• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Keeping live food

dwhatley;149000 said:
Is the temperature in the dorm/house warmer now with the heat on? Also test the water for ammonia, you may be getting more plankton that is dying off an poluting the water quickly, both or either may be causing the problem. You might try using the water you draw off your tank during water changes in stead of the water at the collection site.
Are you getting your water from the beach? It's been raining a lot lately (winter) so maybe there is a lot of runoff pollution or an unnaturally high percentage of fresh water (low salinity), especially near the surface.
 
Update:
Had to upgrade my 2 1/2g tank. I received an orde rof 40 fiddlers, they were in transit for 3 days I lost quite a few. I was keeping 1/2 in a bucket. (had to keep cleaning it, very smelly) I have kittens, found out real quick that wasn't going to work, one of the kittens kept getting int them UGH! I decided to go with a 5g and same design. I have to say my system is extremely easy to keep. I just add wate revery day, moisten the sand every few days and I feed plankton krill flakes a couple times a day. I have yet to attach the little light I turn on each morning and off at night to give them day/night and a little warmth. I have never noticed any odor, must be microbal activity in the sand, it was formerly from a used tank w/some new rinsed sand. The sand bed is appx. 1" deep, they love to borrow into it. I added a couple more chunks of rock I had laying around so they can hide too if they wish. I have to say, I really don't mind the way it looks.

Photos~
from the front
CIMG7087.jpg



top down
CIMG7086.jpg
 
corpusse;149915 said:
After 3 days was the heat pack even still warm?

Anytime you are getting stuff live even if it is feeders it should be sent overnight.

This is the second time I ordered from Paul Sachs, they were suposed to come w/2 day shipping. First order was on time I lost 1 crab. This time there was a mix up, I am not placing blame on anyone in paricular, just a series of misscommunication and mishaps. I will use him for fiddlers again, things happen :roll:
The heat pack was spent, I should have taken a photo. They were extremely cold and the water was dark red and the smell, I am trying to forget. I used tongs to take the live crabs out had to dump some water so I could see them. I was shocked that I only lost about 5 initailly. The next day however I lost a few more. The ones I have left, hard to tell from the photo, I counted about 30, are very active and eating well so I think were are in the clear.
 
I'm not going to bash Paul. I have ordered from him before and have been very happy with the service. However he should not be offering these slower shipping services for live animails. I suspect the shipping costs turns many people off, but that is the cost of them arriving alive.
 
Paul does offer other shipping methods for anyone who choses to ship overnight. I been a customer of Paul's for years and have used 2 day from other vendors as well for certain animals and will disagree with there being a problem with animals that have been proven to weather the handling. When this type of shipment works over and over again, I fail to see a reason to insist that it is not a good way to ship, even overnight can go awry at times so the extra day issue is not specific to two day shipments.
 
I agree completely Miss. D, my first shipment form him was fine w/2 day shipping. Even after this misshap I plant to continue using Paul for my fiddlers. I have to say he was great about responding and helping me find my missing package. Unfortunately these things happen once in a while, what ya gonna do?
 
I am not so much defending Paul as a shipping method that works. The people who stay in the collection business have pretty well fine tuned what works a high percentage of the time and they guarantee their shipments based on success. I am doublely aware of this since I do most of my acquisition on-line AND had to write specialized code to set the minimum shipping based upon shipability of critters for the site I set up for Ken (sealifeinc.net). In my webmaster hat, I see the DOA credits and correspondence from customers and am very comfortable with the shipping they use. DOA's are rare and when they occur, they are usually not the 2 day critters.
 
An update on the new 5 gallon fiddler tank. About a week into keeping the fidlers in the new tank I began to notice an odor. :yuck: It was worrying me because this tank is on my kitchen counter. (in a section I have dedicated this tank and a 14 biocube, no food prep here) I made sure there were no dead crabs i may have missed. I considered cleaning it if it got worse. It gradually became less noticable until now I can barely detect an odor even when I stick my face right over the open tank. I have not had any losses since the first week if I remember correctly. My flat cover is working very well, no more kitten raids. I am very happy with this setup, I add water every day and throw in a pinch of plankton krill flakes, takes about 1 minute of my time each day. :sun:
 
What did you do exactly everytime you detected an odor? I wasnt going to set up a tank, rather just get a storage tote for the fiddlers? with about 1/2 inch of sand and a bowl for water and maybe one or two rocks? But you need to keep the sand moist also? It cant be dry?
 
I keep mine in an empty salt pail with two rocks and enough brackish water (somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 saltwater and 2/3 to 1/2 ph adjusted freshwater) and swap to a new bucket when I lose one or notice an odor (generally they are parallel, if I find one dead that does not smell, I freeze it, otherwise Davy Jones gets the offering). Generally speaking I swap buckets about once a week, sometimes every two weeks. I don't use sand at all and they seem to do as well as those given a sand environment. I experiemented with all fresh and all salt with one batch and did not notice a difference in mortality but I compromised and now use brackish water.
 
I was thinking that i would have to do a bunch with the sand in with the crabs, that it might worse than using just water. Because once the sand starts to smell there isnt much you can do about besides taking it all out and washing it... :frown: and it will probably start to smell faster than water wouldnt you guess? Do you just have stagnant water? Or put a pump in there or a airstone? Something? If not thats great, less work the better, as my attention needs to be on my cuttles :smile:
 
They are air breathers so oxygenating the water does not do anything for them (although Paul thinks they can also breath underwater but I have not done any research on this interesting suggestion. I have found that there is a lot of conflicting information about them on the net). You DO have to change the water and once a week if there are no casualties seems to work out pretty well. You will want fairly deep sides or you will find them anywhere in the house. There are some old stories about how far some have managed to go.

I have tried using varying amounts of sand with no live extension and a lot more mess, smell and hassle.
 

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