My Caridina cf. Propinqua Project

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Zoea from Caridina cf. Propinqua (a.k.a Sunkist Orange Shrimp)

They will be washed out to sea today (moved to their salt tank).

I tried to get some shots last night of them and this is about the best I could get at the moment. They are so small. I'll try to snap some more before moving out to sea. You can just make them out as they almost look like arrows.



I'm going to estimate around 40 or so zoea in there at the moment. This morning, most of them where in the same corner as pictured above.

Time's running out on the remaining ones in the tank. Hopefully I will be able to find alot more today and get them moved over so they at least will have a fighting chance of survival.

Back from holiday and getting things all squared away. Washing out the zoea tanks and will be moving females over to them. I'll move over (2) Amano's and (2) ninja's today. I'm going to try to work on building the permanent station as well.

Most of the phyto is growing well. The Isochrysis is growing green again. I thought this phyto was a golden brown algae. I'm trying to contact the supplier for verifcation. The Dunaliella is slow going but looks like it is finally getting established. Cultures may be ready to split just in time for the new zoea.

I'll also get the O. Cocama tank finished and then restock it with C. Propinqua to get them back to where they need to be for the project. I've set up a different tank for the Red Nose with less current so that should keep them happy.

Busy day in store for today. I'm currently waiting for the cable guy to show up so as you know....that means I got plenty of time to work with.

Amano's: One lady has started hatching her eggs. There is a couple dozen zoea floating about with still a ton more to hatch. The other lady looks as if hers will hatch any day now as well.

Propinqua: Finally found a berried female. Awesome. I'll move her into isolation shortly. I don't have many of these guys left but getting ready to get some more in.

Ninja's: There are a few berried ladies in the tank. These guys breed very rapidly. Only thing is that I don't know how long they have been berried. I'm going to try to house two ladies together and just hope the hatching times will be close together. If not, I stand the chance of loosing an entire batch.

Harvesting phyto cultures today. Will be making up a new cocktail mix. New specimens of Isochrysis and D. salinia have arrived. My last two didn't fare well under culturing so have to reestablish them. I also just recently discovered that I have the C. Iso strain. While this one should work just fine, I'm looking to get the T. Iso strain. I have a lead on it now so hopefully that will pan out.

What a day today! Got home a few minutes ago. Two and half hours sitting in traffic. Bad accident. So I'm already in a foul mood by the time I walk in the door. Start my normal routine of checking in on things and find my Propinqua lady dumped all her eggs. After one day! Grrrr! What a bum deal.

Cleaned out the tank that she was going into and will transfer another Amano lady in there.

Started washing a batch of zoea out to sea. I'm going for something a little different this time. I'm gonna shoot for a salinity of 1.018 on this round. Need to eliminate some of the lower salinities. I'm also going to try a different method on the air. I took a short piece of tubing and drilled some small holes in it. Going to place that on the end of the bubbler and see if I can't get some better tank movement as well as increase in the oxygen in the water. I'm also going to control the feeding more this time as opposed to just dropping a a bit in the tank and letting it ride.

Dinner time so I'll update more later.

Stopped the salt drip into the tank for the eve. Took a quick reading and the level is at 1.012 at the moment. Little ways to go and I will restart the drip tomorrow. Another thing I'm trying...I turned the light out instead of running 24 hrs. Main reason is that the tank next to it, the female hasn't hatched out her eggs yet. We'll see where it gets us tomorrow.

Turned the light on this morning and all looks well. The other female had a full hatching last night so now both tanks are full of zoea. I'll clean out the unhatched eggs and get the new batch washed out to sea this evening.

One thing that slipped my mind during this experiment is the temperature. With the A/C running, the basement temp is around 68. I don't believe that is going to be good. I may have to rethink things with the light and just run it 24x7 again. The only difference with this round will be the amount of food available in the tank. If I limit it more, the amount of light available will be greater which may help (hopefully) keep the zoea suspended longer.

