Posts Tagged ‘crab’
March 26, 2008
In keeping with my “photo gifts” kind of mood this week, as well as my “Under the Pier” posting today, some new shots of Admiral Byrd waving at you.
He has got to be the crab equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger given he holds that claw up for MANY hours a day, every day now. I should be so buff…..
I will also note that while he waves that claw so diligently in his attempts to flag down women, he is very pragmatic and can multi-task. He can keep that large claw in the air and wave it back and forth, even as he manages to pick up a shrimp pellet with the other claw and eat. The guy’s gotta keep up his strength, right? 🙂
Tags:Admiral Byrd, Arnold Schwarzenegger, buff, claw, claw waving, crab, fiddler, flag down women, multi-task, photo gift, shrimp pellet, under the pier
Posted in Broken Bits | Leave a Comment »
March 25, 2008
Yesterday was one week that we noticed Scarlett O’Hara was pregnant again.
Looking back over my notes on the first pregnancy – we noticed her eggs (2/17/08), then moved her about a week later (2/24/08) into the spare tank I’d just set up. Five days later she delivered. (2/29/08) The one thing we weren’t sure the first time was how long she was carrying the eggs before we noticed. From my log notes, I saw her on the 14th and didn’t notice anything. So, I expect it wasn’t much before 2/17 that she brought the eggs out on her abdomen. Given that, it appears it was about a two week gestation period.
If history repeats itself, 2 weeks will be about 3/31/08, next Monday.
With that in mind, I decided to move Scarlett O’Hara to the nursery. She seems calm this time, doesn’t seem disturbed by the calcium sand, sat under the water filter for a while, then moved toward the side of the tank and greedily went after the shrimp pellets I dropped in.
Since I can’t be sure when the eggs will hatch, I will shut off the water filter today.
Yesterday’s water parameters show both the main aquarium and the nursery aquarium to be about equal. No nitrates in the nursery yet, but moving Scarlett into it should kickstart the nitrogen cycle; I did drop in some shrimp pellets into the nursery the other day, just so “something” organic would be “rotting” in there and feed the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Hopefully that will be enough to do the trick.
Yesterday’s parameters:
Main aquarium (before moving Scarlett):
Salinity 1.0115, Chlorine 0, Alkalinity 300, Hardness >300, Nitrites 0, Nitrates 20, pH 7.8-8.0
Nursery aquarium:
Salinity 1.013, Chlorine 0, Alkalinity 300, Hardness >300, Nitrites 0-0.5, Nitrates 0, pH 8.2
I have brine shrimp eggs though I won’t start hatching those until the fiddler babies are born. According to the package they take about 24-36 hours to hatch. I have something called “San Francisco Bay Brand: Brine Shrimp Hatch Mix” It has eggs, sodium chloride and magnesium sulfate and you just add a liter of water. I have a container with an air bubbler to put the mix in. No heater though. Just not going to spend another $30 or $40 for a brine shrimp heater. The kid at the pet store who has a marine tank and raises brine shrimp for his fish told me there’s no reason you can’t hatch them at room temp. He does it all the time. I’ll let you know how that works. I don’t know how many shrimp I’ll get in one of these packets. There’s three packets to the package. If needed, I’ll go back to the aquarium store and just get the larger container of shrimp eggs.
If you want to see some good instructions on hatching brine shrimp, as well as some pictures of the shrimp as they go from eggs to the tiny shrimps, click here for the San Francisco Bay Brand website.
In any event, I have the Kent Marine “ZooPlex” product to feed the babies for the first few days until the crab larvae are large enough to chase down live brine shrimp. This food is made to work well for invertebrate larvae and is considered a good brine shrimp replacement. It’s available at PetsMart. Again, we’ll see how it goes.
Tags:Admiral Byrd, alkalinity, aquarium, aquarium store, brine shrimp, brine shrimp eggs, Brine Shrimp Hatch Mix, brine shrimp heater, chlorine, crab, crab larvae, eggs, hardness, hatch, hatch shrimp, invertebrate larvae, Kent Marine, Kent Marine ZooPlex, live brine shrimp, log, magnesium sulfate, marine tank, nitrate, nitrates, nitrite, nitrites, nitrogen cycle, nursery, organic, PetsMart, pregnancy, room temp, salinity, San Francisco Bay Brand, Scarlett O'Hara, shrimp pellet, sodium chloride, tank, water filter, water heater, water parameters
Posted in Broken Bits | Leave a Comment »
March 22, 2008
Well the fiddler crab, Scarlett O’Hara’s pregnancy progresses well. I am through “labor and delivery” with Under the Pier’s second draft, and we had an RIP moment for my laser printer, which died trying to print the last two chapters of that draft.
