), have been spotted in the hermit's reef tank! I am literally in a state of shock... I'm guessing a female released them last night. There are somewhere around a hundred of them, and since female hermits averagely lay around 200 eggs, I probably have something close. On June 26th there was behavior between my male, Rice, and one of the females which appeared to be mating, but as I had been waiting so long for something like this to happen, I was cautious about believing it to be so. (Now though, it is obvious that it was in fact, what it appeared.) Land hermit crabs display external fertilization, in which the male 'hands' the spermatophore to the female with his fuzzy-tipped 'cleaning legs'. She at her leisure uses this to fertilize her eggs. In my crabs, I was aware of the difference between this and the usual shell fight or dominance behavior because the crabs were halfway out of their shells and exposing their ventral sides (or undersides) to each other, which crabs would usually never ever do in commonplace situations. They also waved their antennae wildly, at a speed not usually observed. I never saw the female carrying the eggs, but that may be because I wasn't expecting to see any. I checked the female the day after they had mated, and there was no appearance of eggs at that point. She may have laid them later on. If I had observed the eggs, I would have seen them carried on her special 'egg carrying' appendages on the side of her abdomen, also known as pleopods. The eggs would have started out bright orange, and then turned gray as the embryos developed. She would have constantly washed them with her shell water, and cleaned them with her 'cleaning' shell-legs, appendages with a similar appearance to a pair of personal bottle-brushes. If you want to see what this process is like, watch this video:http://youtu.be/X9Je-RIyjhY I will be working on setting up a secondary tank for the megalops stage (a higher stage of larval development) and shall to try to continue to update, so stay tuned! We found Smaug dead today. I think she was the one that had the babies, and it wearied her. Poor Smaug, found lying dead beneath the water. I guess that is what happens for naming her such.
A Memorial to BanditBandit was growing proficiently and happily eating lots of crickets when I woke up this morning to find him in a frightening state. His abdomen was crumpled and misshapen and a pulpy black secretion was attached to his anal area. A mantis of his species does not have the ability to fold their abdomens as some species do, and a healthy mantis has an abdomen at least double that size so I could clearly see that something was very wrong.
I watched him for a time, and deplorably he was unable to flex his abdomen in a natural manner. I desperately searched for information on this problem in hopes that there could be a solution, but all the signs pointed to a slow and unavoidable death. The issue arises in cages where too many prey are left in the cage with the mantis, and disturbs it while it is attempting to molt, (a time where the mantis is soft and extremely venerable). The disturbed mantis suffers from an exoskeleton that does not form correctly. The crickets in my cage had been getting bigger and bolder, and were often climbing up Bandit's sticks. I thought this was a good thing at the time, because it seemed that Bandit would have an easier time hunting, but now I wish I had seen the problem in this before. I think Bandit tried to molt upside down from the mesh lid to avoid the crickets, and his abdomen drooped from that angle. This was a really hard lesson for me to learn, and I wanted to present this issue so future mantis owners could know avoid this. I did not want Bandit to suffer, so we put him in the freezer so he could die peacefully as recommended by an expert on mantis care. I now know that it is critical not to keep prey in the same cage with the predator as I was attempting to do. I also learned that only so many prey should be offered at a time, and to avoid feeding when the mantis is preparing to molt. I really wish I could have known this before it cost my little pet Bandit's life.
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