Shrimple Blog

Blog dedicated to biology, more frequently branchiopods or diplopods.

[shrimple-blog]

Helloo, welcome to my nerding-out blog!! This blog will mostly be focusing on:

•general biology •invertebrates (some favourites being Diplopoda and Branchiopoda) •updates and videos on my sea monkey colony (Artemia Franciscana brine shrimp) •amateur diagrams of different lil guys I like •reblogs of things relating to everything above •me nerding out, of course.

MY OTHER BLOGS:

catotrophicTEM (Main blog. Art, animations, doodles + rambles)

catostrophicreblogs (just where all reblogs go)

[andyluvsu]

Millipedes 👀❤️‍🩹🤞

[shrimple-blog]

shit guys mb i think my millipede gal is actually a dude. watching the recording from my last post, they're missing the 4th pair of their legs, which is where the gonads probably are (ㅠ_ㅠ)

I didn't wanna manhandle them when counting the legs so i just did the segment size method which ig is now proven kinda unreliable lmao. sorry for misgendering my millipede (‘’❛ ؂ - „)ᕗ

[shrimple-blog]

FIRST MILLIPEDE

I got my first millipede!! She's a ziphonora peach millipede, and i ordered her from Richard's inverts (yeah i did say i wanted to get smokey oaks / ivory / giant olive, but i still got a lot of space for them. From what i could find, they all have very similar care guides and they should co-habit fine). She was very well packaged, with some substrate and sphagnum moss in her container and packing peanuts to make sure she doesnt bump around in the box.

I'm pretty sure she's a female; the 3rd and 7th segments seem to be the same size as the rest, but i might be wrong. I can't find much info on peach millipedes online, so i dont know which segment the gonads are normally stored in. She's a little smaller than i expected, though i did order a sub-adult so she'll likely get bigger. The enclosure is certainly way to big just for herself, but i do plan on housing her with other millipedes. Not sure what to name her, i'm open to suggestions!

She's a very curious but hesitant millipede. when i took her out of the container, i tried to get her to crawl onto my hand, which she'd walk up to as if she was going to climb on, before curling her head (or shaking it side-to-side) and walking backwards. I didn't even know millipedes could move backwards XD! She did the same thing when i offered her a slice of cucumber.

she was showing some burrowing behavior so i set her in the very over sized enclosure for her to burrow in. She walked about and sniffed the corners for a while, mostly sticking her head into the dirt before backing up and sticking her head into a different bit of dirt lol. eventually she settled on burrowing beneath a log by the side of the container. I'm not sure how surface active peach millipedes are (again, not much information on them online aside from general care guides) but she seems reactive towards light so she might just be nocturnal.

I'm now realizing i forgot to measure her size before she burrowed away. Anywho, here's a silly video of her trying to climb a wall.

[shrimple-blog]

mushroom in the millipede enclosure!!

Found this thing growing out of a pile of sphagnum moss this morning! Quite happy about it actually, it’s a great sign of a thriving ecosystem! If anyone who’s good at mushroom identification can ID this, lmk! I think it might be milk drop mycena? The substrate is a mix of compost and hardwood leaves/wood if that helps. Couldn’t get a picture of the underside of the cap, so I can’t really describe the gills.

[shrimple-blog]

Millipede enclosure set-up!

all the ethical breeders in the uk (that i know of) don't have any of the millipedes i'm looking for in stock right now, but that doesn't mean i can't start setting up their home until then!

First is the container of course. I wanted a decently sized container, because i'm planning on housing at least 2 millipedes (one medium sized one, 20cm max, and one smaller one, 10cm max). Nothing fancy, i ended up settling with a plastic storage container from my garage. it's dimensions are about (w)42cm x (h)32cm x (d)32cm. I think the general rule for millipede enclosures is that it must at least be 2x as wide as the largest millipede's length, as deep as the largest millipede's length, and a substrate as deep as the largest millipede's length

my substrate is about 20cm in depth, which would accommodate for the largest millipede i hope to get (giant olive millipede, species Telodeinopus aoutii, which grow up to 20cm when fully grown.) This leaves them with about 12cm of climbing space. I hope this is enough room for them, but it's hard to tell because not many places explain how much climbing space is needed for different millipedes, though I remember reading somewhere that 10-15cm is fine. I believe climbing space would vary on how surface-active a millipede is, and their actual size. i plan on having an ivory aswell (or smokey oak, whichever one is in stock before the other) which are both relatively surface-active and the same size, ~10cm fully grown, so i think the 12cm of climbing height will be plenty for them.

