Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I know that a few people here have successfully raised Amano larvae. I've made a few attempts, and right now I have a hatch swimming around in about 30 gallons of green water (huge, I know, but a 40-breeder was handy.)

I transferred the larvae into saltwater about 10 days ago. My concern is that they look to my eye to be about the same size today as a week ago -- around 2mm tip to tail.

Is this normal, or should I worry that some conditions are wrong?

I seeded the water with Tetraselmis sp. and the water is nice and green -- there's light on 24/7. The tank is unheated, so the temperature is between 66 and 68F. Specific gravity a bit under 1.025. I'm not feeding any additional food so far -- I have a few sizes of GP available, but I get the impression that I should be worrying more about water quality than food supply.

The temperature sounds way too low to efficiently raise the larvae. They might not be eating at these temperatures. Raise the temperature to the mid 70s.

Yes, warmer is better, but don't worry that the zoes were harmed. I though a batch of mine had failed and I turned off the heat & lights for several weeks, only to find them still doing OK when I went to clean out the tank.

30 gallons... oh man. Good luck catching post-larvae when you get them.

You might want to drain it down so you're just using the bottom 5 gallons or so.

Though I'm finding skinny tall containers work better than squat containers just because the typical measuring devices for specific gravity are relatively tall.

OK, I bought a heater and raised the temp to about 82 degrees. The zoes are now growing rapidly, and seem more active as well.

I check on them by briefly switching off the light and shining a flashlight at a corner of the tank -- this attracts a few to a spot that I'm watching so I can see how they're doing. The larvae do seem to be less phototropic as they get older, though, so I may end up in suspense for the last week or so.

Does anyone have any idea how long the post-larvae can live in saltwater? I'm going out of town right about the time that (with luck) they'll be metamorphosing, and I'm wondering if I can deal with them when I get back, or if I need to leave painfully detailed instructions to my girlfriend about how to fish 'em out.

As long as you're not away for weeks at a time you can deal with them once you are back. In nature they take at least a few days to migrate back into freshwater anyway, so the postlarvae have a high salinity tolerance for a few days to a few weeks.