Breeding Journal, Species: Lysmata vitatta

General
Species:  Lysmata vitatta (was listed as L. boggessi in error)
Social Structure:  Large Group 25 shrimp, 15 are large/adult
Size of Individuals:  Range from 1/2" to 1.5"
Age of Individuals:  Unknown
Date added to Tank:  October 2011

Broodstock Tank Details
Size of Tank:  Breeding setup approx 1000L total.  Tank 380x610x390mm 67L 17.5US Gal
Substrate Details:  None
Filtration Details:  Skimmer, UV, Macro Algae, Live Rock
Water Changes:  100L fortnight
Water Temperature:  27.1C
Lighting:  Power Compact
Lighting Cycle:   7am to 7:45pm
Other Tank Inhabitants:  Black and White Ocellaris

Broodstock Feeding Details
Food Types:  Spectrum Thera A+, Spectrum Salt H20 flakes, Enriched Brine Shrimp, Mysid shrimp, Marine Green, Home Made Mash (prawn, pipi clam, white bait, squid, garlic, norrie etc). Occasional live brine shrimp
Feeding Schedule:  Morning and night.  Pellets followed 10 minutes later with frozen food.

Spawning Details
Date of First Spawn:  Unknown
Spawn Time of Day:  Unknown
Dates of Consecutive Spawns:  Unknown (very regular)
Courtship Details:  Unknown
Egg Size:  very small less than 0.5mm
Egg Color:  Green
Egg Count:  unknown

Hatch Details
Hatch Date:  10/27/2011
Hatch Time of Day:  10:30pm (lights were left on till 9:45pm
# Days after Spawn:  unknown
Larvae Description:  small white critters that are very attracted to light.  Movement varys, with some moving in straight paths, others appear to jump from position to position.  Others still seem to spin very rapidly.

Larval Tank Details
Temperature:  26C
Size of Larval Tank:  50L
Substrate Details:  None
Other Tank Decor:  Heator
Filtration Details:  water change and air stone
Lighting:  Power Compact
Lighting Cycle:  6am to 10pm
Water Changes:  variable

Larval Feeding Details
Food Types:  Rotifers raised on Reed Rotifer Diet. Greenwater acheived by tinting the water with Reed Nannocholoropsis, about 2ml.  Baby Brine Shrimp within 4 hours of hatch.  1ml of AmGuard for ammonia control daily.
Feeding Schedule:  morning, afternoon and night depending on food remaining in RBT

Metamorphosis/Settlement
Date of Settlement Start: 
Days after Hatch: 
Date of Settlement End: 
Description of Fry: 

Grow-Out Tank Details
Temperature: 
Size of Grow-Out Tank: 
Substrate Details: 
Other Tank Decor: 
Filtration Details: 
Lighting: 
Lighting Cycle: 
Water Changes: 
Size at Transfer: 
Age at Transfer: 

Grow-Out Feeding Details
Food Types: 
Feeding Schedule: 

Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Miscellaneous Information: 
Additional Spawns: 
S = Date of Spawn 
H = Date of Hatch 
S 03/11/12  
S 01/02/15

Note: 07/24/2012 Thread changed from Lysmata boggessi to Lysmata vitatta.  On doing more research it became apparent that Lysmata boggessi are not avaliable within Australia.  The local variety is Lysmata vitatta.

You will be required to provide photographic evidence in this thread of each event submitted for the MBI Program.
If your thread does not contain these photos the MBI Committee will not be able to approve your reports.

Adults with Eggs

 

 

 
Day 1

 
about day 4

 

 

 

Very nice photos!

Thanks, it was a  challenge.
 
I used a Canon 50D with an MP-E 1-5X lens, ring light/flash, macro extension rings and tripod.
The net result, is that focus is acheived by leaning on the desk and varying my weight on the desk (fractions of a millimeter).
 
Its a bit finicky
 
To slow the shrimp down, I put it in the freezer for about 10 seconds in a drop of water.  This chilled the slide but did not freeze the water.  I was then able to take photos and on returning to water appeared it to be ok.



 
Wow!  I didn't know a person could photograph such tiny things with a handheld camera.  They are very good photos!
 
How have you been doing with the boggessi?  Mine didn't seem to eat rotifers.  I use NHBBS, but I haven't seen able to get past 11 or 12 dph.

Thanks for the comments EasterEggs!.
 
Im not really getting that far with the boggessi at the moment. I have got them to about the same stage as you. Once they get to 10-12 dph, im finding that the prey becomes the hunter and in about a day, I have brine shrimp but no boggessi.
 
I think that I have been adding too many brine shimp and they are growing faster than the boggessi. This time round I am going to remove the uneaten brine every 48 hours and cut back a bit on the amount of live I am adding.
 
I added some Rots, to see if that would help last batch. This time I did add some (probably 2000 all up).
 
If removing the brine after 48 hours goes well, I will try using 50% frozen ones from my excess for the next batch and see if that helps.
 

