Reef nutrition

Ray's 125G Cuttle Rearing System

magnetar68 said:
So I have had the cuttles for a week. The eggs are getting more transparent and the cuttles inside seem to be getting bigger, but I don't see them move at all. Should I be worried?

I have been feeding the mysids live rotifers and I seem to still have a healthy population. Here's some video of the rotifers I took through a microscope:

http://youtu.be/LwYUqVV9Y6Q
Click to expand...

What scope are you using?

Awesome video, but too bad you didn't get the front in focus, that is where the cool action takes place.

We have video where you can see them feeding, and the algal cells going through their body. I think we've got videos of eggs being developed and pushed out as well. Fun things to play with, that is for sure.
 
I got really good deal on a Celestron 1500. I am not trained so the bad focus is simply me not knowing what I am doing. I had a hard time getting the rotifers to stay in place. There must be a trick to this like using very little water. I am also using a very low end 2MP digital video unit.

I have seen the video you guys have. It's awesome. Here's a link for those interested. http://[Youtube]MHmKVvvkKfI[/YouTube]

I also took some video of the mysids. I noticed most of them had something underneath and I was not sure if it was the egg pouch or another mysid being cannibalized, so I looked at one under the microscope. It was the pouch with eggs in it. The one I looked at had 4 or 5 eggs. They might still be cannibalizing each other, but that's not what is underneath them. I have had them for 8 days and I don't think I've lost too many, yet. I have been feeding ~2 liters live rotifers from my 5G bucket at 6am and 7pm and the nanny has been giving them two small cubes of frozen rotifers at noon.
 
Slow them down with cold, use less water and sandwich them with a cover, but not all the way.

Just stick the slide in the fridge for a few minutes :D
 
BAYMAC said:
Slow them down with cold, use less water and sandwich them with a cover, but not all the way.

Just stick the slide in the fridge for a few minutes :D
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks for the tip. I will give that a try.
 
Cuttles Hatched!

I went in to the fish room this morning and saw 2 cuttles in the net. I went to get the camera and by the time I found it and came back to the room there were 8! I missed them actually coming out of the eggs. Oh well.

Here are some videos:

[youtube]vVTWUr2jeNo[/youtube]

[youtube]su5mDt9_iwE[/youtube]
 
Hey Ray,

Here are my answers to the questions you sent me:

Q1) I put 4 in one breeder net and 4 in another. Will that work?
Click to expand...

That will work fine. You could also put all 8 in a singer net breeder for at least a month. The advantage here is that you would have only one place to feed and check.

Q2) I have added a few live mysids to each net so that have something to eat when they get hungry. Will that work?
Click to expand...

That should work. There is an idea floating around that cephs can get used to prey animals left in tank with them and no longer see them as food. However, I have not really seen this in hatchling cuttles.

Q3) Any other things I should be thinking about off the top of your head?
Click to expand...

Yes - don't freak out when you don't see them move or eat for a few weeks. Keep feeding them and all should rock..

:D
 
Thanks Rich!

So the cuttles seem to be doing fine. They are active and all still accounted for. I have not seen them eat, but the mysids I am putting in there are disappearing. This could be cannibalism from other mysids, so cannot say for sure if the cuttles are eating. But as Rich said above, no need to panic over it yet.

I am continuing to feed the mysids live rotifers. I have been taking 2L of mysid water out into a clean bucket, then taking 2L from the rotifer bucket and putting it into the mysid tank, and putting the 2L I originall took from the mysid tank and filtering it through a coffee filter back into the rotifer bucket. Every morning I top off both system with RO/DI to deal with evaporation. I have been using the rotifer floss in the rotifer bucket and cleaning that every day with the kitchen sink hose and tap water. ALl of this seems to be working, but I am worried I need to do some water changes with fresh salt water at some point. Anyone have any tips of this?
 
Looks like I crashed my rotifers. I setup a tank above their bucket last night and I had some stuff drop down into the bucket since I forgot to put the lid back on. From the microscope, there are still rotifers in the bucket but the density is low. In the microscope, I noticed a lot of other smaller swimming organism. They can be seen in the video below. I know the video sucks, sorry. The rotifer is at about 30 secs, so you can see these are much smaller than the rotifer. Anyone have any ideas on what these are?

[youtube]DKPWhOkMH50[/youtube]
 
ciliates... probably euplotes

You've just got low density, which is not the end of the world, nor is a crash as you can usually find cysts from males. In a case of cysts, it'll take a lot longer to recover the density.

Feed less for now, any extra feed is just going to feed the euplotes and cause them to bloom harder, thus eating more of the feed
 
Thanks, BAYMAC. Looks like the density is increasing with smaller feedings.

8 day post hatch update:

The other good news is I actually saw a couple of the cuttles eat last night. In general, they are much more active at night. During the day, they tend to stay secluded under the macro algae, but at night, they walk and swim along the algae and around the netting.

Last night, I added some mysids and then used a small red flashlight to illuminate one of the mysids swimming in the center of the net. One of the cuttles at the edge of the net saw the mysid and quickly swam out and zapped out with his feeding tentacles and ate him. A little while later, I saw another cuttle find a mysid and eat it the same way.

I am pretty low on mysids. I have a shipment coming in Tuesday, so I am OK. The 250 I originally received on Thursday Nov 29th lasted this long (18 days) and I have been adding several 2x a day to the cuttle net since they hatched last Saturday.
 
Another rotifer video. Looks like my rotifers are increasing in density (not shown well in this video but I did see a lot more rotifers free swimming in today than yesterday) but the ciliates seem to be still prominent and eating a dead rotifer (that's my guess anyway).

[youtube]YVh5_6mk9Vw[/youtube]
 
magnetar68 said:
Another rotifer video. Looks like my rotifers are increasing in density (not shown well in this video but I did see a lot more rotifers free swimming in today than yesterday) but the ciliates seem to be still prominent and eating a dead rotifer (that's my guess anyway).

[youtube]YVh5_6mk9Vw[/youtube]
Click to expand...

They are eating the algal flock, algae, bacteria and rotifer poop. They have no method of eating something like a rotifer.
 
10 Days Post Hatch. I still have 8 cuttles. I don't think the last egg is evolving so the hatching may have died in the egg. They were very active feeding last night. I tried putting a frozen one in front of a couple of them last night and used a pipette to move it around, but they did not go for it. Shining the red light on a live one, however, and they sneak up and ate it.

500 lab raised, pollution free, disease free mysids from Reed Mariculture showed up today. $126.39 including the overnight shipping. These should last me until the first week of January; but the holidays will make the next shipment a little tricky. This should get me to 20 Days Post Hatch, so maybe I can wean them onto frozen starting 12/28?. I might just order another 500 for delivery 12/28 to be safe.
 
The last egg hatched, so he was not dead, but he still has the egg yolk attached and is much smaller than the other ones when they were born. I have him in a separate net for now, but doubt he will survive.
 
Be aware we'll have limited shipping the next two weeks. I cannot speak for the Mysid labs, but IIRC they stopped shipping for the holidays last year. I'll be finding out shortly and will post back here.
 
Thanks for the heads up. I spoke to Kathy (at RM) and she said the vendor knows that I might ask for a shipping on 12/27 and they can handle it. They are also OK if I ask for shipping on 1/2.
 
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