Clarkii Larval Rearing (no rotifers?)

[seafarm]

Unfortunately that won't work - the difference in size is too small. We've been growing them for several years and the only method we've found is the frequent and heavy harvests that uses statistics:

Day 1 - 50% harvest
Day 2 - 50% of the rotifers are 1 day old. Harvest another 50%
Day 3 - 75% of the rotifers are 1-2 days old. Harvest another 50%
Day 4 - 87.5% of the rotifers are 1-3 days old

I'm not sure my numbers are statistically perfect, but you get the drift. If you can find a way to harvest just the older adults your name will become famous in the aquaculture world

[Kathy55g]

Originally posted by jnowell
Actually, I just rinsed the bottles out with tap water, and let them dry upside down....THEN I read about adding some bleach, rinsing and adding de-chlor. As I restart the cultures, I'll be sure to use bleach. This was but one of the many pitfalls of trying to hack this together at the last minute. I am learning a lot though...

If you bleach the bottles and the water together, you will save time and bleach and have bullet proof phyto.

Here's what I do:

Add 8 drops of bleach to a soda bottle 2/3 full of 20-25 ppt saltwater. cap, shake, and store overnight.

Next day dechlorinate with prime or whatever, add 14 drops of MicroAlgae Grow ( that would work out to 1 ml per gallon) and top off with the greenest culture you have of live phyto. Put on an airline (bleach that too) to the bottom of the bottle, and lights on 16 hours a day. I use a timer.

After about a week to 10 days, start new bottle(s) with similarly bleached and dechlorinated bottles, fertilized the same way, using the nanno from this first bottle.

If you get your saltwater into a collection of bottles and then add bleach, you can store them indefinately until you need them. Makes it simple and easy. You can grow as many bottles as you have lights to light them.

When I started doing this, my nanno grew and still grows 6 months later, very reliably. Good luck, and merry xmas.''
Kathy

[jnowell]

Thanks again Kathy! Your advice couldn't come at a better time, as I lost another microalgae culture while I was at work today. I had one remaining when I got home, but luckily I had prepared bottles of saltwater/bleach last night. I started new cultures, two from the one remaining bottle, and one from the previously matured culture that I had in the fridge (it's been in there for about 48 hours, I assume that will work?)

The rotifers are looking great thanks to all the help I got here. Even the fry are looking better this evening due to the increase in food they can now have. They all have that good dark color when viewed from above, no more skinny transparent ones. Still a long way to go, but I'm pleasantly suprised at my success so far. Day 5 has begun, and I have 35 of about 50 or so doing well.

If I get some to survive long enough, all of you who have helped can have the pick of the litter for free if you want them

Merry Christmas to you too Kathy, now where's Santa with my 500 gallon complete setup.

Jason

[jnowell]

They grow up so fast



I finally got an acurate count, for some reason they all stood still just long enough, 37 at this point. I hope they do OK switching to baby Brine Shrimp...we shall see.

[jwreffner]

Originally posted by jnowell
They grow up so fast

Don't all children?

[Kathy55g]

That's a great picture of some well fed larvae. How did you take it?

[jnowell]

Well, I turned on the 15w Power compact bulb (so my digital camera could focus). Then I just put the camera in Macro Focus mode, held it down about 3" above the water surface, and pushed the button. I'm thinking luck had a lot to do with it

My camera is a Nikon CoolPix 5600 (5.1 megapixel) so it's pretty high resolution. I cropped this little section out of the pic to get it down to a manageable size. The actual shot was of a larger surface area, but the guys were all grouped together and happened to be mostly in focus. The trick is to get the autofocus to pick out a fish, rather than a side of the tank or something. Autofocus looks for a straight line to focus on (sorry, I was a photography major in college) so you have to frame the shot where the only straight line is the side of a fish. Macro allows the camera to focus much closer, but you can't normally use the zoom when it's active.

In short, put it in Macro mode zoomed all the way out, with the camera very close to the subject. Always shoot at highest resolution, and give the camera plenty of light to focus with, (but only the straight lines in the frame that you WANT it to focus on) use the flash for the actual exposure. Then, on the computer, crop the original photo down to what you want in the picture and adjust the brightness and contrast to pull out the details.

Sounds easy right? I took 7 photos and this was the only good one. You can use any software package to crop and adjust the brightness/contrast. I use Adobe Photoshop (expensive), but Microsoft Photo Editor (free) or MS Imaging or Paint (come with windows) will do fine.

Hope that helped, inexpensive cameras will rarely do a good job of this, mine was only about $300 and I bought it a year ago.

Jason

[jwreffner]

Photoshop too expensive

I use Paint Shop Pro from Jasc Inc...Much cheaper

[jnowell]

I went home for lunch today, and noticed another clutch of eggs...the others just hatched Friday night of last week, 4 days ago! Who put Viagra in my tank?

I guess any question I had about whether they would spawn regularly has been answered. Ding Ding, Round 2!

[jnowell]

Quick question, this morning, I got up early and was doing all my "chores" on my rearing tank before work (company lunch, so no noon feeding today). I syphoned the bottom clean, added some new water (very slowly, like maybe a half a cup every ten minues or so to a half full 10 gallon (temp and salinity were the same for both). Then I added lots of rotifers, hopefully enough to get them through until 3-4 when they let us out of here today.

After doing all of this, several of the larvae were swimming in tiny circles, head down, like the had lost their air bladder or equilibrium or something. Most of the them just kinda snapped out of it, and started swimming normally, and eating. A few were still doing it when I left for work. Any guesses as to what caused this, and is it serious?