Here are the latest two spawns.  These are 4dph and 3dph (in the same RBT)
 

Sorry for the picture quality, but it gives an idea of the density of food to shrimp (BBS are small blobs, boggessi are bigger and less blobbier!) .
 
For size reference, bottom right is an airline.

 
These are my same thoughts too.  How do you plan to remove the older brine shrimp?  I was thinking of using a 250-500 micron sieve to push down into the larvae vessel, then siphon the water out of the sieve which should not let any shrimp in.

They solved the problem for me by eating everything that moved.
 
Im now waiting on brine shrimp hatching in the morning to give them more.
I have feed them some frozen BBS, and a mixture of 100-200um and 200-300um aqua pearls.
 
That should hold them till the morning.

It is morning!  :p  Here anyway...hehe.
 
If you need BBS quickly you can get them to hatch in 6 hrs if you decap the eggs and then set the hatchery into a sump where they will be heated to 80F.

Big failure today.  Three batches of boggessi lost.
 
Once again I added to many NHBBS.

12/8/11 9:30pm - Two seperate spawns of shrimp. 500 to 750 fry estimated.
I have put these in a RBT with an airstone, greenwater, rotifers and NHBBS (no heater last night, as I had run out of heaters till I moved fry around this morning).
Interestingly, with one of my last batches (not listed in this journal) I somehow moved some of the batch to my Tomato clown RBT.
The shrimp in with the clowns grew faster and developed better than the ones in a RBT of their own.
The clown bucket had a noticiably highter food load (BBS) and a much faster air stone.
 
If I continue to have issues with getting these guys through, I may put the effort into making a kressel of some sort, to see if that improves the process.

No need for green water & rotifers if you are running static system with daily water change. NHBBS is enough. No need for a kreisel either. A tall cylindrical container with a wooden airstone fixed to the side will do. No big bubbles, very very fine bubbles. Change out all the water every day, replace old BBS totally with NHBBS and switch a new container or wash the old one. Do this everyday and you can get >80% settlement rate. I've done about 100 shrimp in a 4-5L container so that gives you some idea on stocking. You need to remove the shrimp once they settle, usually they hang near the wooden airstone.

Thanks for the info FuEL, its appreciated.
 
Can I ask, how do you do a complete water change per day without losing the fry?
Do you use a stand pipe with a screen or similar?
Any reason for a wooden air stone specifically rather than a regular (blue ceramic?) one?
 
The batch that I started without a heater, is going really well.  I would estimate that 2/3 to 3/4 remain after about a week.
 

Normal airstones bubbles too rough will damage late stage larvae, usually around day 10 onwards. Get a shallow white tray, pour everything out & gather the shrimp larvae using a syringe. If they are larger use a larger pipette.

Thanks
Thats such a better method than my stupid cleaning with an rigid airline and siphon method. 

I always thought a kriesel was best for shrimp larvae to keep them suspended.

RLTW

180 Gallon Mixed Reef

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8

I will try Fuel's method on my next batch.  Nothing to lost at this point!  Are glass bead airstones (the expensive ones) as good as wooden?  What day do you start the 100% waterchanges?  Why not use a 500 micron sieve to catch the larvae and backwash them into the new container?  Or is that damaging to the larvae?

Sieving them will be harmful once their longer appendages start to appear. Not sure how small the glass bead airstone bubbles are but traditional wooden airstones have always worked. Start the 100% water changes from day 1 onwards. Once the larvae are in a tray they are phototactic, meaning you can attract them to one corner with light. I usually do the water change every morning when there is not much Artemia left in the water. NHBBS at 5/ml seems to work best.

well, i gave this a go last night and they now have a much cleaner bucket.
 
I thought whilst I was doing it, I would get a count.
In the first 1/2 of the water I took out there were over 600 fry.  I gave up counting at this point.  The second half of the water was less dense, I guess 200.  So about 800 total.  This was a bit of a shock, as I was expecting 200-300 tops.
 
They are in about 30L of water in a 40cm round (16") tub.
 
Should I separate them or just continue to add about 1L per day to the volume as I have been doing?
 

Wowzers that's a lot of larvae! Good luck with them!

Try cookie jars with a diameter of around 8". The wooden airstone at the side near the bottom creates a better circulating current. If the base is too wide it does'nt happen.

At the moment, I have swapped to the wooden airstone, but its ancored to the heater on the bottom.
 
this put the airstone in the middle of the RBT.
 


Do you mean, move the airstone to the side to get a circular flow around the circle of the container or do you mean a circulating flow bottom to top?

Yes airstone to the side to create a kreisel uni-directional flow somewhat. Those airline suction cups work just fine. Wooden airstone all the way to the bottom at the side of the cylindrical vessel.

After taking a break from these for a few weeks, I have collected a spawn on each of the last three nights.  They were all smaller spawns and I have them in the same RBT.
 
I siphoned the bottom and exchanged 80-90% of the water yesterday and will continue to do this regularly.

Here are some photos from tonight for the latest batch of shrimp.
 
