Detailed Diagrams of lsymata amboinensis larval stages

[DaJMasta]

It shouldn't be a problem to move them to a new tank, but you need to know their molting schedule, you want them both to be moved (since the night of the molt is also the fertilization of the next set of eggs), and it contributes nutrients and potentially problematic spores to the rearing vessel (like hydroids). Without predators, blacked out sides and a dim light up top should allow you to collect the larvae in a display or broodstock tank, even manually, over the course of an hour or two if needed - they can swim for at least a few hours without issue so long as flow/getting tangled in things isn't a problem.

The actual amount even hundreds of larvae will eat is on the order of a couple dozen nauplii an hour, so unless you're diluting your feeding solution, it would be difficult to continuously drip them in slow enough to only be what they consume.

As for their commercial availability, Live Aquaria has had them in the last few years that are captive bred, I believe in conjunction with a university lab that's actually doing the settling, but then selling through them. That suggests to me that the effort required/settling rates are high enough/low enough respectively that they're not truly commercially viable at the moment. Also I'm hesitant to recommend live aquaria as their shipping quality seems to be extremely lax as of late (I do hope they fix it, but I won't be buying from them for some time yet.)

 

[moretor1]

It shouldn't be a problem to move them to a new tank, but you need to know their molting schedule, you want them both to be moved (since the night of the molt is also the fertilization of the next set of eggs), and it contributes nutrients and potentially problematic spores to the rearing vessel (like hydroids). Without predators, blacked out sides and a dim light up top should allow you to collect the larvae in a display or broodstock tank, even manually, over the course of an hour or two if needed - they can swim for at least a few hours without issue so long as flow/getting tangled in things isn't a problem.

The actual amount even hundreds of larvae will eat is on the order of a couple dozen nauplii an hour, so unless you're diluting your feeding solution, it would be difficult to continuously drip them in slow enough to only be what they consume.

As for their commercial availability, Live Aquaria has had them in the last few years that are captive bred, I believe in conjunction with a university lab that's actually doing the settling, but then selling through them. That suggests to me that the effort required/settling rates are high enough/low enough respectively that they're not truly commercially viable at the moment. Also I'm hesitant to recommend live aquaria as their shipping quality seems to be extremely lax as of late (I do hope they fix it, but I won't be buying from them for some time yet.)

Yes diluting the feedstock tank would most likely be the option as it would be easier to filter out the larger ones that way as I suspect the mesh would get clogged with the larger or dead artema if I connected the culture tank directly to the larval tanks

Also good to know how much they consume, would a 20 gallon barrel be a good option for raising a sizeable feed stock?

 

[moretor1]

That would also explain live aquarias $90 price tag for a fire red shrimp

 

[DaJMasta]

Also good to know how much they consume, would a 20 gallon barrel be a good option for raising a sizeable feed stock?

If you mean for growing live food, it's more than I've got going. I have 4 2.5G drink containers with a different kind of copepod in each and then two brine shrimp hatcheries (little round dishes to keep out egg shells) on rotation, but aside from phyto, that's all I run.

 

[moretor1]

If you mean for growing live food, it's more than I've got going. I have 4 2.5G drink containers with a different kind of copepod in each and then two brine shrimp hatcheries (little round dishes to keep out egg shells) on rotation, but aside from phyto, that's all I run.

Do brine shrimp work well for breeding most species of shrimp?
I plan on trying my hand at a wide variety and hopefully one day make it into a commercial thing. Specifically i'm looking at BCS, both blue banded and regular, sexy shrimp, pistol shrimp and literally anything else i find interesting and will spawn in captivity

If i find relative success i've considered the economic viability of attempting to breed mantis shrimp as well, Oddly with their very high price, the "captive bred premium", and their relatively short free floating larval stage they are probably one of the best candidates... not a huge fan of single fish(shrimp) tanks though

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Do brine shrimp work well for breeding most species of shrimp?

Yes.

For some examples:

Breeding Palaemon Elegans (Mediterrane Rock Pool Shrimp) Guide

Hi, Im going to post a breeding guide of palaemon elegans shrimps here. Two females are preparing for spawning so if you are interested you may want to stick with me. This breeding guide will be interchangable for every kind of shrimps but i stick elegans because: - With cleaner shrimp we are...

www.reef2reef.com

Breeding & raising Thor amboinensis

Hi all! Earlier this year I tried my hand at breeding my sexy shrimp. About every two weeks the female would release hundreds of larvae in the night. So I did some research for a couple of days and DIY'd a tank to raise the lil' shrimp. I went with a 12 liter/3g glass tank in which I placed...

www.reef2reef.com

Culturing Marine Grass/Ghost Shrimp

Hey everyone! TLDR summary at bottom. I've seen a few people on here ask about how to culture marine ghost/grass shrimp species in their tanks, and the responses I've seen have ranged from it's not possible, to use Google Scholar, to you just add them and they breed. Knowing that Ghost/Grass...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[DaJMasta]

Artemia nauplii have sort of been the default of almost all aquaculture in labs until the last 20 years or so, so the majority of things anyone has been able to captive breed has included at least some artemia nauplii. I resisted it for a while as copepods are something you can produce more sustainably and are theoretically better in terms of nutrition, but the calories and the ease of capture for a just-hatched artemia are really tough to beat, especially in their size.