next is the actual contents of the substrate, which i've seen stressed to be the most important part of a millipede's home. I'm gonna be honest, i didnt actually measure the exact ratio i did of each ingredient, i just mixed it all together and got more along the way if i felt it needed more of something.

for the base, i used some compost that didnt have any fertilizer or manure in it. i heard some controversy about whether or not peat in the substrate is ok for millipedes, but its kinda hard to get your hands on it in the uk due to ethical concerns anyways. topsoil is probably a better base to go with, but i had already bought a bag by the time i realized.

Nutrition in the substrate is probably the most important for millipedes, as their main diet is just the dirt they burrow in. Being detrivours, they feed on decomposing plant matter; mainly white wood and leaf litter / mulch. I collected (probably like 3 bags each?) of white wood and leaves from my local woods, and froze them for at least 72 hours to kill any hitch-hikers, but hopefully not wash out any beneficial bacteria or the nutrients from it. IMPORTANTLY, the leaves and wood CANNOT BE SOFTWOOD! they have resins and saps that are toxic for millipedes and cannot be digested by them! this means no pine needles, pine cones, pinewood etc. though their cousin centipedes can be found in those environments, that's because they're predatory carnivores.

an alternative to white-wood is flake-soil, essentially manufactured decomposed wood. it's usually sold by beetle breeders or other bug-keepers as it's used as the substrate for larvae and grubs. Again, make sure the seller is clear about what wood they use, as softwood is bad for millipedes. Most people make it with oak, birch or beech. i bought from postpods since they sold it at a pretty reasonable price.

flake soil can still be a little pricy though, so a lot of people make their own. there's plenty of tutorials online, but from what i remember its just yeast, water and wood.

you dont need to get both flake soil and white wood, but i didn't want to scalp my local woods from all the white-wood i could find which is why i bought flakesoil. Flakesoil is seen as the more ethical option, since white wood takes years to decay and probably shouldn't be stripped from the ecosystem that relies on it for food. Flake soil is more sustainable, as it can be made in bulk within only 4-6 months.

after mixing everything together, i froze it again just for safe measures, and decorated the surface with some oak logs, which are soft enough for them to eat. They should be fun for them to climb, too. all i need now is an extra handful of leaves to scatter across the surface.

I've had terrariums in the past, and none of them did very well. that's because they need an actual community before making an ecosystem. So, i ordered some springtails; these tiny lil buggos that are usually referred to as the "cleanup crew" because they eat mold to prevent the overgrowth of it in your terrarium. they're neat, but i got them to hopefully keep control of the inevitable fungus gnat bloom.

which they did not. ATM, i have hundreds of larvae covering the walls of the container, some even ontop of the lid that i've been wiping off. they arent a danger to me, the springtails or millipedes, but it is kinda gross and not fun to look at. most people will tell you to lower the humidity if you have a fungus gnat problem, but that's an issue because both millipedes and springtails need high humidity in their enclosure. so, instead, i'm looking at nematodes to hunt them down.

long story short, they're microscopic parasites that hunt down and enter the larvae, produce a bacteria that kills them, then they reproduce to kill a new host. there are different nematodes specialized to target different things. The type i'm looking at (Steinernema feltiae) only hunt larvae, so they won't hurt springtails or millipedes (as neither have a larval stage). After they've hunted down all the fungus gnat larvae, they'll have no other food source and die, so you don't have to worry about them. I haven't gotten them yet, but i'll try and order some to deal with this bloom.

that's all i've gotten up to as of the moment. I'll just be maintaining the enclosure till the breeders restock their millipedes. Till then, i probably won't have another giant report on the enclosure like this lol (even tho they are fun to write).

