Reefs.org Forums

[Ummfish]

I collected a prolarva yesterday to take a look under the microscope. Unfortunately, the collection did the little guy in. But since it was still enough, I went ahead and made some photo composites.

First, with backlighting:



And with no backlighting:

[amashun]

WOW Andy, what a great post mate!

thanks for the link and i will be watching it closely as i will be also getting a matting pair from a friend of mine who shut down his system very soon.

keep up the good work mate.

[Ummfish]

Thanks, man! Good luck with your new pair. I really like housing them in the 55 gal. barrel, BTW. I makes the eggs super easy to collect.

[Ummfish]

Starter cultures came in today.

Here's a comparison photo between (left) Acartia tonsa (a pelagic copepod and, unfortunately, really too fast to get a good photo of), (center) a sixline prolarva, and (right) the markings on a millimeter scale.



And here's a short video of small strain rotifers (4x magnification):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFSNujomB8Y

[Ummfish]

Here's another little video:

Acartia tonsa, in culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZswCr3vrf0

[Len]

These is extremely informational and interesting. Would you like me to move it to the main General Discussion forum where more people would read it, or keep it here?

[Ummfish]

Len, bud, please feel free to cross-post as you please. I'm entirely happy with that. I should have something else exciting for this evening, too.

[Len]

Moved with a shadow to the prop forum so both forums can see this thread

[Ben]

Cool photos, I need to look in the other forums more often. I almost missed this gem.

[Sea Turtle]

Nice one. I really love those microscope pics. I have to get one of those. Oh the fun you could have...

[Ummfish]

Thanks, y'all! Truth is, these are just from a little cheapo microscope. I got tired of the headaches from staring through eyepieces so I bought one of those with a little LCD screen instead of eyepieces meant for kids and maybe high school students. It came ready for photos and video. The clarity of the image is not nearly as good as my old Bausch & Lomb, but it's much easier to use.

[Pepperoni]

It's very scientific. I'm breaking the Maracyn SW into tiny pieces and allowing the smallest I can get to dissolve in the petri dish with the water movement while I'm pipetting. Very controlled. I haven't been giving a water change afterward. The antibiotics didn't seem to be slowing the little guy down any.

111 eggs tonight. I made a new egg incubator this afternoon, so the eggs went in there. That's a water pitcher from Target.



And here's my egg collector with pipette.

very very nice...looks very similar to the egg batteries I use for hatching trout

[Ummfish]

That sounds about right. I still need to work on the incubator. I still haven't figured out something to direct the air bubbles away from the center column. Maybe a small funnel or something.

[Subcomandante Marcos]

Thanks, y'all! Truth is, these are just from a little cheapo microscope. I got tired of the headaches from staring through eyepieces so I bought one of those with a little LCD screen instead of eyepieces meant for kids and maybe high school students. It came ready for photos and video. The clarity of the image is not nearly as good as my old Bausch & Lomb, but it's much easier to use.

That surprises me. The optical quality seems to be quite good.

[Pepperoni]

That sounds about right. I still need to work on the incubator. I still haven't figured out something to direct the air bubbles away from the center column. Maybe a small funnel or something.

at the hatchery, we use a constant fresh water flow through the eggs, so they aren't boiling about, in my opinion, a clean sump with a regulated powerhead blowing the water through the flask overflowing and recirculating back could work, but I don't know the what sixline eggs actually need just bouncing ideas

[Ummfish]

Marcos--This is the scope I'm using: http://www.amazon.com/Celestron-44340-Digital-Biological-Microscope/dp/B0014YNGCK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=industrial&qid=1245599968&sr=8-1

Pepperoni--I'm getting hatches in still petri dishes, but the hatch rates aren't good (1-2%). What would be ideal for me would be to have an air-driven hatcher that I can switch to water when I want to flush the prolarvae into the rearing chamber. That would be best for me. Whether that would be the best for the fish is another question. The eggs are really small and mostly buoyant, so the screens would have to be tiny. So, they'd foul quickly and I wouldn't think the eggs would appreciate being smushed against them. Maybe a downweller with a large surface area would work. Hmm.

[miwoodar]

Man, Andy, you have both aspiration *AND* skills. Thanks for bringing us along on your journey.

[Ummfish]

Thanks, Mike, but I think the jury's still out on the skills part. But goals? Sure, I have goals.

Did I ever show you all the manifold for the larval tanks? It still needs glue, but here 'tis:



The idea is to put a pretty large pump on there so the pipe fills and overflows down to the sump, even when I'm running as much water through the tanks as I want. At that point, I should get constant head pressure to each of the ballvalves such that I can take tanks on and off the system without having to constantly adjust the flow to the other tanks.

[miwoodar]

Aspiration, skills, * and * smarts.

You're not fooling me...

[Ummfish]

Well, thank you again, but again I still believe there's a lot left to prove. It puts me in mind of one of my favorite fish quotes, though:

It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming. (John Steinbeck)