Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

If I remember right, they morph into postlarvae at around 20 to 30 days or so. This means you would have had to keep them alive for around a month before you would see them take on their adult shape. I read that the best thing to do is start sucking them out with a turkey baster and putting them in less less salty water as they change. I haven't exactly decided how I will handle that yet, since I haven't made it to that point. My second attempt will soon be underway as soon as my currently pregnant female releases her eggs. I also have a second female I have to hunt down in my tank who is also carrying eggs. Catching her is easier said than done though, since my tank is VERY heavily planted. Once they make it to the wall of plants in the background, I have to wait until they wander out again.
-Aphyosemion

I just have trouble identifying a feature that tells me if they are postlarvae or still larvae. I raised mine about 24 25 days before they died off, i did seem to see more distinguishable legs but i couldn't tell if they used them. To summarize, Mikes article mentioned these changes:

-8mm long
-sit on walls and bottom
-looses their orange color (a product of him feeding his shrimp golden pearls)

The last point seems to be the key identifier that mike was able to use. I have other problems though, my salt is old and I honestly cannot see a 8mm clear animal against the non-dissolving white sand.

I had a difficult time figuring out how i wanted to move the larvae, but i think I like what i've come up with. I use the 2L bottle brine shrimp hatcher with the air pump hooked up, the little things hatch out fairly randomly in 4 days I estimate 20/100/30/10 have shown up. I took a 3' peice of air tubing and tied a knot into the middle, and packed thin filter floss into the tank-side of the siphon. Watching closely, I found that i can remove about 1ml/5min and the larvae are able to avoid the suction for the most part. I drain the hatching container down to about 2 cups and pour off the larvae to a second container-not directly into the salt so i dont loose my female to her flopping. I leave just enough water for my female to be poured into the dimpled bottom of the 2L bottle that i cut off. I chk and make sure she gets something to eat, and then put her back into a 20/80% mixture of plant tank water/fresh RO.

What's astounding to me is my female still looks like she's carrying hundreds of eggs, but again i can't magnify her abdoment to tell if they are empty cysts. I can attempt to make them go orange with decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, i'm not sure how large they are though i have to check. I think they are smaller than golden pearls though.

Keep the thread goin aphyo, be interested to hear how you've dealt w/ your larvae. I'm sure mustafa has some methods too.

In shrimp larvae I've dealt with (different species, albeit), the single most distinguishing feature between larva and PL is that a PL will tend to move (whether by walking or swimming) forward rather than backward. So gently chase them, or just passivbely observe them, to see if they move head first. Larvae generally do not move in any headfirst fashion unless they're sinking.

There is at least a noticeable difference between green or cherry shrimp babies and amano shrimp babies that I would think would apply to post-larvae amanos. The amano larvae are noticeably absent the walking legs and seem to remain suspended in the water or just hover near the bottom. The non larvae species have apparent legs and seem to actually sit on things and walk around, more like adults. While I am still working on making it to PL stage with amanos, I didn't think there would be a problem identifying when they had metamorphosized into the adult form. If it is also difficult, it will just be one more of the battle scars to display when you finally achieve success.
I was lucky enough to finally catch a second amano female from my 75 gallon tank to isolate into a 1-gallon breeder tank. I have been debating how I will deal with 2 separate hatches and have come to the (tentative) conclusion that it won't be a problem. The shrimp are moved to SW as they hatch, then to brackish and finally freshwater as they morph into adult form. In theory it could be a little amano assembly line. In practice I will probably already be pondering how I lost the first batch when the second batch is ready to go.
-Aphyosemion

Salinity dropped to 1.016 = 200 dead shrimp i noticed it but couldn't correct it in time

Yeah, I think they said that anything less than 30 PPT will give you something like 97% shrimp loss. I keep a lid on my breeder tank and anytime I add water by sucking out the larvae from freshwater, I keep close tabs on the specific gravity to make sure it doesn't change too much.
I found a new table that seems to say that temperature has some effect on the salt content estimated by using specific gravity. It adds a little more of a complication to the formula, but I intend to reference that chart just to make sure I am around 35 PPT and no less than 30 PPT at any time.
Here is the link: http://www.algone.com/salinity.htm
-Aphyosemion