Mantises can spawn in captivity (you would need a two shrimp system, of course), but as I understand, their larvae are pretty cannibalistic - I don't know how many have made concerted attempts, so it may not be as bad as I'm imagining. I had a spawn very early on in my tank (3 hitchhiker mantises, one already carrying eggs), but it was only the one and it was way too early for me to actually be able to catch and try to raise any. They have a very distinctive look as larvae, as the smashing claw appendages exist as longer/larger arms in the larvae, and they were strong swimmers as far as larvae go - on the level of a few others I've seen, but definitely fast.

 

[moretor1]

Artemia nauplii have sort of been the default of almost all aquaculture in labs until the last 20 years or so, so the majority of things anyone has been able to captive breed has included at least some artemia nauplii. I resisted it for a while as copepods are something you can produce more sustainably and are theoretically better in terms of nutrition, but the calories and the ease of capture for a just-hatched artemia are really tough to beat, especially in their size.

Mantises can spawn in captivity (you would need a two shrimp system, of course), but as I understand, their larvae are pretty cannibalistic - I don't know how many have made concerted attempts, so it may not be as bad as I'm imagining. I had a spawn very early on in my tank (3 hitchhiker mantises, one already carrying eggs), but it was only the one and it was way too early for me to actually be able to catch and try to raise any. They have a very distinctive look as larvae, as the smashing claw appendages exist as longer/larger arms in the larvae, and they were strong swimmers as far as larvae go - on the level of a few others I've seen, but definitely fast.

if i were to attempt mantis shrimp it would most likely revolve around some sort of large individual/pair larvae rearing setup, it is good to know they are good swimmers too

My current idea for rearing them would be with a large circular tank, seperated into many sections that direct the water flow coming from the outside towards the center and out the bottom. Imagine a spiral but the lines are acrylic and its segmented using fine mesh

This would be used in the later stages of larval development when they are strong enough swimmers to not die in the mesh and would make it so you would've have to feed dozens of individual systems

also do you have any opinions on the nutritional content of brine vs mysis shrimp? may it be worth it to feed a combination of both? I've heard that mysis shrimp have a lot more protein than brine shrimp

 

[DaJMasta]

For larvae, the mysis will be larger than the larvae and larger than they can eat. Brine shrimp aren't particularly nutritious as a food (though maybe not as bad as some claim), so when adults are sold, it's usually enriched or gut loaded with phyto to increase their nutritional value. The freshly hatched nauplii, on the other hand, still have their yolk sack, which is a very concentrated source of energy and important fats in a small, easy to catch package.

Mysis are the superior food in my mind if the animal can eat it, but it will probably take months of being a juvenile until a new shrimp can manage more than the fines that come off in the water.


As for the tank - I don't know if I can picture exactly what you're imagining - but consider these two things (in addition to what you already think, of course) when coming up with designs: some larvae may need almost no flow. It sort of surprised me, but there are a handful of larvae where my default attempt is to use as little flow as possible (a rigid airline down the middle of a bucket at 1-2 bubbles per second, sometimes less). There's a limit to how low you can go in the long term to prevent stratification and film building up on the top, but especially for larvae that like to swim and are at least mildly phototactic, the extra getting pushed around may not help unless its bringing food to them (or vice versa).

The other to think about is maintenance - specifically, ease of cleaning and your unconscious resistances to keeping up with that . It seems pretty well known that larvae are more sensitive to nitrates in particular than their adult counterparts, so water changes, often very frequent ones, are a regular part of most rearing operations. This can present a problem since reasonably quick ways of doing this potentially could injure the larvae (suck them into too large a gap, pin them against a strong flow, etc.), so just make sure you have an idea of how to do routine cleaning in whatever you go with. I personally really like the idea of a false bottom made of some kind of mesh that you can vacuum under... but I think it would probably only work in a low flow tank, the mesh size would have to be carefully chosen, and it would be challenging to manufacture durably. Too fine a mesh and the grime wouldn't fall through, too large and the larvae may get through or caught on it, too high a flow and getting caught on it could lose a limb.