Now, to expand on each just a bit:
Scarlett O’Hara is busy eating or just sitting behind the air filter, in the main fiddler crab tank. Her pregnancy progresses with no odd happenings. Her “nursery” tank is doing well – water parameters are fine and salinity was down to 1.012 when I diluted the water, earlier in the week. I will recheck water parameters and salinity tomorrow in the nursery tank. If they are fine, I will most likely move Scarlett over to that tank Monday or Tuesday. We first noticed her carrying eggs on Monday the 17th. On Sunday the 16th, we saw no evidence of eggs, but that’s when she was spending days living on top of the water filter, sitting in the water currents. So best guess here, is that Monday will be one week. The last time she delivered her babies, it was just about two weeks. So I will move her to the nursery early this coming week. Also, I will shut down the water filter again and just leave the air bubbler running.
I picked up eggs and supplies to hatch brine shrimp and will talk more about that tomorrow. I also picked up a liquid food geared toward larval invertebrates, that is a good brine shrimp substitute. NO MORE LIVE PHYTOPLANKTON. I’m hoping that sticking to the zooplankton food approach will work better and not end up with high nitrites that kill off the babies. So more on this tomorrow and this week.
I spent most of the day on Good Friday, polishing the last chapter of Under the Pier’s second draft. It is finished. Of course it needs more work, but at least now it is a real book. There are no giant piles of fix-it cards or empty places in the chapters where I still had to figure out something or add in a description. Next up in the project:
1) Continue on with the posts about writing Under the Pier – I left off on location as character and Part II of that coming up this week will be more info about specific locations in the story — which though fiction, are amalgamations of real places, as well as how I researched them.
2) I will be putting together the submission package for a couple of editors from last year’s Carolinas – SCBWI conference. These packages include three sample chapters, chapter summaries, and any other info I want to include. At least according to one editor. I have a “map of my story’s town,” a schematic of the diner and the diner area, a smaller map of the area around Max’s house, a schematic of Max’s house, a glossary, probably a bibliography of some of the sources including research papers and the researchers I talked to….and of course, this blog’s address. 🙂
3) Start draft three. This time, I can now read through “completed” chapters, and listen out loud to their rhythm, see where they bog down, see where they need more “sensory details” and also go through the large “revision” charts I made up to see if I’ve covered everything. A later post will cover what I compiled for those revision charts.
Re the demise of my laser printer – FRUSTRATING!!!! I was halfway through printing the last two chapters when it seized up and died. Now I can’t really complain. I’ve had that printer almost 7 years and have printed thousands of pages. I got my money’s worth out of it. I was just hoping not to have to a) deal with buying a new printer just to finish printing my book and b) spend the money now. But…. c’est la vie. We now have a new HP Laserjet P3005dn. I need to make it my friend. 🙂
Anyway, that’s the state of affairs here. Oh, and also, given the impending draft three of the book, I need to get going on “Creature Features” So stay tuned!
Tags:air bubbler, air filter, aquarium, bibliography, blog address, bog down, brine shrimp, c'est la vie, chapter summaries, chapters, crab, creature features, diner, editors, eggs, fiction, fiddler crab, fiddler crab tank, fix-it cards, glossary, Good Friday, HP Laserjet P3005dn, invertebrates, labor and delivery, larvae, larval invertebrates, laser printer, liquid food, listen out loud, live phytoplankton, map, nursery tank, phytoplankton, pregnancy, research papers, researcher, revision chart, RIP, salinity, sample chapters, Scarlett O'Hara, SCBWI, SCBWI conference, SCBWI-Carolinas, schematic, second draft, sensory detail, sources, tank, under the pier, water current, water filter, water parameters, zooplankton
Posted in Broken Bits | Leave a Comment »
March 18, 2008
One of our readers sent in some information the other day about her attempts to raise fiddler crab larvae. That comment was in response to my blog post entitled:
The Fiddler Babies are Dead But We’ll Start Over and Prove HorseyhannahWrong.
Yesterday Laurie has this update that she posted on one of my other blog posts: “Extra! News on Preparing the Fiddler Crab Nursery.”
She has such good info, and generously wants to share it with all, so I include it here for all to see.
I especially loved what she said toward the end of her comment, that maybe if all of us who have knowledge on the subject of fiddler crabs pool our info, we can prove that you CAN too raise fiddler babies without the hundreds and thousands of dollars of equipment that Horseyhannah (on the Animal Planet forum) says you need.
So here is Laurie’s information, her gift to all fiddler enthusiasts out there, updating us on her progress and also listing the many things she’s done to make this work. Thank’s Laurie! And to anyone else who might have more info for myself or Laurie, please do send your comments. They are welcome!
Fiddler crab lovers of the world, unite!!! 🙂
Comment:
Laurie’s Fiddler Crab fry–March 17th, 2008, Day 7 and still going…
Just an update. They were released on March 10th and true to the (artist!?) breeder of the mangrove crabs www.aquahoito.info/sesarma/index.html on March 15th, day 5, I had a little more than half die off. In the last 2 days no more have died, tho.
