Egg-laying Documentary

[madFrankie]

Thanks y'all, I'm thinking that I might enter that last one in the calendar comp

 

[cathy]

That last picture IS amazing, wish I had a camera that could take pictures like that..
I really love all the pictures, they are really good, nice close up's. Please keep us updated
with photos as they grow.
Cathy

 

[Toptex]

Frank, those pics are sensational. I am also rearing my 14 babies that I acquired last Sunday from boof (thanks again boof - they have all hatched and doing well) and dealing with bbs, hatching, culturing microworms, etc. etc and just have a couple of questions.

I have had a lot of trouble finding Daphnia. Being a Melbournian I thought you might know where to get it. Im willing to travel!!

Also what sort of camera do you have. I recently purchased a new SLR Nikon d90 but certainly does not have the magnification that yours does. Love that lens. That pic of your axie muching on the brine shrimp is magnificent.

Truly enjoying your contribution. roud:
MA

 

[madFrankie]

Frank, those pics are sensational.

Thanks! :happy:

I have had a lot of trouble finding Daphnia. Being a Melbournian I thought you might know where to get it. Im willing to travel!!

Southern Biological in Nunawading will sell you a live culture of Daphnia (about 80 of them in a little vial) for around $15. Call them first though 'cause they need a couple of days to prepare them.

Also what sort of camera do you have. I recently purchased a new SLR Nikon d90 but certainly does not have the magnification that yours does. Love that lens. That pic of your axie muching on the brine shrimp is magnificent.

I use a D90 too, it's a fabulous camera. for these closeups I've cheated a bit - I'm just using the 50mm F1.8 lens with a nifty little 4x magnifier filter on it. The filter is just like a screw-on magnifying glass and basically turns the lens into a super-macro.
The quality isn't quite as good as a proper macro lens, but for $40 instead of over $1000, I'm pretty happy with it!

Seriously, go get yourself that lens if you haven't got it already - it's an awesome deal for around $200 (There's the better F1.4 version to, but it's twice the price) and a magnifier filter, it opens up a whole new world of really tiny things made HUGE!

The lens itself is a work of art too, it's fantastic for shooting in low-light conditions and the depth-of-field you can play with at F1.8 is beautiful.

 

[Toptex]

Thanks Frank for answering my questions. I will look into the Daphnia on Monday and Nunawading is not too far either which is even better.

As for your camera tricks, Im not too savy with all of the functions as yet but I'm having a fun time clicking nevertheless. Every time I pick it up I'm surprised at what it's capable of doing. They are great cameras aren't they? I think I will stick with what I've got for now and as soon as I become confident with it I may buy myself that filter you mentioned. It's a a ripper and not too costly. I also looked at your website of the Melbourne photos. Your a pro Frank. They are really fantastic. Do you do weddings and babies?... Just kidding!

Keep clicking...
MA

 

[Vee]

WOW! What incredible photos. Thank you for sharing these!

 

[Gothica Lily]

Hi Frank!

Any Updates?

They are SO CUTE! We'd love ours to breed, but it's been a bumpy ride with our male stuffing himself full of stones (he was pushing the girl around though).

Great pictures!

If you are in Melbourne, then it may be good to keep in touch in case if we or you need babysitting! lol Say our/your family wants to go on holidays or something. Kids are responsibility! Grats by the way Good looking munchkins!

Just thought I'd drop in to say Hi and nag for photoes



Gothica_Lily (Angie) & Dalabrae

 

[madFrankie]

Any Updates?

Nothing much more to report right at the minute, will surely post more pics soon though.

If you are in Melbourne, then it may be good to keep in touch in case if we or you need babysitting! lol Say our/your family wants to go on holidays or something. Kids are responsibility! Grats by the way Good looking munchkins!

Sounds like a good plan to me!

 

[madFrankie]

Ho-kay everyone, a few more shots.

I fished one of the little guys out and chucked him in a beaker so I could get a look from other angles.

He's around 40mm long now and I've scaled the pics down a little 'cause the image sizes on this thread are getting ridiculous!

Underside, good shot of the slimy bits and his feet.

 

[Gothica Lily]

They are so big already!

Good shoots, Frank! When will they grow their hind legs???

How are their mom & dad doing? Oh, by they way, you said you were going to leave some of the eggs "to nature". Did they end up eating them?

