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Once-ler's eggs in parent tank

Parent tank: what worked, what didn't

I asked Roy for help and he mentioned that it takes a large tank and lots of food, and a way to keep the babies from bumping into the sides of the tank (I assume he meant a kreisel tank). I'd have to agree that the 55 gal tank had much better success, for a few reasons.

-The larger water volume was easier to maintain for constant quality and temperature, and had enough room. The babies are little but they swim a lot and I can't imagine keeping them in tiny containers!! Honestly the best ratio was when there were about 30 babies OR LESS in the 50- 45 gal that were in there. They spent a lot of time floating the surface- think of how much "personal space" the surface of your tank will give the babies!

-The population of benthic creatures kept dead babies and uneaten food from polluting the water. I'm sure the population of bristle worms and brittle stars kept my water clean.

-I fed often (4 times a day when I could) and I fed a mix of stuff. Next time I will start feeding time in the beam of light right from the beginning. Not that the babies are so smart, but it seemed to be a great way to concentrate phototropic foods. I fed a mixture of "Rotifeast," cyclop-eze and newly hatched brine shrimp. I'm not sure if they ate the stuff in the rotifeast but it is thick and trapped the shrimp and floated at the surface for a bit then sank as slowly as they seemed to like.

-I had a pre-existing population of copepods. Once I knew I had a female, I started dosing the tank with phytoplanktons- this was about 5 weeks before the babies hatched. Since the lighting is low in the octo tank, I had no algae problems, but I got a bunch of super tiny 'pods on the sunny part of the glass. As the critters grew they moved toward the dark corners. I don't know for sure if the hatchlings ate the tinies, but both my husband and I saw different babies eating the bigger 'pods (at 6 or 7 days old), carrying pieces bigger than themselves!!!

In retrospect (or, if I had Animal Mother's 60 gal)...
-The babies float at the top a lot. One was left in the kreisel, survived to too strong current by hiding in the macroalgae. I had hoped the algaes I got would float but they didn't. Next time I'd get some sea grass or something that will float at the surface and give them a place to rest. It'd be even better if there were a population of 'pods on it!

-I'd keep a small population of tiny brittle stars on some smooth shells or rock, but keep the floor of the container mostly bare. Sometimes the babies would rest on the bottom a moment after a dive bomb, and in my tank there were a lot of predators. Also, I was never able to find them in the substrate after they died. I never had a chance to look at a dead one under my microscope. We found that the "Coolpix" camera lens pointed into even our small (1X and 3X magnification) would yield a recognizable photo- but we were left with rotifers and brine shrimp before we figured out that trick.

-The bubble wall was good and I put a diffuser on it but still had spots where the bubble stream was too turbulent for the babies. The babies seemed to willingly travel up in the streams once they got to the bottom. I'm sure they were "riding the bubbles" on purpose because you could sit and watch the same babies swim down and ride up over and over. Toward the end, though, they seemed to get tumbled about too much. I think I'd try sinking a SMALL power head in some sort of filtered box (they couldn't get through the filter sleeve material we used on the kreisel). I'd ring the top of my tank with a tube that had tiny holes in it, so that the tank was ringed with a very LOW flow downward. Then maybe a very diffused air stone in the middle.

I'm sure I'll think of more. Please point out things I forgot to post!!! I'm working on how to upload movies to our "my mac" page- I haven't given up on that yet!
 
:sad:

thanks for keeping us informed. I suspect you've broken the TONMO record for small-egged babies, at least as far as I can remember, and having a record of what was working for a while is very useful.
 

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