Today I was able to get supplies for them, including a salinity meter ($7.00) and some test strips for nitrate/nitrite etc. and Kent’s PhytoPlex (not live) for more food. As I didn’t have proper food for them I did the newborn fish fry trick of feeding them hard boiled egg yolk. About 1/2 a matchstick head’s worth smashed fine in some water and dispersed with the fry, twice a day. That was too much, no doubt, but I’m new at crabs and they did ok…
I tested my water (2 gallon hex w/no filtration, slight bubbling from airstone) and nitrates were 0, nitrites were alright-“caution” .5 ppm, salt is .015ppm, hardness 300 (ideal). I’m finding it’s cheaper to do water changes in a small fry tank than buy a whole salt water filtration system. 2 tbsp Ocean Reef salt/quart, 1 qt every couple days. The little squirts only have to get to 2 or 3 months old before they’re little crabs, by the looks of Mr. Mangrove Crab’s work, so that’s not much salt used over time versus the complexities of a nitrogen cycle filtration system. Now that I have test strips I’ll know how often that should be.
Again, shutting off the bubbler, wiping the bottom to free the slime that’s growing there (I don’t think I’m getting it all, so if it’s food it’s still present somewhat), then fluffing it to one side and siphoning it up w/airline tubing seems to clean the nitrite creating stuff pretty well. Shining a light in one corner for them to aggregate near keeps most of them out of the way, and I shine it again in the gunk glass I siphoned into to get the ones I accidently sucked up back into the tank.
One interesting note is that after the “D-Day” day 5 die off the herd that is left swims less and congregates on the bottom on the side facing the window. Their movement is now more like a thousand little frogs hopping around in the herd at the bottom of the tank. Some still swim, but majority is doing the new movement. I can see a bit of their tail now, but no major growth change.
Possible theories: 1.) they molted on day 5 and many didn’t make it through. 2.)Nitrites killed them at this stage and they haven’t molted yet. 3.) Maybe everyone’s dies at day 5 because they have 5 days of food stored in them or because when they molt the new contact with water conditions isn’t right for them…
Interesting to note that my water isn’t the right ppm for salt, but half have survived… I thought I saw somewhere it should be ocean water (1.020-1.024, and somewhere else 1.010. hmm. Wish I had more tanks to test all 3 salinities.
My hope is that with more postings from folks that are having success we can all help each other out to solve this mystery and not make silly statements like it taking hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the right water conditions for this. heh heh that one still makes me chuckle. I bet it’s possible.
Folks could try their filtration systems in their nursery tanks with a big ball of fiber-fill around the intake (intake on LOW!) with super fine cloth over that. That makes the drag into the intake almost nothing. You’ll see if the babies are being pulled onto it, it’s too strong still… but I still am having great water results with one gallon of water in a two gallon tank.
Best… Laurie
Tags:air tubing, airstone, Animal Planet forum, aquarium, bubbler, crab, crab fry, fiber fill, fiddler babies, fiddler crab, fiddlers, filtration, filtration system, frog movement, hard boiled egg, hardness, Horseyhannah, intake, Kent's PhytoPlex, larvae, mangrove crab, molt, molted, nitrate, nitrite, nitrogen cycle, nursery, salinity, salinity meter, salt, slime, tail, tank, test strip, yolk
Posted in Broken Bits | 1 Comment »
March 16, 2008
When I first I walked by the fiddler tank yesterday morning, I was sleepy and oblivious. Then I did a double-take. Sitting at the front of the tank was the discarded molted shell of somebody. On closer examination, and with my husband’s consultation too, we both agreed it was Melanie Hamilton’s discard. That means she is at the moment most likely to get pregnant if Admiral Byrd invites her in.
At the same time we noticed that Scarlett O’Hara was sitting on top of the water filter….again. The last time she did that, we noticed shortly afterward that she was pregnant.
Admiral Byrd of course, was marching up and down the tank, claw arm held high, and waving.
To continue – Scarlett O’Hara spent the entire day and evening yesterday, on top of the water filter. She is still there this morning. She has never done that before or since, except when she was pregnant. I know she is still alive because she is “blowing bubbles.” Crabs foam sometimes when they’re out of water, to moisten their gills.
Even when I freaked out Admiral Byrd yesterday, and scared Melanie Hamilton out of her live rock because I was cleaning the tank and accidentally bumped the live rock, Scarlett O’Hara didn’t leave the filter perch. She just moved down into the filter for a bit, then climbed back up. Admiral Byrd meanwhile kept trying to climb the heater power cord up to the top of the filter to be near her, but he couldn’t quite do it with that large claw.
Yesterday afternoon we noticed that Melanie Hamilton remained outside the live rock, sitting there on the gravel serenely watching Admiral Byrd flex his claw. Then she spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in his cave lair. This morning she was resting just outside his lair, picking algae off the rock. He was napping inside.