Angie

 

[Gothica Lily]

Oh, Frank,

We will Both need babysitters now.. Ours decided that it was time for us to have grandchildren!

This morning I got up and the eggs were Everywhere....! Me and my husband are uber excited! Ordered some sea monkey eggs to hatch BBS and bought some plastic containers for babies!!!



Any advice? lol

 

[madFrankie]

Woohoo! Nice one Angie!

You're in for a whole bunch of fun.





Best baby-raising tips I can offer are:

• Get the eggs out of Mum and Dad's tank 'cause they'll get eaten if they stay in there.
• Keep them reasonably warm (18-20) while they're developing and they'll hatch in 14 days.
• Set up two BBS hatcheries (details of mine is below).
• Get your bbs eggs in bulk - I use the ones from a company called Aqua-Pics that I can get in a vial from my local aquarium shop. The actual Sea Monkeys branded ones only have a few in the packet and they'll feed your babies once before they're all gone! Stuff called 'Hatch Mix' isn't great either in my experience. The vials that I get are about $16 and have hundreds of thousands of pure eggs (no salt) in them.
• after the babies hatch, make sure you feed them every day and do daily water changes.

I made my bbs hatchery setup myself, brief instructions below:

• Nail together some planks of timber as a mounting.
• Stick the lids of 2L soft-drink bottles to it with liquid nails.
• When the liquid nails is completely dry, drill holes through lids and mounting for airline to go in.
• push airline through holes and seal with waterproof silicone.
• attach airlines to airpump with a splitter (or you can get a double-outlet airpump), it's also very useful to put little turn-off valves ($0.50 each) in the line so you can switch off each hatchery individually without filling the airpump with water.
• Slice the bottoms off the bottles and screw them into the lids.
• put in heaters (not essential, but I found that the bbs hatch HEAPS better if it's about 28 degrees in the weter).
• Mix up your water - I use aquarium salt and put in about 30 grams/L of water.
• fill the bottles, turn on the heaters and airpumps, bung in a load of eggs, put a lamp over the hatcheries and wait for 24 hours.

Here's a pic of my setup to help visualise what I'm waffling about:

Using this setup I get HUGE quantities of hatched BBS 24 hours after the eggs go in so I alternate between the two bottles each day. This way I've always got plenty for my 200 hungry mouths.
To get them out I turn off the airline valve and the heater and let the water settle for 10 minutes or so, the bbs are strongly attracted to light so they congregate towards the light source where I then suck them out with a turkey baster.
I've set up a dodgy contraption using coffee filter papers and a sausage-maker to rinse the bbs but you can use a fine stocking if that's easier. I haven't managed to find an actual net that's small enough - even the 'fine' one is too coarse and they just go straight through.
Once I've rinsed all the salt off the bbs they go into a little container with fresh water in it and get dispensed into the babies' tanks via the baster again.

Good luck, hope this helps! Let us know how it progresses!

Oh, and re your other questions: Mum and dad are doing great, I had to scoop out another batch of spermatophores recently - I don't think Mum's up to the task of another load quite yet!
The eggs that I left in the adults tank mostly got eaten but a few hatched (and THEN got eaten... lol).

 

[Toptex]

CONGRATULATIONS Angie. That's very exciting as I know you've wanted babies for a while now. I too acquired some babies which I've been nurturing and thought I'd put in my 10c worth! No expert to this process but have received great advice from many.....including Frank.
Frank, your set up is fantastic and I have a similar system (minus heaters and light). What I found really handy was a really good video on youtube.com: (copy and paste link).... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uNkHPuGaqo which outlined step by step process of building your hatchery. Worth a watch.
I also bought bbs online (ebay): GSL Brine Shrimp Eggs - Live Fish Food Aquarium 50g 80% from the seller e.alpha deals. They were really good. I bought the wrong thing from them initially and they happily refunded my money and put me on to the right product. I have had great success with the eggs they supplied - $13.50 for 50g.
And for you Frank....to obtain the bbs, I draw up the hatched bbs with my baster and squirt it into a sheet of Handee paper towelling (its a better/stronger quality) which I have placed over a small container/coffee cup and rinse it with slow running flow of water. Then dip the rinsed bbs into the "tank". I hope this helps.
As for the rest in relation to bring up your babies Angie, Frank has it covered.