[novacorpseart]

Bored so I doodled d&d classes as millipedes

(Pt1)

[bonaparteicide]

my little lesbos 🌱

(millipedes do engage in same-sex sexual behaviours, they do not try and distinguish gender between other millipedes and will just attempt to mate.)

[shrimple-blog]

SRRYY FOR NOT UPDATING

Got caught up in artfight stuff and work experience, so i haven't had time to type up blog posts. BUT! That doesn't mean i haven't been working on stuff in the meantime! Progress has been made with a new brine shrimp colony, AND i have started setting up an enclosure for some millipedes!! ATM its just the substrate with some rotting oak logs and a handful of springtails, i'll make separate posts for both that and the brine shrimp update.

[meltknuckles]

a fated pair of star-crossed bunnies 🩷🐇

[cosmonautroger]

jellyfish babies

[daily-cephalopod]

Todays cephalopod is having a snuggle :)

[shrimple-blog]

preserving my brine shrimp!!

i saw some people keep wet specimens of triops, so i was thinking i could probably do the same with my sea monkeys!

After looking into it, i determined keeping them in an ethanol solution would be a little sad, because they're so tiny and would just sink to the bottom. However, i found the hand-sanitizer technique would fit pretty well (keeping the specimens suspended in clear gel hand-sanitizer. The alcohol prevents rot while not being harmful enough to destroy the specimen's tissue, and the consistency of the substance means the specimen can be viewed easily.). It went way better than i expected!! For a first try, i think this looks pretty damn good.

despite these shrimpos looking absolutely awesome preserved like this, there are some mistakes i did make doing this... most notably, i didn't soak them in an alcohol solution before putting them into the gel. I didn't have any ethanol or isopropyl alcohol, and they would have deteriorated before i could get my hands on some, so i only soaked them in the sanitizer for half an hour before putting them in the final thing. this did lead to them being sorta cloudy as first, which thankfully cleared up, but was probably because the material was too fresh.

second of all, some of them are positioned awkwardly because the pipette i used isn't very good at positioning 8mm shrimp, so some males with claspers have them out of place, or thoracopods are pointing in unnatural directions. Not noticeable to most people, but a lot of them are also swimming the wrong way. Brine shrimp actually swim to what we would perceive as upside down, with their legs pointing upwards. I accidentally positioned some of them with their legs pointing downwards.

Third, the bubbles. they're easy to get rid off, either you boil the vial or use some fancy pipette to suck it out. But, i have no fancy pipette, and the vial i am using, is not a vial. It's a hand-sanitizer bottle, which is plastic, and would definitely melt if i tried boiling it. I don't actually mind them that much though, it makes them seem a little more lively.

overall though, i'm happy with how this turned out. i can do some beautiful macro photography now, and i can reminisce on my 6-month-running colony.

ALSO, i won't be starting the new colony for a while. It's still boiling out here, and i don't want to leave them unattended while i'm doing work experience next week. instead i'll just let the algae grow in both tanks.

[myxomycota]

a tiny springtail on Craterium minutum

by Barry Webb

[indolentjellyfish]

tiny glass aphid

[shrimple-blog]

bad news on the sea monkeys…

so, there’s a heatwave here in the UK at the moment and I believe the shrimp died from the heat.

i usually have them in my living room, but with a heat lamp over them to help both algae growth and keep the temperature at around 21-25 degrees Celsius. I have an aquarium thermometer that tells me where the temperature is between 30-19 degrees.

when it’s hot, I turn the lamp off and let them cool down, before moving them to a windowsill where they usually get to 23-27 degrees, which is a normal range for them. That’s what I did this morning, but when I went to school they must’ve overheated and died. When I checked the thermometer, none of the numbers were highlighted, and it definitely isn’t under 19 degrees, so the poor fellas likely baked at above 30 degrees…

i have another packet of eggs, which I’ll start on Wednesday after I clear the tank of the past generation and do a water change. But this generation of shrimp will be missed :[

[shrimple-blog]

I believe I have underestimated my colony’s stupidity

for context, when brine shrimp mate the male attaches their claspers to the female’s egg sack, which is located at the end of their body.

my guy here is trying to grab her head, I don’t have high hopes for the third generation in this tank 😭