With any luck, we can try the larvae thing again somtime soon?
I am in the middle of re-establishing the nursery tank. I had emptied everything from the original set-up, cleaned out the tank, put down the one inch or so of the calcium-releasing sand, and added the water. Now I did forget to rinse the sand out, so the tank water was cloudy at first, but it has settle out by now. I’m not sure how one effectively rinses sand out anyway without half of it going down the drain. I will say the white sand really makes the inside of the tank bright when the light is on. If we get babies again, it should be much easier to see them in such a bright tank.
I couldn’t decide whether to make the 3 gallons of water I added marine or brackish. I guess I should start brackish because first we’ll have to move the mom, whichever one of them it is, from their tank, which is brackish into this one. I wouldn’t want to shock them. Right now the tank is on the “marine side” of brackish. I’ll adjust the salinity with a bit more water shortly.
The live rock is back in the tank hopefully doing its thing to establish the nitrogen cycle. Both the air filter AND the bubbler are running and so hopefullly the tank environment will establish itself as quickly as possible. Rather than replace the old water filter cartridge and lose whatever nitrogen-fixing bacteria that had started to thrive in it, I left everything in place and returned it to the tank.
An interesting about the old water in that tank. I tested it before I emptied it out just to see if the nitrite levels ever came down. They read zero, and the nitrates were in the “okay” zone. I guess once I stopped using the live phytoplankton and let the water filter run for a few days, that was what it needed. So the phytoplankton was most likely the culprit in the high nitrites. In any event, I dumped the old water and just started with fresh sea/brackish water all over again.
One thing – that Reef Calcium product that I’d hoped would raise the alkalinity but not raise the pH, when added to half strength Instant Ocean… maybe it didn’t raise the pH but it didn’t solve the problem of the pH being too high from the Instant Ocean even when I used that at half strength. So I still had to use a pH lowering solution and this morning it is about 8.0 vs 8.4 that it was yesterday. So that’s perfect . At least though, the Reef Calcium did raise the alkalinity.
I will keep you all posted on any news from the adult tank. Keeping good thoughts for a new crop of larvae babies. Stay tuned.
Tags:Admiral Byrd, air bubbler, air filter, algae, aquarium, blowing bubbles, brackish, bubbler, calcium-releasing sand, claw, crab, crab foaming, fiddler crab, fiddlers, foaming, fresh water, gills, Instant Ocean, larvae, live phytoplankton, live rock, marine, Melanie Hamilton, molt, nitrite, nitrogen cycle, nitrogen-fixing bacteria, nursery, nursery tank, pH, pH lowering solution, phytoplankton, pregnant, Reef Calcium, salinity, Scarlett O'Hara, sea water, shell, tank, water filter
Posted in Broken Bits | Leave a Comment »
March 14, 2008
It’s been a day of taxes and bills and other aggravations…enough to drive any sane person to the comfort of their fiddler crabs. 🙂
Admiral Byrd has been robustly marching around the tank, and no matter if he’s on “gravel hill,” the top of his “fake cave” or perched on “live rock” he stands tall and waves his claw. We just walked back in the house from dinner and the first sight to greet us across the kitchen was Admiral Byrd waving. Now we know deep down inside that he really couldn’t care less about us unless we’re a female fiddler crab, but still, on a tired night we could live in denial and pretend our “pet” is welcoming us home.
On a bit more serious note, I received a great comment from someone about my post on the death of the fiddler babies and how the Discovery forum person, Horseyhannah, said not to even bother trying to raise babies.
This person currently has living crab larvae – day 3 – and she’s offered a lot of ideas from her own experiences. There is SUCH good information and several suggestions for fiddler crab owners in her comments. I wanted to first say THANK YOU! And secondly, for anyone who didn’t catch the comment, just click here to read it.
She noted that she doesn’t use substrate on the tank bottom, which is interesting to me. I have heard others who’ve done the same, so I think there might be some merit to that approach. For myself this time around I will use the calcium substrate, since by the time I got that post, I had already started setting up the nursery tank with the new sand. So I’ll see how the sand “experiment” goes. But still, her approach to not using substrate seems very interesting and if she wants to send any updates on how it’s going, that would be great. I imagine there are many others out there who’d like to know if that is a better way to go. So anyone with info on keeping the tank bottom bare, please do send along your experiences.
I also appreciated her kind comment about my blog postings – re my novel, the fiddlers, and my marriage. Many thanks. To respond to the requests in her comment:
1) – There are many more posts to come on the progress of my novel, Under the Pier, and about life in general.