Still working on a better water current idea as well. Have a couple of ideas floating about. One of those sounds interesting involving some PVC piping (idea was presented to me via a member on another forum).

Going to be takind daily salinity checks as well.

Turned lights on this morning and all looks well still. Zoea floating about nicely.

I think I stressed the last female out when I tried catching her. She dropped all her eggs yesterday and a few hatched out. I didn't think she had been expecting that long. Didn't think I was too stressful when I caught her. I have a nice gentle routine I use. I'll see what may happen with the rest of those eggs. Otherwise, I catch the zoea and place them in one of the other tanks.

Salinity in both Amano tanks is almost at 1.018. Have a little bit more to go to get there. A little slower than I wanted to get there at but seems to be ok for the moment. Lights on this morning find the zoea still doing well. Water is not green from phyto as yet. I just hope I'm not starving them. I'm adding roughly 1.5mL of phyto/day. So when the lights are out, they huddle up to any area where they see light. Since the phyto station is directly under them, they are at the front of the tanks in the morning. Once I turn the lights on, that's when I feed. I place the phyto right where they are at. That should provide for quick eating before everything gets moved away by the current. The fact that I haven't seen any zoea hanging out near the bottom is a little encouraging. Still very early yet. I have adjusted the air tubes just a bit as well to where both are a couple of inches away from each other. This has provided a very nice current and keeping things moving nicely. I'm still going to work on a small bubble wall as well with hopefully smaller bubbles for increased O2 staturation.

Another thing I'm going to do during this round is perform a water change. I'm going to do this at Day 5. Depending on the development of the zoea, I will do this every (5) days. Salinity level will be maintained at 1.018.

Zoea progressing well still with this new round of testing. <knocks on simulated wood> Lights on this morning and everyone moving about nicely. Started noticing a few of them really start to zip around. This was right after I fed this morning so I'm curious if this was greedy feeding behavior. :) As I watch these two groups more, I'm seeing more activity out them than groups of past. I watch them go through movements such as curling up into a "c" form and then straightening back out and floating in the current. I would see it from time to time in the other batches but those pretty much just floated around or hung at the bottom.

And speaking of current, I think I have a really good one established now. To date, I still haven't found any zoea hanging out in the bottom sections of the tank. Before I would notice groups of them bouncing around in the corners or at the bottom side panes. <again knocking on simulated wood>

As the zoea are appearing to be healthy with just the small amount of phyto I'm feeding, I am starting to wonder if I should begin some alternate feeds such a Spirulina. I'm thinking that after I do the water change tomorrow, I will feed both phyto and a comparable amount of Spirulina. The question I would have is would they phyto be too small for them and they need something a little bigger or they will still be eating the phyto just fine and enjoy a bigger particle feed as well?

My salinity is swinging just a bit too. With evap and phyto feeding (as small as that is), I tested it at 1.020 yesterday. Made an immediate adjustment to get it back to 1.018. I do need to conduct a side test here to get the proper salinity of the phyto before feeding. I'm culturing at 1.026 and thus feeding at that same level. Granted 1.5mL isn't that much but again with that and evap, it's obviously causing the swing. So another question I pose is whether I make this adjust at harvest time when I put the phyto in the fridge or just wait until I feed the smaller amount? The latter of course would depend on me getting the proper ratio of phyto mix to fresh water but a relatively easy experiment to conduct.

Now on to a sad note. The last Amano female that I moved over, the one that immediately dropped her eggs after moving, she unfortunately is dieing. :( I discovered her yesterday in the main tank (one day after her return ot the tank) on her side and color was an orangish hue to her. But not expired yet. I got some fresh tank water from another tank and moved her into a holding chamber in hopes that she will rebound. I found her this morning still alive and original color back but still listless on her side. I also noticed that she still had eggs under the first segment of the carriage. Hopeing for the best but expecting the end game.

Great news! The little lady looks like she's a gonna pull through! YAY! Did a water change yesterday in the specimen container she is in. For a spell she was standing right side up but from time to time would either be on her back or side. This morning, she is standing again and moving around nicely. She has even ate a little bit of the flakes I put in there for her. I'm not going to move her for several more days though just to ensure she's 100%. I feel so much better.

