Posts Tagged ‘tank’
March 17, 2008
That’s right folks. My husband spotted it this morning. Scarlett O’Hara is pregnant again!! I wondered.
She climbed back down into the tank this morning after almost 3 days up on top of the water filter. Just like last time – spend a few day on top of the water filter, next thing you know, she’s got a bunch of eggs on her abdomen.
I am wondering if there is something about the water filter, maybe the flow of the water up through it as she sits in the currents, that helps the eggs come out onto her abdomen? Does this replicate something about water currents in nature when fiddler crabs “bring out” their eggs?
In any event, knowing that the last time she hung around on the water filter, she was pregnant, we had been watching her closely these last 3 days. She did NOT have any eggs showing Friday, Saturday or Sunday, but there they are on Monday morning.
So we call this day #1 of “Pregnancy, Take 2.” I figured we’ve got about two weeks before she’ll drop the babies again. I’d like that nursery tank to have a full week to just run and establish itself before I move her over to it. Parameters in the nursery tank are good: No chlorine, nitrites, or nitrates. pH is about 8.0, water hardness >300, and alkalinity is running about 200 today. I need to bring the salinity down a bit more. It’s currently at 1.016, and if I can get it to 1.012 before I move Scarlett, that would be great. I don’t want to “shock” her with too big a salinity jump from her current tank to the nursery.
So again, we march through “expectancy.” 🙂
Tags:alkalinity, aquarium, eggs on abdomen, expectancy, flow of water, nursery, pregnancy, pregnant, salinity, Scarlett O'Hara, take 2, tank, water filter
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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
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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
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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
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March 7, 2008
I am not sure that things in the nursery tank are going well. A sudden reversal in fortunes over the last day or so. Very decreased numbers of babies. In fact, this morning, it’s hard to tell if there are any left. The water got cloudy, like an algae bloom, and the nitrites spiked high and even a touch of chlorine showed on the dipstick, odd since I use distilled water. So the chlorine is coming from tank conditions, not the water I used. Some thoughts:
I am not sure if the decrease in numbers is:
1) Normal? They cannibalize each other.
2) High nitrites?
3) Touch of chlorine?
4) Wrong food?
5) Too much or not enough food?
6) Salinity? Are the science articles wrong and should I have left it brackish?
Water quality:
It started out that the water would get cloudy for a little while after I put food in the tank. Then it would return to being clear. Now, however, it’s cloudy all the time. I replaced 1 gallon of water last night (still “marine” at 1.019), and I added buffer to raise alkalinity for them to have enough calcium to molt. I also added Prime to get rid of chlorine and decrease nitrites. I succeeded with raising the alkalinity, and eliminating the chlorine. Nitrates are still in the “okay” zone, but nitrites didn’t drop.
This morning the tank is still cloudy. I will recheck parameters in a little while, and probably replace another gallon of water. I hate to do that because if there are babies left, I am most likely pouring some of them down the drain with water I tank from the tank. I do pull the water from the side of the tank where the babies did not hang out much, but still. Nothing to be done there though. a.m.
It occurred to me this morning that maybe the phytoplankton was either a bad idea or I just gave too much. The phytoplankton is alive. I noticed the water I drew off last night had a greenish tint. That means the phytoplankton, which is PLANT plankton, and alive, may be blossoming, in fact, maybe it’s a phytoplankton bloom in the tank. Given it’s not the open ocean, but a closed environment, the bloom, while successful in generating more food for the babies, maybe too much of a good thing in an aquarium. If too much growth, is it raising the nitrites and killing off the babies? I am wondering if I should have left the food at “Small Fry” and maybe the ground up krill and not added the phytoplankton.
I will also put a sample of the water under my “precision” microscope later to see if in fact the water is jammed with plant cells.
I will update on the results of water change, microscope viewing, and repeated parameters later, as well as whether it looks like there’s any babies left.