2) – She asked if I could put all the fiddler crab posts together in one place for all those “crab junkies.” Well, have no fear – they already are. On the right-hand side of my main blog page, under the “Pages” listing, click on the page called:
“And What’s the Deal With All The Fiddler Crab Stuff”
Every fiddler posting is on that page with a live link to each and every post. So crab junkies – have a great time. 🙂
For anyone who is following the progress of my “Author Journey,” or for the process and progress of my novel, Under the Pier, I’ve done the same thing. Each topic has a page with all the posts listed there, and live links to them.
If you should find your way to my blog on a page that doesn’t have the “Page list” on the right, just click on the Soul Mosaic words in my header and it will bring up the main day’s page. Then you’ll see the Page list on the right.
Well, I will re-group tomorrow. It is simply nice to know that in spite of irritating taxes and bills and other life annoyances, there are those constants like Admiral Byrd waving his claw no matter what time, day or night, that you walk in the room.
Happy Weekend to you all.
Tags:Admiral Byrd, Animal Planet, bare tank bottom, calcium stand, crab, crab junkie, crab larvae, Discovery Channel, fiddler, fiddler babies, forum, gravel, Horseyhannah, larvae, live in denial, live rock, marriage, no substrate, pet, substrate, taxes, under the pier
Posted in Broken Bits | Leave a Comment »
March 12, 2008
Some Fiddler Updates – New Product Technical Details and Romance
1) Preparations, Take 2, for the Fiddler Crab Nursery Tank:
I came home from PetsMart yesterday armed with calcium sand to replace the gravel in the nursery aquarium. That project will commence later today. The sand is actually something called Seachem Meridian Tidal Marine Substrate. It’s basically calcium carbonate precipitated from ocean waters by coral. It will stabilize the calcium and alkalinity levels in the water, and keep the pH from getting too low. Its porous structure and size supposedly are good for the growth of denitrifying bacteria. We shall see.
At the very least, it’s a dual purpose as I can also use this sand for the bottom of the land hermit crab cage I just bought. The land hermit crab project will be ramping up soon.
I also picked up some liquid food that should work fine for the larvae. I’d mentioned a product called JBL Nobilfluid that a gentleman from Finland used to raise his crab larvae. However the Nobilfluid is made in Germany and appears to be available in Finland, Germany, England, Italy and the UK, but I couldn’t tell if it was available here in the US. I could get it from a UK website but between the exchange rate and the shipping, I expect the cost is prohibitive. A JBL representative answered my email yesterday and said their product is not available in the US yet.
I found this new product at PetsMart called Kent Marine ZooPlex. The problem I had with the fiddler babies was trying to find liquid plankton to feed them. My mistake was getting live liquid phytoplankton, which made the tank toxic and killed them. I realized larval crabs need zooplankton, which is animal plankton = roughly translated: MEAT. Phytoplankton, being plant based, is the wrong plankton. Larval crabs are carnivores, not vegetarians. Anyway, Kent Marine ZooPlex is “concentrated aquacultured Marine Zooplankton” and is geared toward invertebrates including larvae. The bottle notes it can be used as a brine shrimp replacement. So this sounds like it might be just the thing for liquid feeding of newborn larval crabs who are too small to chase live brine shrimp around.
I will still need to get the dried brine shrimp eggs to hatch when I know I have a pregnant female ready to shed her eggs. The brine shrimp hatchery project will come a bit later.
2) How to raise the alkalinity of the water for the brackish tank without raising the pH?
The dilemma I have when using Instant Ocean to make up the brackish tank water for the adult crabs, is that I have to use it at about half strength. That way I get a salinity of about 1.010 instead of 1.020-1.024. The trouble is, that makes the alkalinity way too low meaning there’s not enough calcium in the water for the crabs when they molt.
I’ve tried adding Seachem’s Marine Buffer, to raise the alkalinity and it’s very successful, but it also raises the pH way up to 8.3. That’s fine for a marine tank, but for the brackish tank, the fiddler crabs seem to like the pH closer to 7.8-8.0 I have a constant battle trying to get the salinity low enough, the alkalinity high enough and the pH “just right” somewhere between a freshwater tank and a marine tank. When I use the Marine Buffer I have to then add something to lower to pH.
I was hoping to find something that would raise the alkalinity, but not the pH when I use Instant Ocean to make up the brackish water. Yesterday I came across Seachem’s Reef Calcium. The website description reads:
“Reef Calcium™ is a concentrated (50,000 mg/L) bioavailable polygluconate complexed calcium intended to maintain calcium in the reef aquarium without altering pH.”
I am going to try the Reef Calcium product and see if that solves the problem. I will let you know.
3) Romance: a humorous update for a Wednesday:
Ever since his success with Scarlett O’Hara, Admiral Byrd has been out there claw-waving up a storm. Melanie Hamilton spends just about all her time inside the live rock. Yesterday afternoon is the first time I’ve seen her out of it in weeks. I think she took to hiding out in the rock when Scarlett O’Hara was living in the nursery tank. With Scarlett temporarily gone, Melanie was the total focus for Admiral Byrd. I don’t think she liked that.