Big day today for the zoea. Lights came on and all still doing great. Today is the first water change in the zoea tanks. I toyied with the idea of only doing this on one tank but decided to go ahead and do both. The new water is aerating as I type and tested at 1.016. I'll check it again before I do the water change but that should be fine with the daily swings of the tanks and should balance right out.

Didn't get to the water change yesterday but will be doing it right after I'm done with this update. Still progressing and haven't seen any casulties or groups hanging out at the bottom. Lights on this morning and they are moving about nicely. Didn't feed this time since I am doing the WC. Will add some phyto and Spirulina once the WC is complete. Once I do the water change, I'm going to start logging some data such as temp and salinity readings in the morning and then evening before the lights go out. Want to get a better understanding of the swings that are occuring and see just how much the values are. I'll try and sneak a pH value in there as well. Just curious as to what that may be.

The Amano lady that I thought I was going to loose continues to get better. I found her swimming around in the container today. She is more and more active every day. I do about 80% water changes in her container every day. I think a couple more days and she will be ready to return to the tank. I won't worry about the few eggs she is still carrying. Her health is more important than that.

Found another Amano female berried today as well. I plan on moving her early this time. I think this may be why they are not getting full hatches.

Bit to update today.

Amano Zoea - seem to be doing ok. I did suffer some losses and I think that it may be due to leaving the light out longer than normal. I let it go for two hours longer in the darkness. Definately time for a timer on these tanks. The others seem to be fine. One tank is greener and cloudier than the other which I find a bit unusual as well. Not sure what would be causing that. I'm going to try to siphon the bottom of these tanks to get the build up out of there.

Amano lady - I am acclimating her slowly back to her original tank. She looks pretty good and has been swimming around. I think it's time for her to go back to her clan.

Ninja's - Seem to be in a constant state of berries. I keep finding zoea in the tank as well. I need to find some more 1g tanks to add to the project.

Propinqua - Another berried lady found today and she is loaded. I am seperating her in just a few minutes to see if she drops her eggs. I've been dealing with them dropping after one day. I'm wondering if the Red Nose may be causing this ... possible crossing??

Very interesting discovery today. The tank that the one Amano lady dropped her eggs, well, I never paid it any attention. I felt the amount of zoea and the dropped eggs wasn't going to amount to anything. This tank didn't even have an air bubbler running on it. I brought the tank upstairs last night and placed it on the counter ultimately forgetting about it. So today I went to clean out the tank so I could transfer the Propinqua into. Well...SURPRISE...I look in there and I see a couple hundred zoea floating about in this murky cruddy water! Wow. And here I thought all of these were lost.

I'm trying to catch all that I can and place them in two rearing tanks I already have going. I will have to adjust the salinity again as I'm adding freshwater to the mix. But, I'm going to do a partial water change to offset the amount of water in the tank.

What a pleasant surprise. Now I know this is going to throw off the age of the zoea in the tanks but I wasn't working by age anyway. If I get to that point where they start to morph, I'll be removing the ones that do anyway.

Water changes completed in the tanks. Spirulina added. There are a few more zoea to try and capture. I get a few everytime I go back down there. Will adjust the salinity back to 1.018 and we should be good to go til day 15. <crosses fingers>

Approaching the two week mark for some of the zoea. All continues to progress well. You can make out the size differences between the ones that were in the tank already and the ones just added. That's a good sign as the zoea are showing growth. The two water changes so far appear to have no impact which again is a good sign. Next wc is scheduled for Sunday. Salinity being maintained at 1.018. Very minor shifting which I'm attributing to evaporation. I add enough fresh water daily to keep it stable.

The Propinqua female is still holding her eggs. Awesome. That ended the streak of dropping eggs after 24hrs. She will be moved over to a rearing tank today.

