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Aculeatus eggs!!! Help!

Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
505
Well my aculeatus beans has layed eggs. She has been brooding for now about a week and a half. I had her for about 4 weeks. So the eggs are most likely fertile. I did get a glimpse of them. They are tiny. I do know that raising these eggs are very challenging and the longest they have been kept alive is 11 days. Also she has eatin a few hermits and a little bit of a shrimp.

What i am planning to do is put each baby in a 3 in clear tube with fine netting on both ends. Then set them at the bottom of the tank. I am planning them to feed all the babies tigger pods. What do you think about this? Also what is a pretty simple way to set up a brine shrimp hatchery? Does any one see any errors in this process?

About how many hatch out of the eggs? Also about how many babies will there be?
 
This morning i got up and saw that beans (the mom) was out swimming around. She grabbed some hermits and then tucked back in her den. Do they usually do this when they are brooding? Also still wondering about my questions up top.
 
No we have not seen females leaving the eggs to hunt. Very interesting though and wanting to eat should not be a bad thing.

The best guesses on the egg counts, hatching rates and times are in Sedna's journal referred to in earlier posts (there are two posts that have direct links so you can click directly on the posts to go to her journal).
 
There may be a thousand eggs there. Then only method I know of that might yield luck (and this for squids, not octos) is a very large circular tank (at least .5 m diameter) with slow circular flow and a very fine mesh over the slow trickle outflow.
 
Go back and read the entries for "the Once-ler's eggs- parent tank." That was the best luck I had, the 11 day experiment. I would never put small egged octos in small containers- they are pelagic and need a lot of room to move. They swim mostly at the top but will dive up and down and need a gentle current to keep them moving! Both of my aculeatus broods hatched out at 3 weeks almost exactly.

I forget the particulars of your tank, but if it well established with a clean up crew and live rock, you will be able to turn off your filter and keep close tabs on the H2O quality once you see the first baby hatch out. I had a long flexible air stone tube (PetSmart) that I circled around the tank and hooked up so that it made a ring of bubbles that kept the babies moving. This was in my bow front tank so it's already a bit circular.

Pleas read my entries for the Once-ler's eggs and you will have fewer questions! It was a fun, if "hopeless" experiment that I'd STILL do over (and have!).
 
I am planing to turn off the filter when i see the first baby. Then put a airline tube all the way around the tank. My last question is i do have corals in the tank will they get affected by the filter being off? Also can any one compare the size of the babies when they hatch? I have no idea. The only thing i have heard is really small.

Also Sendna i read your journal on them it helped out a lot, but i dont have the money right now to try and set up a baby tank. Also if you stuck all your babies in one tank wouldnt they start eating each other when they got bigger?

When beans (the mom) is going to die is she going to come out in the open or will i have to check and make sure she is still alive? Sendna, how long did once-ler live after they hatched?
 
Babies will be smaller than a grain of rice. They will swim around the top, you'll see them. Try the trick with a flashlight to try to get them to swarm in the light. Of course they'd eat each other, but they won't live long enough for that to be a problem, anyway. When they hatch out you'll be amazed that any of them make it in the wild! As hatchlings, they're just food for everything big enough to eat them. I think the Once-ler and Aku both only lived about 24 hrs after the hatching. They came out of their den, you won't have to go mucking around to get them out. It's sad to see them getting eaten by bristle worms, though.
 
For the amount of time you will have with the young, your coals will not be effected but setting up the air stone will help with circulation.
 
I was looking in the tank and i saw a cluster of eggs floating around in the tank. I gently grabbed the eggs and dropped them back behind the where here den is. Do they keep the eggs connected to there arms of the rocks? Also if it is on the rocks could one have my starfish knocked it off? If they are fertile what color would they be, because they were completely white. Not even a hint of color.
 
So i have every thing set up and just waiting for the eggs to hatch. I got a question about food. Can i feed them mysid shrimp? If not what is another thing? I do have tigger pods they are pretty small. I am seruosly starting to think about the brine shrimp hatchery. Would a 2 liter bottle with a bubbler in with a light on it work? Also what is a good temp for that? The temp would be my only problem.
 
There are dozens of instructions on the net for the upside down bottle hatcher and you should be able to experiment to see if you can get one working. I tried to find you the DIY version of the link I sent for a pie plate style hatcher earlier but can't locate it. You can experiment while you wait but first you will need good brine shrimp eggs and that could be a problem unless your LFS keeps them refrigerated. I have some very old but likely still good eggs in the garage frig (from the same group Sedna used) and can send them if you will PM me with your address.

If I remember correctly, the DIY version of the hatcher is basically a shallow bowl of salt water (roughtly 2" deep) and several floating rings made from styrofoam cups sliced into rings. The eggs are placed in the floating rings to hatch and the casings are supposed to stay in the rings. A flashlight will attract the hatchlings and I think a small brine shrimp net with the handle bent 90 deg will work as a scoop.
 

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