Anyway, after giving birth, Scarlett O’Hara has been eating almost non-stop. I think she finally slowed up a bit yesterday, but she’s still pretty ravenous. In fact yesterday, I dropped a shrimp pellet in the tank and Scarlett scrambled up and caught the thing in mid-drop. It never even touched down on the gravel. And she’s pretty good. No fumbling and bobbling the shrimp pellet. She spotted it, she jumped, clutched it to her chest and landed on her feet, eating the pellet before she landed. She could probably earn a spot as an outfielder for the Red Sox.
Unlike Melanie Hamilton, Scarlett hasn’t been too concerned one way or another with Admiral Byrd’s where-abouts. She doesn’t run from him, or toward him. She just eats. Still, I don’t think she’s averse to his presence as she’s spent a fair bit of time in his lair, the fake rock cave, while he walks around waving his claw. I have to wonder if he realizes she’s sitting in his house?
Last night I turned off the tank lights, shut off all the house lights and went upstairs to bed. A little later I had to come downstairs for something and walked by the tank. Even in the dark, I could see Admiral Byrd standing there on his gravel hill, waving his claw. Total darkness, but the crab is still out there trying to get the attention of the ladies of the tank. What dedication.
He is also very funny in his pursuit of Scarlett O’Hara. He climbs to the top of the live rock, to wave his claw of course. Yesterday while claw-waving, he caught sight of Scarlett down on the gravel next to the live rock. He stopped waving, tip-toed to the edge of the rock, peeked over the edge at her to see which way she was going, then, like a teenage boy in love, scrambled down the rock and followed her around all the while waving his claw.
So watch out Scarlett, Admiral Byrd is peeking.
Tags:Admiral Byrd, alkalinity, aquacultured, aquarium, brackish, brine shrimp, calcium, calcium carbonate, carbonate, carnivore, carnivorous, claw, claw waving, coral, crab, denitrifying bacteria, eggs, fiddler, fiddler crab, Finland, gravel, hatchery, hermit crab, Instant Ocean, JBL, JBL Nobilfluid, Kent Marine, Kent Marine ZooPlex, larvae, larval, larval crabs, live rock, marine, marine buffer, Melanie Hamilton, Meridian, molt, nursery tank, ocean water, PetsMart, pH, precipitate, Red Sox, Reef Calcium, romance, salinity, Scarlett O'Hara, Seachem, Seachem Marine Buffer, Seachem Meridian Tidal Marine Substrate, Seachem Reef Calcium, shrimp pellet, tank, Tidal Marine Substrate, zooplankton, ZooPlex
Posted in Broken Bits | Leave a Comment »
March 10, 2008
The fiddler babies are dead.
I am sad, because I really did like the fiddler babies. I looked around on the web last night for clues to their demise and that’s when I got ticked.
The Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet Online Forum had a discussion of how to raise fiddler crab larvae. “Horseyhannah,” a senior member on the forum basically told a member who asked how to raise fiddler larvae that it’s so hard and requires hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment to simulate ocean environments, waves, tides, etc. so it’s really not possible. Horseyhannah told the person to just enjoy the adult fiddler crabs and don’t bother to raise the babies. Needless to say, the person asking the question was polite, said thank you, agreed it will probably be hard, but would still like to know horseyhannah’s info source…just in case she decided to raise them anyway. My answer to that person is: GO FOR IT!!!! PROVE HORSEYHANNAH WRONG!!!!!
In fact, I am determined to do just that. In my book, Horseyhannah has thrown down the gauntlet and I am determined to prove her wrong.
I will concede failure on this first attempt. I am sad as I was so looking forward to having some fiddler grandchildren survive. I was frustrated and disappointed because contrary to the advice above, I think it was not only possible, but it was happening. Because I lost them so quickly, that tells me something overwhelming happened in the tank to kill them all off at once.
To review, by Friday afternoon, there were no babies moving around. It was a rapid decline, and up until that point, we still had quite a large number alive. I have to conclude it was a water quality issue and I think the biggest culprit was the live phytoplankton. But to go through this methodically, let me look at several things. If it were salinity, ie they didn’t like the marine environment I don’t think they would have lived that long in it to start with. I suspect the following things were problems:
1) I used gravel and we did lose MANY babies because they burrowed into the gravel crevices and died there.
2) The nitrite levels in the water spiked suddenly and got very toxic. Thoughts on this point:
a) I didn’t get the tank set up early enough to have a mature and well-functioning nitrogen cycle.
b) I either fed them the wrong food, or too much, or both. The wrong food or too much food meant it didn’t get eaten, sat in the tank and rotted. OR it created a huge algae bloom that raised nitrite levels beyond a tolerable level.
c) I didn’t change the water fast enough once I realized the nitrites were a problem, though given the phytoplankton issue, I was probablly fighting a losing battle from the beginning.
d) I no doubt lost babies doing the water changes because my only option was to bail water out of the tank and pour it down the drain
So boys and girls, what have I learned from this first attempt that can be done better next time?