Live and learn. As my husband says, “Next time”….I think there’s always things we can do better. AND, once this experiment is over, we’re going to leave that spare tank up and running empty so it can settle out with a matured nitrogen cycle. Stay tuned for updates.
Tags:algae bloom, alkalinity, aquarium, babies, brackish, buffer, calcium, cannabilize, chlorine, dipstick, distilled water, krill, marine, microscope, molt, nitrate, nitrites, nitrogen cycle, nursery tank, open ocean, phytoplankton, Prime, salinity, Small Fry, tank, tank conditions, water quality
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March 6, 2008
Companies have “Product Pipelines.” Teachers have “Lesson plans.” Movies have “Coming Attractions.”
Given that, I thought it was important to take a moment today to let everybody know “what’s coming” in the next few months on Soul Mosaic. The list below is not complete by any means, just some of the highlights farthest along in the planning stages:
Fiddler Crabs:
It remains to be seen whether the babies will make it or not, but I will continue to keep you posted. I see from the blog numbers this is a subject of high interest, so I will keep the updates coming.
As of today, the numbers of babies in the nursery tank has dropped dramatically. I am both sad and relieved. If thousands survived, they might have taken over my entire downstairs. However, I hope some make it. The parameters in the tank are good except for nitrites…the bane of all new tank setups. I am on my way right now to do a water change and see if that helps.
Hermit Crabs:
The next addition to the household in the near future will be 2-3 hermit crabs. I will be chronicling that from the very beginning, including what gear I buy and why, what happens when I “bring the babies home,” and how “life with hermit crabs” goes. Stay tuned for updates on when that will be happening.
Writing Posts:
There will be more posts to come on both My Author Journey, and the journey of Under the Pier as it moves through its process. I am pleased to report I am almost done with the second draft and will be starting both the third draft soon as well as putting together a submission proposal for a couple of editors. I will be sure to document the journey as it progresses. Topics still to come over the next several weeks and months in both of these areas:
1) Essays
From animals to God, geeks to kids, essays are how I speak. So more to come in this department
2) General Writing Journey
– The Writer’s House – That Swarming Bacteria, Proteus mirabilis
– Broken Bits – Encouragement for the Writer’s Soul From Beyond the Grave: A Nobel Laureate “Speaks”
– Writing Sanity: Do Something For Someone
3) More Topics for Under the Pier – Journey of a Novel
– Research Part III: Animal Character R&D
– Research Part IV: Setting as Character
– Three: The Mystical Number for Character Dynamics
– Test, Review, Retest, Analyze, Conclude
– Research Biblio- Diner Books
– Research Biblio – Nature Guides
– Writing the First Draft: If I Find One More Envelope Shred With a Story Note on It I’m Going to Scream!
– The First Draft is Done; What Now?
– So What’s Scribbled On All Those Revision Board Lists?
– What Writings Books Did I Use and Which Ones Did I Find Helpful?
– What Was Writing the Second Draft Like?
– What’s Coming Up for the Third Draft?
COMING SOON!!! A New Blog Category: Creature Features
As part of my preparation for Draft 3 of Under the Pier, I need to refresh my memory on all the critter descriptions. To really have those fish, birds, snails, and crustaceans breathing on the page requires vibrant details. So since I have to do a biology review of sorts, I thought I’d turn it into a creature of the day review for all of us. So – “Creature Features” coming VERY soon. (Appetizer: Did you know that an oyster toadfish can sound like an underwater foghorn?)
Photos and Art:
– New Macro photos coming soon. Since it’s Spring that means I can go back outside and crawl around the pond. Who knows what I’ll catch with my macro lens.
– “Photographic Journey of a Painting” – I will follow the journey of one of my oil paintings from rough sketches to explore composition arrangements, initial layers of paints, through finished product.
– Possibly Pastel: Given that I will be taking a 2 day seminar on Pastels in April, I may start exploring pastel art works and sharing those as well.