Ninja's are still holding as well. I did find zoea in the main tank. Not surprising anymore. The females are in a constant state of being berried it seems. Being small shrimp, they hide very well. I don't have enough tanks to isolate all the females as yet.

Went to move the Propinqua lady to the rearing and discovered she dropped her eggs. Grrrrrrrr! Placed her back in the tank and cleaned out the specimen container. Glancing around, I found another berried Prop. Awesome deal. I'm in the middle of water changes at the moment and will immediately move her to isolation. She's holding more eggs than the last female had.

Believe it or not, I still found some zoea alive in the stagnant tank. I was really surprised. I did my best to remove those remaining zoea and divide them into the rearing tanks. That tank has been cleaned out and another Amano will be placed into it. Get her in there early this time and see if I get a better hatching.

Water change in the ninja tank as both of them are still holding their eggs.

All looking well. Continuing to make progess.

Caught in the act. And what do you supose is going on here eh? :)



I went down to check on things this morning and saw the males swimming around frantically. Then she came out of hiding and....well....the rest is history. lol

I kinda skewed my test on the zoea. Got home really late last night and didn't turn the light off on their tanks. I'm pretty sure this didn't impact them at all but does mess with the test of turning the lights off every night. All looks well this morning. Water is getting more green which is getting hard to look into to see how many zoea may be floating about. Water change on the schedule for tomorrow so hopefully that will be ok.

Ninja's and Propinqua still holding onto their eggs. I would expect the Ninja's to be hatching out any time now.

Nice looking shrimp...

I always get excited when i see male swimming around in the water column hehehehe.....

Zoea continue to grow the best that I can tell. I've noticed that most of them are changing color to a brownish color. Still hard to get a good look at them due to the cloudiness of the phyto and spirulina. Performed a 50% water change in both tanks. Salinity still holding at 1.018.

I tried snapping some pics and even shoot a video but it just didn't work.

Man...forgot to turn off the lights again last night. Definately got a get my timer for a more controlled test. I don't think it hurst anything which is a good thing.

Amanos:
Fed combo of phyto and spirulina this evening. The big zoea are really moving around nicely. I'm curious to know how many might be in these tanks. It's too murky to get a good feel for it. I'm debating about starting Golden Pearls now. I may do this at next water change. Might even just do a tid bit tomorrow.

Ninja's: Surprising they haven't hatched out yet. This is the longest I've noted them carrying eggs. The eggs are also a more pinkish color at the moment. I'm wondering if this is a bad sign or if they turn this color prior to hatching. Did a water change in their tank.

Propinqua: No carrying females.

Only a few Amano zoea remain in each tank it looks like. A little discouraging but at the same time encouraging. The zoea that I can see are big, they are brown and hopefully these will be the first ones to make it. This is the furthest along we've been in the project. That is the encouraging part. I'll have to go back and take a look at the data to see if I can pick up on anything. One thing that immediately comes to mind are the days that I left the lights on instead of turning them off. The days that they were left on were late into the round which is why I'm thinking this may attribute.

As for the water changes, I think the zoea did very well with them and it turned out to be a big plus. I kept the gunk from building up on the bottom to some extent. I want to see if i can manage that even further for the next round.

Now the question is, should I consolidate the zoea to one tank or not? At the moment, I'm going to let things ride and just see what happens.

Starting with the Amano zoea. I gave the tanks one final water change. I think this one will be the last until we know what will happen. Either the remaining zoea will make it or unfortunately, they will perish. I do feel pretty comfortable though. After draining the water, I got see better. There are a few that are a nice size and nice brownish/red color. The tanks remain cloudy after the wc. This could pose a problem if/when they morph. I'll have to be able to see them as shrimp to be able to pull them out. The unknown for me is to know how long a shrimpet will be able to survive in the brack conditions?

On to the Ninja's. When I first checked them when I got home, all looked well. I did need to do a water change in their tank as well. Got everything done with the Amano's and some other tanks and went to start working on the Ninja's. I started a siphon and started to pull the gunk from the bottom. Something caught my attention. Zoea! Awesome! I immediately stopped the siphon. Then I got a flashlight to take a better look. One female had all her eggs hatch. The other one is still holding but hiding behind the airstone. She will release hers anytime now.