1) I will use calcium sand not gravel. Aside from the fact that the babies won’t get trapped in the substrate material, the calcium sand will provide enough calcium for the babies to stay healthy during many molts.
2) Figure out the right food and amount. The gentleman from Finland whose article I quoted a few days back (he raised the Red Clayed Mangrove crabs) fed his larval crab Artemia…brine shrimp. He had a hatchery right in the tank to have a fresh supply. He also used something called JBL Nobilfluid for when the larvae were too small for the brine shrimp. This product is probably similar to the Small Fry liquid food I was using. It it made by a company in Germany and I’m trying to find out if it is marketed here. It has 50 different vitamins and minerals as well as brine shrimp and is geared for newly hatched aquatic animals too small to tackle live brine shrimp yet.
3) DON’T USE LIVE PHYTOPLANKTON this time. In spite of an almost 50% water change, I could not get the nitrite levels down. In fact, they kept rising. Now I am finding information that phytoplankton excrete nitrites. The better the phytoplankton did, the higher the nitrites. And with each feeding I basically inoculated the tank with more. I created my very own algae bloom which released such high nitrite levels, the babies were doomed.
Frankly, the tank seemed to be doing okay until I started using the phytoplankton. I would feed the liquid Small Fry food and while the tank would be cloudy initially, it cleared quickly, telling me the babies ate the food. At that point, in spite of it being a new tank with an unestablished nitrogen cycle, the nitrite levels stayed pretty low. However, once I started using the phytoplankton, the tank got cloudy quickly, the nitrite levels spiked, the water had a greenish tint, and the larval crabs numbers dropped dramatically. So, NO phytoplankton.
4) For water changes, instead of bailing water out, I will use the water bubbler as my “filter” to keep the babies in the tank, and let gravity siphon water out of the tube. I have the bubbler’s pump set up beneath the tank and have a regulator valve in the line to keep water from back-flowing from the air bubbler, into the pump. If I remove the valve and let the tube sit in a bucket, it will slowly siphon off water through the bubbler. This should let me slowly get water out for changes, without bailing larval crabs out of the tank and sending them down my kitchen drain.
So. I will start over. Admiral Byrd is doing his part, trying to get Scarlett O’Hara to notice him. Scarlett O’Hara has been eating and hanging around Admiral Byrd’s cave den. I figure it’s only a matter of time before Scarlett has eggs again. Therefore, tomorrow, I will take down the nursery tank, clean it out, get some calcium sand, and get that tank up and running again with the live rock in it, and get that nitrogen cycle stable.
We are going to try this again! My husband and I would love some fiddler grandchildren, 🙂 and even he said that we must prove Horseyhannah wrong!!! Stay tuned.
Tags:Admiral Byrd, air bubbler, air pump, algae bloom, algal bloom, Animal Planet, aquarium, aquatic animal, Artemia, brine shrimp, bubbler, calcium sand, crab, crab larvae, Discovery Channel, eggs, fiddler, fiddler babies, fiddler crab larvae, fiddler larvae, Finland, forum, gravel, hatchery, Horseyhannah, JBL Nobilfluid, larvae, larval crab, live rock, marine environment, nitrite, nitrogen cycle, ocean environment, Online Forum, phytoplankton, Red Clayed Mangrove crabs, regulator valve, Scarlett O'Hara, Small Fry, tank, tides, toxic, water changes, waves
Posted in Broken Bits | 2 Comments »
March 4, 2008
Just a brief note today – buried in writing work, bills, and car stuff….reality creeps in. 🙂
The fiddler babies continue to thrive. I notice the numbers are down in the tank, and we also noticed they seem to congregate on the right side of the tank, near to the live rock. They swim in and out of the live rock crevices, and some do wander to the other side of the tank to investigate the water filter which is not running at the moment. They probably figure it’s another cave because any babies over there tend to hover under or behind the non-running water filter. But even as tiny guys, they know to keep to shelter.
My husband diligently checks on them with the flashlight and noted that they are bigger…he commented that since birth they have grown from “periods” to “commas.” It will be interesting to see how many survive. The tank is “ocean” level salinity now at around 1.020. I’ll keep it there until the 17th, which will be two weeks “in the ocean” for the guys. About that point I will start doing water changes and bring the salinity slowly back down to the brackish level I keep the adult tank at: 1.010-1.012.
I am keeping an eye on the nitrite levels in the babies’ tank since it’s up quite a bit. I added Amquel to lower the nitrites but I never really see that happen with that or Prime. I sometimes wonder if the solutions to bring the nitrites down are really “placebos” for the owners of the tanks? In any event, monitoring water quality, especially since I’m putting liquid food into the babies’ tank 3 times a day.