The Confusion:
What to do with the years and years worth of animal articles I have collected? – I have a box of news articles from the web collected over MANY years. It’s one of my quirks. I see an article about an animal, a cat who flew cross-country trapped in a plane’s insulation, a zoo animal playing with fabric softener dryer sheets, a 6-legged octopus, and I HAVE to print it out and keep it. My husband finds them for me now and sends them to me. Just like my feeling compelled to keep writing down the words “Mosaic” and “Broken Bits” over and over for the last few years until finally I realized it was my blog’s title and theme, I feel compelled to collect these articles.
The confusion in my mind is: WHAT SHALL I DO WITH THEM? I know I am supposed to do something with them… I FEEL it. But …what?
(Anybody have any flashes of insight????)
…And Last But Not Least: And Then There’s Bear
So, lots to come in the next few months, so stay tuned.
Tags:analyze, animal articles, animal character, aquarium, bear, Broken Bits, character, coming attractions, crab babies, creature feature, diner books, dynamics, editors, essay, fiddler crabs, first draft, hermit crabs, larvae, lesson plan, macro photos, My Author Journey, nature guides, nitrites, Nobel Laureate, novel, octopus, painting, pastels, photographic journey, pond, product pipeline, Proteus mirabilis, research, retest, review, second draft, setting, submission proposal, tank, teachers, test, third draft, under the pier, water change, writer's soul, zoo
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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
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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
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March 1, 2008
Just a reminder that coming up over the next week, the next few installments on the journey of my Under the Pier novel. I had to take a break from those for taxes, actually finishing some more chapter revisions, and of course, taking care of the “grandchildren.” But stay tuned. More to come on Under the Pier.
Re the grandchildren:
What wonderful goings on! Soooo many little black dots in the nursery and they are definitely swimming around. Many are hiding out in the shadows of the live rock caves. So tiny and already they know to hide and avoid “predators.”
I am feeding them three times a day with a mixture of ground up mini-freeze dried krill, some ground up flake food, a few drops of the liquid Small Fry baby fish food, and a little distilled water mixed in. We shall see how it goes. And no, I am not grinding the mini-krill with my husband’s lovely stone mortar and pestle that he uses for grinding up herbs and spices in the kitchen!!
Regarding salinity – it’s a tricky call. While Uca minax, which are the type of fiddler crabs I have, are seen furthest up the estuary in areas of lowest salinity, there seems to be evidence that for at least the first two weeks of their larval development (zoeae) , they actually survive and do better at a higher salinity. However there is also evidence that for the next (megalopae) stage to metamorphose into crab Stage 1, this species does best with the lower salinity seen in the upper estuary environment that the adults live in. I will post more information tomorrow including the links to the two papers I found today on this subject. Long story short today though, is that zoeae of all the species of fiddler crabs, seem to need a couple weeks of “being at sea,” hence higher salinity.
I’ll also explain about the three species used in one of the studies and how their selectivity for salinity levels puts them in different spots in the estuaries and thus probably keeps them from competing with each other for resources and food.
Also to come – I dug out the small microscope I had as a kid and will pick up some microscope slides. So to follow, descriptions of babies, under the glass.
A couple of other notes – courtesy again of my engineer husband. He noted a bunch of white things all over the gravel and wondered if the babies had already molted. Maybe they have but these white dots were too big and irregular in size for baby shells. I believe it’s salt crystals that didn’t dissolve in the water before I added it. I added more water to bring the salinity up closer to a marine environment. I started at 1.010 (brackish) when they were born and over the course of yesterday raised the salinity first to 1.012, then by last night 1.015. Today I’ll finish raising it to 1.020. Then in two weeks I’ll bring it back down to 1.010-1.012, the optimal range for Uca minax adults.