I think that this is the first time I have some shrimp that appear to have 5 sets of legs and have lost their paddles.
 
Again, photos are not great tonight, the little bugger did not want to stay still
 

 

 

 

 
I really like the eye's and how they look.  It reminds me of an insect eye.
 
Am I right in thinking that this shrimp is at Z9 or Z10 in terms of development?  If some one who knows could let me know that would be great.

Cool!  How old are these ones?  What type of vessel and maintenance are you doing these days?

Went back to my origional method, much like with the clowns

Started with some rots, green water and nhbbs, added more nhbbs as the got low (tried to add small amounts)

Container is a 50l RBT with a regular air stone.

Started with 10-15l bloodstock water, added ASW and RO water at about 1l per day.
Occasionally if bubbles were remaining on the surface I added 0.5-1ml of amguard

Batch has hatched from 23-26th Jan, so about 16 days old.

Removed water sparingly over this time
2x25% changes.

On checking them yesturday, there appears to be a significant die off again. Last night I could only find about 30 left.

I think this is because I let the water and RBT get too grubby.

after draining the RBT today only 5 were still alive and these did not look good.
 
I have put them in with the Lysmata amboinensis on the hope that the greater NHBBS in the bucket will encourage them to hunt.  Not really expecting them to make it, but its worth a try.

After reading Whys Alives journal on Sexy Shrimp, I noticed there was lots of talk about damaging the shrimp larvae by handling them via siphon or maybe even pipette.  I'm wondering if that might be contributing to my deaths.  What do you think? 
 
How do you go about the waterchanges?  I have just been slowly pouring the water out into a shallow tray and then pipette each larvae back into the culture vessel.  So every single larvae is handled everyday.  Also, in the mornings I siphoned the bottom of the vessel, and would siphon out a few larvae each morning which would be pipette'd back to the culture vessel.  Now I think if it there were always a few deaths everyday.  I wonder if those were the larvae that got siphoned out during the morning clean?  Also now I think of it I siphoned the vessel out into the tray with a 1/2" hose a few times near the end of the life of my last batch...maybe that was the reason for the sudden die off over 24 hours?
 
Hmmm...what are your thoughts?

It's possible, I have associated the losses with me not cleaning in time.
Another way to look at this is that I have been too rough with them when transferring/pipetting.
As there are a few instances now where ivehad big losses 1-2 days after counting them.

On my next batch I'll do 1/2 in a rbt attached to my breeder set up and 1/2 in an isolated rbt and see if I get a different/better result. I'll run just a trickle of water change to aim for 1-2 changes per day in the tub.

In terms of water change the latest lot I went back to 25-50% changes. So I'll do this again with the isolated batch.

It's possible, I have associated the losses with me not cleaning in time.
Another way to look at this is that I have been too rough with them when transferring/pipetting.
As there are a few instances now where ivehad big losses 1-2 days after counting them.

On my next batch I'll do 1/2 in a rbt attached to my breeder set up and 1/2 in an isolated rbt and see if I get a different/better result. I'll run just a trickle of water change to aim for 1-2 changes per day in the tub.

In terms of water change the latest lot I went back to 25-50% changes. So I'll do this again with the isolated batch.

I did 100% waterchanges everyday, didn't skip a day with the last batch that got to 10 dph or whatever it was.  That was also the first time I started using RODI water as source instead of treated tap water.  So I'm still not sure if the waterchanges were of any benefit.  The water I am using has been mixing for several days, but is not cycled in any way, no ammonia detoxifiers added, just salt mix.  This new batch I'm going to do daily evening 50% waterchanges, morning bottom siphoning.  Maybe the 100% changes are too harsh.
 
I hope you don't me sharing my ideas/plans/doings in your thread.  I post in your thread more than in my own journal.  Oops.

 
Not a problem at all, it great having the support of someone else trying to do the same thing.
 
I really like it.

Latest batch is still going strong (touch wood), now 12 dph

 

 

14dph
5 shrimp still going.
I have moved these from the RBT to a small glass tank.
The tank has a heater and an air line for current.
 
hoping that I can keep a better eye on them this way.

I put my latest batch in a 5 gallon aquarium with heater and air stone too.  Most of them lay on the bottom of the tank, and I've had significant die-off (~50%).  I haven't done any waterchanges, and have pretty much just been ignoring them because I've exhausted my ideas for now.  I'm kind of done with these guys until I can figure out a new method as my current methods clearly have not been working.  I'm working on building upwellers...my new plan of attack.    Good luck with yours.

I have collected a couple of spawns in the last few days and am going to give these guys another go.

Will see if I have anymore success this time around.

Well its day 15, 16 and & 17 for each of the the three batches and they all seem to be still going strong.  Im changing 20L of approx 35L  every two days by siphoning the bottom with an airline tube, then replacing the water with a dripper over about 2-3 hours.
Im keeping the NHBBS fairly high in terms of density and they are peppermints are feeding very well.

PS. Knock on wood, here is hoping that this post is not a bad idea

Latest pics from the same batch (day 22-24 for the batches)