Wish you and the big family all the best.
MA

 

[Gothica Lily]

Thanks Frank & Ma!

We have been looking forward to having babies one day. With our lack of experience in any aqua life, we even mistook the snail eggs for axolotl eggs... (i know lol, but we never saw the size of them mentioned anywhere either!). We were disappointed, but now we've got these! It's pretty funny with us!

My husband said I turned all GaGa when I saw the eggs, but you should have seen how he behaved when he got himself some Sea Monkeys!! Like 12 again...lol

I think I like both BBS breeding approaches! I do also like the idea of lamps over the hatcheries.
We think we got about 100 eggs. The female is young, so she didn't give as many her first time (luckly! we have no where to put them! lol)

Oh, do you guys know much about breeding baby Daphnia? Is it just as easy as BBS??

We spent last days heads & arms in aquarium affairs.... Good to know we have support

 

[madFrankie]

Oh, do you guys know much about breeding baby Daphnia? Is it just as easy as BBS??

Heya Angie, I did the daphnia thing, spent AGES trying to track them down in Melbourne. I eventually found somewhere that supplies them in a vial of about 40-80 specimens for around $15.
Dunno if it's possible to get daphnia eggs in Aus. If it is, I haven't managed to find them...

I cultured them in big tubs of green water for a couple of months and then only had enough to feed my new babies for a couple of days when they arrived.
Might have been too cold or something, but they just didn't breed anywhere near fast enough to keep up with the demand so I went to the BBS because they're so easy to come by, cheap and hatch in 24 hours.

 

[randallsmommy]

Your pictures are amazing! What cute Axies you have.

 

[Gothica Lily]

Hey Frank,

Really? Jeez, you must have been so frustrated with Daphnia in the end... Well, I think we'll keep BBS as main diet then.

Your golden albino girl's name was Fanta, wasn't it? I browse local albums lol
What's your wild type's name?



P.S.: We have an albino girl (Peony) and a golden albino boy (Sovereign).

 

[madFrankie]

Your pictures are amazing! What cute Axies you have.

Thanks!

you must have been so frustrated with Daphnia in the end... Well, I think we'll keep BBS as main diet then.

Yeah, the Daphnia were a bit of a disappointment, especially since they're allegedly some of the best food you can feed to axie larvae.
I know that in the U.S. and elsewhere you can get their eggs in the same way we can get brine shrimp eggs here. Nobody in Aus seems to supply the eggs, I even rang the CSIRO (no luck there) and looked at importing eggs from overseas (customs told me that I wasn't allowed to).
The only other option I came up with was catching them wild, but after much stamping around in muddy holes I discovered that winter is really not a good time to catch wild daphnia. <sigh>

The too-hard-basket is where it ended up...

Your golden albino girl's name was Fanta, wasn't it? I browse local albums lol
What's your wild type's name?

The caramel-coloured wiltype is 'Monster' named for his habit of lurking in dark corners and leaping out when there's a worm dangling nearby.
We've got two others as well, my avatar is 'Turbo' and there's a black melanoid named 'Fungus' lurking in the dark corners of the tank and refusing to be photographed.

 

[Gothica Lily]

LOL Frank,

Sounds like you guys can never be bored with your lot! Love the selection of names! hehe
Post pictures of them!

Specialities of our pets include the ability to climb human arms (if possible, grabbing onto any hair available), liking to hide inside hands and biting the owners' fingers on the regular basis (owners must be disciplined!). Sovereign was called so due to his radiant golden color and Peony's name was given to her because of her gills that make her look like a flower sometimes. lol We so hope to get leucistic white babies (hope some had the parentage).

Update on eggs: my husband has been fiddling with BBS setups (he loves the inventing part of it), today we got a few bubbling... Now we have to wait for the BS eggs to be delivered. We already ordered them before we saw your post *sigh*, but we'll definetly consider your suppliers in future (they are much cheaper, too). And then, we've been told they can be of different grades that will determine the hatching rate (x% out of 100%).

We just noticed as our axie eggs are starting to change shape, - the yolks are not perfectly round anymore.

 

[madFrankie]

We just noticed as our axie eggs are starting to change shape, - the yolks are not perfectly round anymore.

Ladies and gentlemen...we have neurulation! What a great geek-word! That means that they're viable and you guys are soon going to be proud parents! Woohoo!

They'll be little jelly beans in a couple of days.