Well, my second female amano has released her eggs. Again, while it seemed like she was carrying a million eggs, there were far too few babies that ended up swimming around the breeder tank. I am guessing that I only have about 2 dozen or so that I caught and put in the rearing tank. This was the first batch for both of the females that I have used, so I am hoping that later on the batches will be bigger.
The big news is that I have successfully made it to the 10 day mark without any problems this time. I still have 10 to 20 days before I can expect the amanos to morph into adult form, but I am a little more hopeful this time than the last time, which was my first attempt. Here are a couple of things that have changed since my first batch, which I think have made the difference.

1) Tank age. The 1 gallon rearing tank has been up for about a month now and has become a deep emerald green. I added a little fertilizer from my planted tanks and left it in the window. Now I just stir up the water a little bit to get some of the larger particles in circulation, rather than adding a lot of phytoplankton from a bottle.

2) Circulation. I have increased the flow from the airstone to about 3/4 of full power. This seems to have a great effect on the shrimp babies. They stay in circulation now, instead of sitting in the brightest corner doing nothing.

3) Lighting. After the amanos were in the rearing tank, I removed it from the window because I was concerned about temperature fluxuations and added a 13 watt compact flourescent light at 6700k and a small Azoo compact flourescent light at something like 8 watts. The lights are on 24 hours per day, which I think helps keep the shrimp from settling down into a corner.

After carefully observing the amanos during both attempts, my tentative conclusion regarding lighting and the airstone is that you have to make sure that the babies remain in constant circulation or they die. When they settle in a corner they likely don't get enough food, or water flow. That might be why someone said they sometimes seem to die at night for no reason if the light isn't on.
Anyway, the process is ongoing. I have a good feeling about potential success this time around. At the very least, I expect to get closer to the final product, even if it takes another try or two before I get there.
I will keep you all informed if I get any further.
-Aphyosemion

Glad you've gotten further this time. Good luck!

Yeah, I really thnk they like a good current and LOTS of dissolved oxygen too.

If lights on all the time is not a harmful thing (currently I'm doing this with my prawn larvae), that's also useful for some other reasons. Helping to keep algae alive in the water, and, when using any live zooplankton (though I don't think you are), keeping all the animals rotating in the same general space (even though the circulation prevents them from cramming and being able to really stay in the same place) so that larvae have a better chance of bumping into the nearby zooplankton. If everybody was TOO dispersed, the entire volume of water would need to be fed to maintain a certain artemia or zooplankton concentration throughout the entire tank... which is wasteful, imo.

Hopefully you've got their nutrition met nicely. Big piece in keeping them moulting into successive larval stages. One of the most distressing things is seeing your larvae living, yet seemingly stuck in a particular stage

Mines doing her thing again too she released today. I think your either too early in isolating her or too late. She could just be less fertile, being too young or something, mines been carrying eggs every month since january. I first noticed her w/ eggs on her on 6/3 which means she released after only 15 days...since i've been wanting to get this right this summer, i observe her everyday so i can't be off by much. And I only have one female, and 2 males.

I sorta got lucky, i isolated her yesterday and put her in the dimpled bottom of a 2L bottle that had been cut off, i let that float in some cooler water, no idea what the temp was. I noticed some cysts laying on the bottom of the bottle and some ditirus so i put her into a 2 quart dish to give her a little better waterquality, this water was also cool something <72F i guess. She started kicking shrimp off early this afternoon at a good clip, easily 150 in todays hatchout. If last time was her typical she will kick off about 30 per day for 4-6days. It's a ton of shrimp.

I'm still using the 2L BS-hatcher w/ air bubbling through, this really moves the shrimp around nicely imo. i changed how i collect them, i'm pippetting about 10ml of shrimp out of the FW vessle and putting them into an empty dimple 2L dimple bottom and then pouring sw in to fill the dimple~1.026. The small volume just happens to work and bring the salinity to 1.024. Then i put them under a light so they gather and i just pippet them into the BS-hatcher. This should add one more check to my salinity, which woulda helped last time.