With that, I removed the one female and acclimated her back to the main tank. I scraped the bottom with a card and then using a dropper removed the buildup. I still performed the water change with my regular routine with zoea. Filled it back with fresh tank water since the other lady is still in there. Now the real test. Lights will go out tonight. We'll see how they do. Hopefully all will be fine and the others will hatch tonight. If so, they all will be washed out to sea tomorrow.

This is a continuation update from last night actually. I went downstairs to turn off the lights on the zoea tanks. I got to Ninja's and noticed the other female looked a little "empty". Broke out the flashlight and confirmed that all her eggs had hatched as well. Removed her and acclimated her back to the tank. I went ahead and added a little of the phyto cocktail for them and at 2300hrs, the lights went out.

This morning when the lights came on, all is well. There are hundreds of "dust particles" (that's how small the ninja zoea are) floating about. I have the zoez tank located next to the main. Will relocate it to where the other tanks are today, drop the water level to four cups and then begin the salt transformatin.

This is by far the biggest group of zoea I've worked with to date. I'm going to shoot for the same salinity as the Amano's at 1.018. My initial goal was actually going to be lower but I liked what I saw in the Amano's even though there aren't very many of them left.

Progress indeed.

Thanks for the update...

Little after weekend update here:

Amano's: Last remaining zoe are still hangin in there. Big and a nice dark color. I still have some of the smaller ones that I added from the one batch I thought was lost as well. If my calculations are correct, the big guys should be morphing any day now. One tank is more clear than the other at this time. I'm pretty much done with these tanks until they morph {crosses fingers}. At that point, I'll combine the smaller ones into one tank and see how they progress.

Ninja's: All is still looking well with these guys. They are a little bigger than a dust particle now. Something to note with their tank. I didn't immediately move it over to where the others are so I just rigged up an air stone instead and have been running off of that. It seems that the stone is creating a much better current. I may have to play with this more and see if I'm getting better current results. This morning they were fed a mix of Phyto and Spirulina.

Propinqua: Found a berried female yesterday and immediately moved her into isolation. This morning, I changed her water and will be moving her to a rearing tank today. I'm going to try and be extra cautious with her since I've been losing all my Prop eggs of late.

In the next couple of weeks, the new improved phyto cocktail will be ready. The other two cultures are finally settling in and getting established. This will make the cocktail a (4) phyto mix which should cover all the nutritional bases.

Nice thanks for the update

Morning check when the lights came on and all continues to be well. Still no Amano shrimpets as yet. The big zoea continue to drift about. I fed (or should say offered) them a small amount of Golden Pearls last night. We are at the one month mark for the initial hatching. I'm going to move another Amano female into isolation either today or tomorrow. That will fill all my rearing tanks for now. May just have to bite the bullet and go to Petsmart and buy new ones since I haven't been able to locate similar size containers elsewhere. I'll keep looking all about though.

Ninja's continue to grow. I no longer have to squint to see them drifting. They are approaching one week now. With this batch, I'm going to do water changes every (10) days as opposed to the (5) with the Amano's. With the ladies holding the eggs about as long as the Amano's, I'm expecting the same time frame for them to morph into shrimpets. I'm curious how the much smaller size of the Ninja's may play into things. One other interesting item to note with the Ninja's; I have their rearing tank located right next to the main tank. With that, the light isn't sitting directly on top of the tank as the others so this is keeping the temps lower. To be honest, I don't believe the light is at a level where it will impact the temp at all so this tank is strictly sitting at room temp which is around 68F. Much lower than I would like. I'll take a temp reading today and see where it actually is.

The Propinqua female is still holding her eggs as of this morning. Still early yet but we are in that window where they have been dropping their eggs of late.

I think this weekend I need to focus on building a new station to house the rearing tanks and phyto cultures. Will make things much easier.