Emerald crab larvae

[Pszemol]

It is 1am and I am sitting in front of my reef tank
and looking at one of my 4 small Mithrax sculptus
crabs releasing whitish dots to the water column...
It climbed to the top of the rockwork, risen on its
walking legs and with jumpy moves of its abdomen
shaken off hundreds of larvae which swim up to the
rays of my HOB refugium light glowing into the tank...

These larvae are attracted to the light, like other
shrimp/crab larvae I have seen.
I used the flashlight to congregate them near the water
surface and collected a bunch with a plastic cup...
Under my toy microscope they looked like a BIG head
with two black, not-stalked eyes, and relatively
long and very thin tail/abdomen... They move doing
jerky jumps in the drop of water on the subject glass
and by curling their segmented "tails"...

I have moved collected larvae to a bigger cup, put
a bubling airline inside and fed larvae with a drop
of Coral&Clam Diet (fitoplankton concentrate from
Mariculture.com) They look like twice the size of freshly
hatched brine shrimp, but I am not sure what they normally
eat. Any idea for a better diet for them?

Anyway... Will see what happens next...

[Pszemol]

Just in case you are interested how the story ends:

It is after 6pm, I just came from work and saw them
all dead. Last time I saw them alive and kicking was
1:00 am today - then I fed them with some drops of algae.

This morning, around 8:00 am I added another drops of
algae and rushed to work little late without paying
close attention to their health.

There are rotifers and artemia alive in the container.
Also, ammonia is almost not detectable, no nitrites so
I would say not the polution was the fatal factor here.

Since I have not seen them eat any food I have provided,
(algae concentrate, rotifers L, artemia naupulii)
I would assume they all starved. No idea what could be
good diet for them - I would guess shellfish algal diet
was sufficient but it looks like it was not...
Other explanation would be that I feed too little algae
and after introducing live zoo-plankton concentration
of algae decreased even more... Maybe rotifers/artemia
have eaten all algea crab larvae supposed to eat?

Next time I will have a chance to breed them I will
hold with zooplankton until I will see some progress
in larvae development fed on algae concentrate only.

Any other thoughts/suggestions?

"Pszemol" > wrote in message ...
> It is 1am and I am sitting in front of my reef tank
> and looking at one of my 4 small Mithrax sculptus
> crabs releasing whitish dots to the water column...
> It climbed to the top of the rockwork, risen on its
> walking legs and with jumpy moves of its abdomen
> shaken off hundreds of larvae which swim up to the
> rays of my HOB refugium light glowing into the tank...
>
> These larvae are attracted to the light, like other
> shrimp/crab larvae I have seen.
> I used the flashlight to congregate them near the water
> surface and collected a bunch with a plastic cup...
> Under my toy microscope they looked like a BIG head
> with two black, not-stalked eyes, and relatively
> long and very thin tail/abdomen... They move doing
> jerky jumps in the drop of water on the subject glass
> and by curling their segmented "tails"...
>
> I have moved collected larvae to a bigger cup, put
> a bubling airline inside and fed larvae with a drop
> of Coral&Clam Diet (fitoplankton concentrate from
> Mariculture.com) They look like twice the size of freshly
> hatched brine shrimp, but I am not sure what they normally
> eat. Any idea for a better diet for them?
>
> Anyway... Will see what happens next...