My current plan for the buckets I use is two things; one, they're small enough that I can just move the whole bucket and do the water change with a siphon, then fill it back with about half a five gallon bucket (conveniently refills two larvae buckets). The other is a specially designed tool to siphon out the bucket while retaining the larvae. It's basically a long pipe with a mesh exterior with an anchor point for the siphon tube in the base, and it expands the area the siphon is drawing from to lower the suction of the larvae on it (not perfect, could be bigger around and a tad higher, but it does pretty well), but it lets me start the siphon and basically just let it drain without my attention. It doesn't vacuum the bottom (which can be very tedious if some larvae are down there too), but it does let me do a near complete water change with minimal risk to the larvae and keeping most of the existing live food in there. (this one https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6467504 ) Not perfect, but I've found that larger containers (7G trash can, for example), are heavy enough and take a large enough amount of replacement seawater that without spigots or a proper stand setup for this, I just don't change water frequently enough, even compensating for the dilution factor of the larger vessel. Also worth mentioning: larger vessels also mean more prey is needed for the same prey density, so going with really big vessels to give lots of dilution and space to the larvae means you need a much larger farming/hatching operation for food.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Brine shrimp aren't particularly nutritious as a food (though maybe not as bad as some claim), so when adults are sold, it's usually enriched or gut loaded with phyto to increase their nutritional value. The freshly hatched nauplii, on the other hand, still have their yolk sack, which is a very concentrated source of energy and important fats in a small, easy to catch package.

Mysis are the superior food in my mind if the animal can eat it, but it will probably take months of being a juvenile until a new shrimp can manage more than the fines that come off in the water.

Just to add about the brine shrimp vs mysis - which is better likely depends on the nutritional needs of the species being cultured; what works nutritionally with one species may not work with another (hence why copepods - which are generally considered much more nutritious than brine shrimp - don't always work well in larval rearing, or why some species of copepods work when others don't).

For the brine shrimp nutrition specifically:

Gut-loading them once they're developed enough to eat (i.e. once the yolk sac is absorbed) is always a good idea, but whether they're nutritious or not really depends on the species eating them; for some species, brine shrimp are incredibly nutritious, and for others, they could be force fed a bunch of brine shrimp and still die from malnutrition.

Again, dependent on species, but - generally speaking - newly hatched brine shrimp are pretty nutritious, and they do rapidly lose nutritional value as their yolk sacs are depleted (see the first link at the bottom, which says they lose 30-50% of their nutrition between 24 and 48 hours post hatching). So, the earlier you can feed them, the better.

Peak nutritional value would be retained for about 24 hours after hatching; as mentioned above, they can lose approximately half of their nutritional value within 48 hours, and it likely goes down further from there (ignoring the nutritional value of any food they may be fed).

They can begin feeding after ~12 hours post hatching, so offering them food then is probably the best idea; without food, they can reportedly feed off of just the yolk sacs for anywhere from 3-5 days (likely dependent on various conditions like broodstock health, water quality and temperature, specific species and strain, etc.), but - again - their nutritional value does go down fast for many species that might eat them.

I'm not entirely sure on this one. The longest I've heard for these to hatch is 48 hours, with 18-36 being more typical. So, if you add them Monday night, some could theoretically hatch Wednesday night and be "newly hatched" still for at least part of Thursday, but they'd be more than 24 hours old come Friday (and rapidly losing nutrition).

https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=srhonorsprog

For the full thread the quote is from:

Nutritional value of hatched baby brine shrimp

I've read that brine shrimp are like potato chips for fish, nutritionally low value. Thus, you need to get gut-loaded brine shrimp for any nutritional value. And I've also read that hatched baby brine shrimp (BBS) are very nutritious, and somewhere that it has to do with their yolk sacs. And...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[moretor1]

For larvae, the mysis will be larger than the larvae and larger than they can eat. Brine shrimp aren't particularly nutritious as a food (though maybe not as bad as some claim), so when adults are sold, it's usually enriched or gut loaded with phyto to increase their nutritional value. The freshly hatched nauplii, on the other hand, still have their yolk sack, which is a very concentrated source of energy and important fats in a small, easy to catch package.

Mysis are the superior food in my mind if the animal can eat it, but it will probably take months of being a juvenile until a new shrimp can manage more than the fines that come off in the water.


As for the tank - I don't know if I can picture exactly what you're imagining - but consider these two things (in addition to what you already think, of course) when coming up with designs: some larvae may need almost no flow. It sort of surprised me, but there are a handful of larvae where my default attempt is to use as little flow as possible (a rigid airline down the middle of a bucket at 1-2 bubbles per second, sometimes less). There's a limit to how low you can go in the long term to prevent stratification and film building up on the top, but especially for larvae that like to swim and are at least mildly phototactic, the extra getting pushed around may not help unless its bringing food to them (or vice versa).