Sand. Again, my husband was watching the babies swim – it is amazing to see these tiny things whiz around the tank – but he shined a light to see if they would follow the beam. The article I posted in yesterday’s gift mentioned that the babies will go to the light. My husband didn’t see evidence of that, but what he noted was that many little babies had worked their way down between the gravel bits, all the way down to the bottom of the tank. Unless they figure out how to get back up to the water, they’ve had it. Now let’s face it. Their parents had a brain the size of a pinpoint. How large a brain do you thing babies the size of a pinpoint have? So the odds of them getting back to the surface are not good. I said “evolution at work. Anybody who tunnels down in the gravel probably won’t live to reproduce. ” My husband noted that gravel is less than optimal for this (engineers talk like this by the way, things are optimal, less than optimal, sub-optimal 🙂 ).
The real important point though was his next comment: “The NEXT time we do this, we should use sand.” There you have it folks. My husband has fallen in love with the fiddler crabs. In all truth, he has. He watches them, thinks about how to make their lives better, anticipates the babies getting ground up in the water filter…..those babies are lucky to have him!!!
Anyway, stay tuned for the links on those two articles about optimal (yes, OPTIMAL) salinity levels for fiddler crab larvae.
Tags:babies, baby, black dots, brackish, caves, chapter, compete, crab, crab Stage I, development, distilled water, engineer, estuary, evolution, feeding, fiddler, food, freeze-dried, grandchildren, gravel bits, grinding, ground, herbs, higher salinity, husband, installment, journey, larvae, larval, less than optimal, light beam, live rock, lowest salinity, marine environment, megalopae, metamorphose, microscope, microscope slides, mini krill, molt, mortar and pestle, novel, optimal, pinpoint, predators, reproduce, resources, revision, salinity, salinity levels, salt crystals, sand, selectivity, shadows, shells, species, spices, stone, sub-optimal, tank, Uca minax, under the pier, zoeae
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February 29, 2008
I came out of the gym and my cell phone went off – the vibrating beep to indicate a text message. It apparently came earlier, but given the facility is blocked I only just received it. My husband sent it – a few simple words: We’re grandparents!” I understood immediately – our pregnant fiddler crab, Scarlett O’Hara delivered her thousands of babies.
When I left this morning, she was wandering around, not really interested in eating. Just walking around. Ed noted the same thing before he went upstairs to do some work. When he came down, he said she was just sitting there eating a shrimp pellet … and she was skinny. He did a double-take and noticed the babies were gone from her abdomen, and all these little teeny really teeny black dots, floating around the tank!!!
As soon as I got the text, I raced to PetsMart to pick up the liquid baby fish food called “Small Fry” and raced home. Did you ever notice how many asleep drivers there are on the highway when you’re trying to get home fast?
I quickly got Scarlett out of the nursery tank as my husband reminded me, because at this point, Scarlett’s maternal instincts are probably done. In fact she may view them as floating “cheeseburgers” and start munching. So I moved her back into the main tank. It was like she never left. Not even a second to re-adjust for her. She just walked over to the live rock and started picking off algae and eating. Kind of like “Ahhhh – good to be home.” I don’t think Admiral Byrd has noticed her return yet. Not sure about Melanie Hamilton. She’s been in seclusion since Scarlett O’Hara left the main tank, probably hiding out from Admiral Byrd who has been waving his claw non-stop these days. I expect Melanie may be relieved to have Scarlett back.
Anyway, just had to let you all know she has successfully birthed. I will keep you posted on what happens from here. We’ll see how many, if any, of the babies survive!!! 🙂
Tags:abdomen, Admiral Byrd, algae, babies, baby fish food, beep, birthed, black dots, cell phone, cheeseburgers, crab, delivered, drivers, fiddler, grandparents, highway, husband, instincts, liquid, live rock, maternal, maternal instincts, Melanie Hamilton, nursery, PetsMart, pregnant, Scarlett O'Hara, shrimp pellet, Small Fry, tank, text message
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Soul Mosaic 