5/15/15 - The hatching is complete. Legs still stays in her den, but there are no more eggs. I tried to feed her a shrimp today - at first she seemed to move slower than before and not have as strong of a grip, but she eventually took the shrimp and pulled it into her den. Unfortunately, it wiggled loose and swam away. She does seem to still be eating some of the cyclops and mini mysis, but it's hard to say for sure.
We tried feeding some frozen mini mysis today in addition to the cyclops and some of the hatchlings seem to be eating it! A few seem to understand that the pipette = food and they will occasionally come right up to it when we're feeding them. It's a little more difficult with the mini mysis because they get stuck in the pipette and if we squeeze it enough to blow it out, the hatchlings sometimes get blown a bit too.
I counted 23 hatchlings this morning, but I found 4 dead today, which with the couple that I found yesterday brings the known total to 10. I know it's to be expected, but it still stinks. The ones we have found seem to be quite small, so I'm wondering if they were the last hatchlings to emerge. In spite of having pieces of tulle covering the slits that allow the water to flow into the filter, the hatchlings still crawl through. We have watched them crawl through and back and have decided that there is really no way to prevent it. Yesterday I counted 11 back there! I managed to move 4 back into the tank, but the other 6 were unreachable/uncatchable. However - there are a good size, so it does not seem to be harming them. I have seen two ooze through the cover into where the balls are in the filter, but there's really no way to know if they are still there or still alive. When I count the hatchlings I just count the ones that I can see at that given moment.
Our second bio-cube is almost ready for us to be able to move some over if/when the time comes. I did move 2 of the emerald crabs out of the octo tank and am planning to move the other 2 as soon as we can catch them. We will still have the turbo snails and serpent star, but one of the crabs tried to grab a hatchling today. I can't say for sure if it was intentional, but it doesn't matter - the algae is gone and I'm concerned that they may tried to grab the hatchlings if there is not enough algae to keep them busy. We have gone back to keeping the red light on at all times and just turning the regular lights on for a portion of the daytime.
Here is a photo of one of the hatchlings that we lost. It is amazing to me that there can be so much detail in it's tiny body.