SQUIDCAM III

[sedna]

Gorgeous! Especially considering the lack of cooperation on the part of your subjects. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Steve O'Shea]

The camera is installed, but I'm not sure when it will go live; cannot be long .... but then again, nothing ever goes to plan these days. I've blacked out the tank now, and when I did so it was obvious squillions of tiny bubbles were in the tank and getting into the mantle's of the squid. Fixed that problem last night ... and can expect one of two things when I get to work today: the sump has overflowed because I was playing with flow rates last night, or everything is ok; which will it be? Bound to be the soggy carpet option!

 

[DWhatley]

I was looking at your setup and thought I saw that it had to be tuned carefully rather than relying on a simple overflow system that can't overflow unless the drain gets clogged.

 

[Steve O'Shea]

It's a careful tune D .... and surrounded by carpet. Prey became predator for 1 animal today; currently ~ 40 squid in there, with 1 egg mass still to hatch. I wish you could see. SQUIDCAM IV imminent! They are SO cute!

 

[Steve O'Shea]

There's now ~ 70 squid in there .... they're doing well They've hatched as follows (day of hatching and total number of animals):

Day 1: 1
Day 2: 7
Day 3: 27
Day 4: 31
Day 5: ~ 44
Day 6: ~ 70

(It gets harder to count them as their numbers increase).

I think I've lost 3 to mysid predation, and one to a spinning problem some paralarvae get.

 

[sedna]

SOS, can you elaborate on what you mean by "spinning condition?" I have seen aculeatus hatchlings spinning like they were "caught in a loop," or unable to stop spinning even thought there is no movement in the H2O that would cause that.

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Apparently it is linked to a strontium defficiency; there are a number of papers that deal with this; this would be a good start

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/141/1/187 (then click the 'manual download' option; you should be able to access this one for free)

Just do a google scholar search on 'spinning cephalopod larvae' - you'll find a few other articles, hopefully one of which will be available without requiring journal subscription (I cannot really download and post the pdfs online - twould be in breach).

There's 108 in there today, 7 days after the first started hatching; I removed a spent egg mass yesterday but have one to go - should get several hundred out of that, but because of the massive difference in larval size I would imagine a number of the more as yet to hatch larvae (paralarvae) would be preyed upon by the larger ones. I might have to separate them.

I'll get to the bottom of the (lack of) SQUIDCAM IV online next week, when uni is back.