The adult tank has been “business as usual” – Melanie Hamilton spends most of her life hiding inside the live rock, Admiral Byrd is ALWAYS waving his claw these days, and about the only difference is Scarlett O’Hara. She must be recovering from “pregnancy and childbirth” because she has NOT stopped eating. She is shoveling in shrimp pellets and picking algae off everything, with both claws at once. She gives “two-fisted eating” a whole new meaning. It is non-stop, almost “frantic” in its intensity. I guess she is making up for lost time and nutrients. Otherwise, she seems fine.
That’s the goings-on today. Working on the next Under the Pier installment, hopefully to be done for tomorrow. Need to finish some chapter revisions first. Stay tuned.
Tags:Admiral Byrd, Amquel, aquarium, bills, brackish, car, cave, chapter, chapter revisions, childbirth, claw, claw waving, crab, fiddler, liquid food, live rock, Melanie Hamilton, nitrite, pregnancy, Prime, salinity, Scarlett O'Hara, tank, two-fisted eater, under the pier, water filter
Posted in Broken Bits | Leave a Comment »
March 2, 2008
Okay. You’re wondering what in God’s name this thing is. Well, it’s one of the crab babies, at least my rough sketch rendition of one. (If you want to see real photos of the zoeae and later larval stages of fiddler crabs, click here ).
It’s the best I can do. I’m spoiled because I am used to working in labs with good equipment.
In the lab I would have put an aliquot of liquid from the aquarium in a test tube, spun it down in the centrifuge, poured off the supernatant, and made a slide out of the sediment, which would be concentrated crab larvae, instead of chasing one unlucky soul all around the microscope slide trying to catch him long enough to see him.
I would have had nice stains to chose from to make the larvae show up better. Today I had McCormick’s yellow food coloring from Harris Teeter.
I would have had a nice Zeiss microscope with oil immersion lenses and fine optics. Instead, I have a Milben kids’ microscope, circa 1965, in a wooden case, with an EverReady 5 volt flashlight shining in the mirror to light the stage. (And if you want a kick, click here to see a similar setup to my microscope and wooden case. It even has the dissecting kit tool indentations in the styrafoam. I had those dissecting tools a long time ago. It says something when you search Google for Milben microscope and it’s listed under “antique sites.”)
I would have had a nice Zeiss microscope with a camera attached to photograph what I saw. Instead, I had to sketch it. I don’t have one of those neat electronic tablets to draw with. All I had is the “pencil” tool on my son’s Photoshop program that I barely know how to use.
So, I know, stop whining. I’m not in the lab anymore. Given all this, I still managed to catch one crab baby, watch him through my very “SUB-OPTIMAL” microscope, in food coloring stain, and draw you a WAY suboptimal sketch.
But still, what the sketch shows is the head part on the right, with two little “?claws” moving back and forth rapidly. It stretches out with the tail on the left. We could even see “material” moving through the crab from the head, out the tail. Yes, out the tail. My husband caught that one. So I guess we can assume the crab baby has been eating the food I served. 🙂
In any event, minus all the fancy equipment, it’s the best I can give you, but still it’s something. I should note that this was a 100x magnification.
We have noted that Days 1 and 2 there was a fair reduction in numbers of larvae and my husband noted the blackened area that looked like a mass murder in one corner of the tank deep down in the gravel where many babies perished. Still, there are LOTS of babies swimming in the tank AND they are bigger than yesterday. If you hold a magnifying glass up to the tank, you can see tiny tails. So some are thriving after all.
If many many thrive, at least the guys at Fish Pros said they’d be happy to buy some from me for cash or store credit. That would be great. I’m always in need of new supplies. 🙂
Salinity is almost “ocean” at 1.017. Should reach 1.020 later today.
Anyway, now you’ve “sort of” met the babies.
….about that centrifuge – it occurred to me I could take a small, capped plastic tube and tie a rope around it and spin it around my head. Then I thought, maybe even better – tape the tube to the inside of my washing machine and run it on the spin cycle. But leave it to my engineer husband: find a way to attached two capped tubes on a rod opposite each other, connect them to a power drill, and turn the drill on….THAT’S the best RPMs for the money. 🙂
Tags:5-volt flashlight, antique site, babies, baby, capped plastic tube, centrifuge, claw, concentrated crab larvae, crab, crab larvae, dissecting tool, electronic tablet, equipment, Eveready flashlight, fiddler, Fish Pros, food, God's name, Google, gravel, Harris Teeter, lab, labs, McCormick's yellow food coloring, microscope, microscope slide, Milben microscope, pencil tool, Photoshop, power drill, program, Raleigh NC, reduction in numbers, rendition, rope, rough sketch, RPMs, salinity, sediment, spin cycle, stains, Styrafoam, supernatant, tail, tank, washing machine, wooden case, Zeiss
Posted in Broken Bits | 2 Comments »
Soul Mosaic 