#zoea 2022

[fbwzoo]

Sorry for the delay on updates. The last several days to week before you start getting megalopa is fucking Hard. You start losing a ton to molting issues, it's been 2.5-3 weeks, and I was dealing with some other adulting things on top of that.

Anyway, we have officially moved into megalopa period! I'm tired, but starting to get some megas is helping.

This little guy was my second megalopa - the first was attacked in the kreisel and already dead when I found them. Unfortunately the second one died as well, airstone stopped working.

But I came home to 5 more today - 1 is stuck in shed and will probably die, but the others look good! I put them in the transition tank and put in a couple pellets for food.

I still have at least a few hundred zoea that look good, and I bumped the temp up a couple degrees to push them along a little. They have a week or so to get this business over with before I shut the kreisel down for my trip. So hopefully the rest of the week will be occupied with catching megas and moving them "downstairs" to the transition tank.

[fbwzoo]

Was a bit stressed about the babies today bc my brine shrimp jars were pretty sparse this morning & I couldn't leave them nearly as much as I would've liked for the day. They were pretty empty-bellied when I got home. But thankfully one of the brine jars had hatched a lot & I was able to load them up!! They wasted NO time in stuffing themselves - look how orange they are! 😂💜

[fbwzoo]

Holy crap, it's been a long day. Story time!

Woke up at 4 this morning bc omg baby day. Worked for a few hours, then left to go to the UPS store. They hadn't gotten their delivery truck yet, so I anxiously waited in the parking lot, fighting the urge to go hijack UPS trucks.

Truck finally came at 10 or so & I saw him take my box out!! I followed him into the store. 😂 Hi yes please those are mine give me my babies!!! Immediately anxiety increased bc of one corner totally soaked.

Rushed home and started opening them with Mary & Darcy on a video call. They were packed in 4 fish shipping bags from Petco, with air pocket pads between them, in an insulated Styrofoam box.

I did find that one bag had tipped over, half of the air out & leaked some water, causing that wet corner. But the zoea in that bag were still alive! The other three bags were perfect, still full of air above the water. Basically all the zoea were still alive!! None of us could believe it, we were really prepared for major losses. Darcy had also given them tons of nannochloropsis & she said the green of the bags had definitely decreased from them eating it, so that was a good call.

And this was the simplest and cheapest shipping method they came up with!! Like, that's such good news, that they can survive with a fairly minimal shipping set up!

SO they're settled in the kreisel and I've been remembering how all this works and working out some last kinks in the set up. We got another surprise when I got home from work and the water was really cloudy - they shed!!! They're on day 4, so it was a possibility, but we didn't really expect it anyway, with travel stress. But that's further proof they're doing well!! Though it did mean I got to scramble and do two water changes already on the first day. Thanks for the immediate dive in, guys. 😂

Hard to tell, but the brighter white spots kinda on the left middle are shed exos that stuck to the glass.

[fbwzoo]

So I'm kinda late with this update, but the zoea are gone. I officially gave up on Thursday night. Both groups had been both dying from molting & eating each other all week. I went to work on Thursday with 30 megalopa...I came home to 9. And less than 100 zoea.

I've been exhausted for 3 weeks, and had/have a million things to get done before my trip. With all of that, and the extremely slim, almost zero chance that anyone would make it even through my being gone, I decided to call it. It wasn't worth the continued stress or putting the added problem on my partners while I'm gone.

I actually handled that decision fairly well. There was so much relief this time, and having known how unlikely it was to work to begin with, that it didn't seem to hit me as hard. I was and am sad, but I knew from the beginning the timing was terrible. I did learn a lot with this attempt, and I look forward to trying again another year.

Unfortunately.... I went to feed small animals on Friday, and I found my darling Seven dead in the cage. She's been my favorite of the girls, and vice versa. We were a month short of having her for a year. She was less than 2 years. No idea what happened, but Jack guessed a stroke or heart attack, maybe. It looked sudden, no signs of anything wrong, and she'd been perfectly fine the day before.

That.... hit me hard. Hence why I've only just been able to update. I spent the weekend as a depressed lump and got nothing done. It still hurts, I miss her a lot. It was so sudden and so early... and I had to be the one to find my girl. It's not fair. I want my baby back. We deserved more time.

[fbwzoo]

GUESS WHAT!!!!!

THEY'RE ALIVE!!!!!!

[fbwzoo]

So I can't say for sure it was the new food that perked them up but... holy crap did feeding time tonight make me feel better.

The zoea had seemed sluggish for the past few days, I always had a puddle of them in the middle of the waste water tub. I was anxious that the days without nanno had caused irreversible damage or delays.

Tonight, I gave them instant brine shrimp followed by the food mix, which I added selcon, a marine vitamin supplement, to for the first time.

Night & day difference. They were all swimming, swarming, zooming around. Eating a ton and following the light with no hesitation - that was a little funny to watch. Even with no airstone in the tub, almost no one was on the bottom.

When I went to move them all back, nearly everyone came for the light, it was super easy. All that was left were dead ones, a few weak twitchy ones, and some stragglers that were hiding that I didn't try to grab.

I also put some new filter media in the filter, and I got a bunch of transition tank supplies along with the salt. Looking forward to getting that set up this weekend!

[fbwzoo]

It's all put together & running now! Ahhhhhhhh

I added a sponge from my tank's cycled salt pool after this, plus a programmable heater & thermometer. I have some small coral coming tomorrow to add as well. I may test the pH of the tank before I add it though.

I was running out of brain to deal with airline tubing once I finished this, so I'm putting the brine shrimp hatching jars together tomorrow instead. I need to cut more notches in the lid for tubing too. I want to add nannochloropsis to the drums tomorrow too, though I'm not sure if it'll do any good with the filter running.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[fbwzoo]

Finished the full drum water change & got everyone put back in! Grabbed a video to show how many I still have. I'm still firmly both excited and terrified. 😅

A lot of them are so big that I'm really wondering if I'm wrong and have some in stage 5. But I guess I'll find out over the next few days, if anyone starts looking like they're going to molt to megalopa next. You can tell when they're about to because they look pregnant - they have the new pinchers and legs all crumpled up against their body under their exoskeleton. So I'll be watching out for that and freaking myself out over whether any look like that or I'm imagining it. 😂