Jason

[jnowell]

A quick post-holiday update. I have 27 fry left still alive, I started adding artemia Sunday evening, and a few of the smaller ones were dead within about 5 hours of putting them in. Some of the larger ones are growing exponentially now too. I'm not sure I would know metamorphasis when I saw it, but a few of them are more fish shaped than minnow shaped now. We are at day 10, I'll post some more baby pics tonight so you can see the progress.

Hope everyone had a good holiday, and many thanks for the newbie support, I wouldn't have made it this far on my own.

Jason

[jnowell]

Well, here are some new pics. These are at day 10, size variation seems extreme, but I think a few are starting metamorphasis, one even has his stripes and coloration coming in.





Jason

[mtraylor]

That is really cool.

[spk]

Hi there,

Some really neat pictures and good stories.

Kathy, need to try and follow your plan with the bleach story.

Good luck with all theser babies.

Steve

[jnowell]

Thanks Steve,

The Phyto plan works like a champ (although I think it was Ediaz who originally posted it). Kathy explained it to me, and since then my Phyto grows like clockwork, and without incident.

After 3 days of artemia, the little guys are all still doing well and growing like weeds. I tried my hand at decapsulating brine shrimp eggs, and got about a 20% hatch rate Gotta go search around and see if Kathy or Edgar has any fool proof tips for those I used the method from the Wilkerson book, but it didn't work out so well for me.

Cheers!

Jason

[ediaz]

Don't be so confident with the phyto

When harvesting it, use a new sterile bottle to start a new culture instead of just topping off the botlle again. Clean the lines and change the floss too. An inline air filter for the cultures will help too.

For decapsulating artemia read Dr. Marini procedure at the top of the FBF. Wilkerson's instructions is missing some steps. That is if you really need to decapsulate.

Try offering some dry food to the larvae and watch them to see if they eat, weaning them to dry foods it's better for them.

Ed

[jnowell]

Ed,

I have mixed up about 30 bottles of water/bleach, so when I use most of one, I just pour last 1/4 of it into a newly dechlorinated bottle, and add some micro algae grow (1 mil per gallon). I hadn't been cleaning the rigid airline or changing the floss though, good points. I guess I could wipe the tube with a bleach dampened cloth and then dechlorinate it in the bottle at the same time.

On the feeding, I had ground up some Ocean Nutrition Formula One flakes for them, and more than a few of them ate it. I still have a few that are much smaller than the others, and they seem to shy away from it. The tank still has a ton of rotifers in it (I'm co-culturing right now with a Nanno drip on the larvae tank). I guess the small ones could contiune on Rotifers until they decide they like the dry stuff.

I am pleased to hear that a guy with your experience switches to dry foods early. I thought I was in for weeks and weeks of daily BBS hatches. I have had good luck with separating the shells, cysts, and artemia, so I'll keep that up until I have them all eating dry foods.

Thanks alot Ed! I promise to pay my dues by helping the next set of newbies go through the same stuff you guys have helped me through. 27 out of 50 isn't bad for my first hatch (it's only day 12, still plenty of time for my "newbie-ness" to rear it's ugly head).

Jason

[Kathy55g]

What Ed said!

One suggestion. When you take a bottle off the airline to use some, propagate first. Top off a freshly dechlorinated bottle, add fertilizer, and put that back on air. Then you can take what's left to use as you wish.

This way you don't introduce any more bacteria/critters than you absolutely need to.


Just a thought. Glad it's working for you.
Kathy

[Kathy55g]

oh, and congratulations! You have a greater than 50 % success rate which is terrific, especially for a beginner. You do know, that you are taking advice from a beginnner whose success rate is only 10%!

[jnowell]

I had read that on your other thread Kathy, but the voice of (more) experience is still music to my ears. Right now I'm considering myself a lucky, diligent reader! I would probably have no babies, no rotifers, and no nanno had it not been for you guys.

What kind of dry food works for you guys? I fed some more Formula One, and a bunch more of them ate it this time. In fact they ate ALL of it! I still need to vacuum the bottom today, but I don't think any food made it there this time.

I took some really horrible video with my digital camera, and some really great video with my video cam, I'll try to get some of the good stuff posted, in the mean time, here is some of the bad stuff. 3.5 Mb., so it'll be a slight wait, and my camera only does Quicktime format, I'll do a better one from the Sony!

Jason

http://www.wfrs.org/rc/DSCN0817.MOV

[mako56]

How do you guys collect your rots? What do you use?

[Kathy55g]

those fish look really great!

[jnowell]

Thanks Kathy, I'm proud of them, but still a little nervous.

Mike,

I bought a Plankton Collector from Florida Aqua Farms. It's basically a 6" long, 4" diameter peice of PVC with a 54 Micron nylon screen on one end. You just scoop up some water from the rotifer tank, let it drain out the sceen, and you have some rotifers. Then you submerse the tube (screen first) in the larvae tank, and pour the rotifers out.

Take a look around Reed Mariculture's site, they have awesome descriptions of the processes, and all the equipment too. Plus Randy Reed is a great guy, he has helped me immensely with my rotifer cultures.

[Kathy55g]

Before I got my plankton collector I used paper coffee filter stretched over a plastic planters nut jar. That worked, but it was awkward getting the rots off. The FAF one is much easier to use.

[jnowell]

I dropped below the 50% mark this morning. Metamorphasis is hard on the little guys I guess. I lost two more, so now the count is 24. I have about ten of them with their stripes, and about ten more starting to show a little color. The other 4 still look like they just hatched, only larger.

They are eating the dry food very well, but I still have rots and BBS in there too. I skipped a day on the BBS, but started some more last night. Time to vaccum the bottom...come to think of it, it's ALWAYS time!

J