Aphyosemian I have questions for ya, and provided what i'm doing mostly points that i think i could improve on:

What are you feeding yours? I'm doing kent phytoplex, and intend to offer a little decapsulated bbs after day 10 or so dont have much else around to offer them

Do you estimate any significant growth? Previous attempt i sorta thought they got more robust but 5 shrimp is hardly an observation, their eyes really seemed to look "adult-like" too

How are you going to deal with separating the postmorph shrimp when the times comes?

I have a greenwater culture going in the tank that they are in. I started it in a window with some ferts and direct sunlight. Now my 24/7 lighting keeps the culture going. I just stir up the green algae that has settled onto the bottom and let it float around the tank for them to eat. I also have been adding artificial rotifers about once per day and I have Kent Phytoplankton on hand as well. I heard that baby brine shrimp are a bad idea for food, because any that aren't eaten quickly grow too large and compete with the amano babies for food.
I have noticed growth in them since I put them in there. They are about twice as big...maybe 3 times as big as they were when they hatched, but that is still pretty damn tiny. They are just easier to see now, which is important because the green water makes it hard.
As for the hatchout, I wonder what the heck is going on. I must be pulling them out of my 75 gallon way too soon or something. I got like 4 dozen shrimp the first time and like 2 dozen this time. I really expected more.
Okay, once they morph into their adult form around day 20 to 30, here is the plan as given on one of the sites I based my plan on. You remove all of the shrimp that have morphed and put them into a half of a cup of saltwater and fill it the rest of the way with freshwater. Then, the next day you cycle that water with 50% freshwater. Then you do it once more on the third day. On the 4th day you put the shrimp in completely freshwater in the grow-out tank. You only need 3 cups of water and if your morph is spread out over multiple days, you just move them down the line one cup like a little assembly line.
-Aphyosemion

Mine was empty this morning, she let loose ~200 i'd guess. In the BS setup, it's impossible to count them in any sort of meaningful way.

I also had one bad hatchout back in april i guess when i started really trying to have these breed. I think the water was polluted, probably high nitrates and the female was unhappy ignoring food. I would capture your female 15 days after she gets her eggs and put her into a dish w/ some aeration. This time and last I put her into about 2 quarts of water and feed an airline tube in w/o a diffuser, both hatches were plentiful.

I use RO water but i dont think that's necessary. PH is 6 and the TDS is very low, it more suits the other animals i like to keep.

I guess your GW culture is in fresh water...i'm going to have to do something else i think. Phytoplex sustains them but doesn't really grow them much. Gonna see if my CO2 yeast is still active

No, my greenwater culture is in the saltwater tank. I only have 2 tanks. The first one is where the mother goes when I am waiting for her to hatch. The second one is the saltwater tank that has a greenwater culture and where the babies go as soon as they hatch. Just throw in a drop of Kent Grow and a couple drops of Kent Nitro+ and put your saltwater tank in the window and you will have emerald green water in a week or 2. You could probably just throw in a large pinch of fish food too, but I imagine that would decrease your water quality. I would post a pic of my 2 tanks, but I am not able to do that here.
-Aphyosemion

Keep us up to date on your progress. It would really help, though, if you could post some pictures. It isn't all that hard to post pictures here. You just have to upload your picture elsewhere online and link it with the [img] tag.

I especially would like to see the any possible postlarvae.

They are still in larval form, but I am nearing the 20 day mark, so I imagine a morph is coming up very soon. I will feel a lot better once I get them into freshwater. Then they will be just like raising cherry shrimp.
I'll try to get some pics posted. I did take a pic of my little breeder tanks so I could post them. I just haven't gotten around to having them hosted online yet.
-Aphyosemion

Have you experienced any losses? How large are they now?

Now seven days in mine have barely if at all grown about 1/16th inch or 2mm. The water turned green for me after a ml of pmdd and a pinch of phosphate, i dont think it's dense enough yet tho. I started feeding a minced spiruela and kelp mix to them, hopefully this will work a little better, they have a lot of ground to make up if they wanna be 1cm in 2 weeks.

I got them eating liquified spiruella flakes but they died off extremely fast after day 9. Seems likely to me, they are really sensitive to nitrates and my unstable setup. Female is berried again, this will be like 8 months in a row, and my 5th try at this.