The other to think about is maintenance - specifically, ease of cleaning and your unconscious resistances to keeping up with that . It seems pretty well known that larvae are more sensitive to nitrates in particular than their adult counterparts, so water changes, often very frequent ones, are a regular part of most rearing operations. This can present a problem since reasonably quick ways of doing this potentially could injure the larvae (suck them into too large a gap, pin them against a strong flow, etc.), so just make sure you have an idea of how to do routine cleaning in whatever you go with. I personally really like the idea of a false bottom made of some kind of mesh that you can vacuum under... but I think it would probably only work in a low flow tank, the mesh size would have to be carefully chosen, and it would be challenging to manufacture durably. Too fine a mesh and the grime wouldn't fall through, too large and the larvae may get through or caught on it, too high a flow and getting caught on it could lose a limb.

My current plan for the buckets I use is two things; one, they're small enough that I can just move the whole bucket and do the water change with a siphon, then fill it back with about half a five gallon bucket (conveniently refills two larvae buckets). The other is a specially designed tool to siphon out the bucket while retaining the larvae. It's basically a long pipe with a mesh exterior with an anchor point for the siphon tube in the base, and it expands the area the siphon is drawing from to lower the suction of the larvae on it (not perfect, could be bigger around and a tad higher, but it does pretty well), but it lets me start the siphon and basically just let it drain without my attention. It doesn't vacuum the bottom (which can be very tedious if some larvae are down there too), but it does let me do a near complete water change with minimal risk to the larvae and keeping most of the existing live food in there. (this one https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6467504 ) Not perfect, but I've found that larger containers (7G trash can, for example), are heavy enough and take a large enough amount of replacement seawater that without spigots or a proper stand setup for this, I just don't change water frequently enough, even compensating for the dilution factor of the larger vessel. Also worth mentioning: larger vessels also mean more prey is needed for the same prey density, so going with really big vessels to give lots of dilution and space to the larvae means you need a much larger farming/hatching operation for food.

the nitrates thing is a very good point and tbh i think that is another reason to consider keeping some sort of macroalgae either in the larval tank itself or connected to the same system as algae is great for low/no flow nutrient export

 

[DaJMasta]

While I do think a plumbed in system would be great for consistency of parameters, ease of maintenance, and general care, the big hurdle to consider is the ability for you to keep problematic organisms out of the larva tanks. Basically, hydroids, amphipods, some kinds of worms, and many forms of other macrofauna will catch and eat larvae, and when plumbed into a mature system, are virtually impossible to keep out. Aside from the regular low nitrate levels of a tank being potentially high enough to be of concern (maybe single digit ppm is too high for some especially sensitive larvae), I would probably go with a diatom filter followed by a UV on the line that feeds the larva tanks from the main one just for that need to keep things out.

While it sounds like a great source of diversity and maybe even some free food for them, and I don't doubt that could occur, a particulate food rich environment is an ideal location for colonial hydroids, and I've even run into small colonies developing on the walls of my culturing tanks just for what was caught by accident with the larvae and grew over a few weeks. While they're small and somewhat hard to see, their sting is plenty strong to kill larvae, so you really need to be sure your feed water is clean from organisms like that, and you probably want to be emptying and cleaning your rearing vessels between runs just to be sure there isn't a colony that takes hold.

 

[moretor1]

While I do think a plumbed in system would be great for consistency of parameters, ease of maintenance, and general care, the big hurdle to consider is the ability for you to keep problematic organisms out of the larva tanks. Basically, hydroids, amphipods, some kinds of worms, and many forms of other macrofauna will catch and eat larvae, and when plumbed into a mature system, are virtually impossible to keep out. Aside from the regular low nitrate levels of a tank being potentially high enough to be of concern (maybe single digit ppm is too high for some especially sensitive larvae), I would probably go with a diatom filter followed by a UV on the line that feeds the larva tanks from the main one just for that need to keep things out.

While it sounds like a great source of diversity and maybe even some free food for them, and I don't doubt that could occur, a particulate food rich environment is an ideal location for colonial hydroids, and I've even run into small colonies developing on the walls of my culturing tanks just for what was caught by accident with the larvae and grew over a few weeks. While they're small and somewhat hard to see, their sting is plenty strong to kill larvae, so you really need to be sure your feed water is clean from organisms like that, and you probably want to be emptying and cleaning your rearing vessels between runs just to be sure there isn't a colony that takes hold.

For sure, I should've clarified the fuge or algae area would be independent of any other systems other than the breeding system

From what I've heard, algae barn has fairly sterile and seperate systems so I would probably just purchase some from them. My lfs algae tank has all sorts of stuff growing inside of them (including some kind of decapod larva)

Does macroalgae hold up ok in a diluted peroxide wash? Obviously it wouldnt be happy but peroxide has been effective at keeping out hitchiking microorganisms for me

 

[DaJMasta]

Not 100% sure, but it may. It certainly seems to be more resistant to peroxide than single celled algae, but maybe something like a freshwater dip would be a safer option. I'll bet there is some discussion of dipping macroalgae around since macro tanks seem somewhat popular and quarantining is abuzz the last few years.