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O. mercatoris

Any guestimate on how many? If my last experiences are true to "normal" you should see the major hatching tonight. Watch for her to "poop" except what will fly out of the tube will be a new hatchling. Unfortunately, I don't think I recorded time of day on either of my observations but I know it was after dark. I will say my guess was not too shabby (3-25) :sagrin:. A full week off but for a first time guess, nothing to be embarrassed about :wink:
 
I'd say about 5 or 6 hatched today, and I have about that many in the net. I can still see another 5 eggs in the tube, and those should probably hatch tonight. I took a few pictures of one of them after I caught them, and dang these things are tough to catch and photograph.
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D can you move this to the raising eggs section?
Done! I was going to ask about moving it :sagrin:

If you catch some of the last ones, see if you can find a clear cup (measuring cup comes to mind if your mom has one of the Pyrex kind) and stick a dime or quarter under it for prospective.

I am sure I journaled my frustration at catching the little boogers. A turkey baster does a decent job if you catch them in the first few hours (they initially go to the glass) but getting them OUT was a major undertaking. I caught a few with my hand or a cup as I recall. Harder to catch but easier to release.
 
YES! The turkey baster was a pain. I thought I remembered reading that somewhere on here, but I figured it wouldn't be that bad. I caught one with it, it wasn't worth it after that.

I just wired up a red LED light. Just a single 3w Deep Red LED from rapidled.com. It looks pretty similar to what I have on my 120g, and works just as good. I can see like five hatchlings (?) dancing around on the glass. Tomorrow at work I'm going to try and get some empty snail shells to put in there just so I have some extras in there for them.

I have seen two interactions between them so far. When I went to catch what I thought was a big one, I scared them and they split off two separate ways and just now I saw one get close to another and they darted off into the tank.

I have some brine eggs hatching, and they should be ready for tomorrow and I have been putting a bit of a refrigerated copepods and a cube of frozen mysis so far. I'm thinking I'm seeing them eat but honestly it's hard to tell. Also plenty of copepods, amphipods, and really small hermit crabs in there if they are feeling ambitious.
 
Please don't use the brine or at least not on all of them. Hopefully you can get your hands on some frozen Cyclop-eeze but brine, even new hatched where there is still some nutrition from the yolk sack has shown over and over again not to provide life sustaining nutrition to cephs. They will eat it but won't survive. If you can get glass or shore shrimp, try chopping it up and mixing with Cyclop-eeze and then squirting them with a pipette. Keep in mind these are pelagic animals and they are not going to catch a lot of swimming food until their arms are longer. Pods crawl and dead food does not swim but needs to be "showered" on them.
 
If you shower them with food, they are not like cuttles and will eat with little coaxing. Finding them is more the issue with octos. Cyclop-eeze and small shore or glass shrimp are so much better for them and if they do eat the swimming brine they may fill up on null food and not eat food that will sustain them.
 
It's kind of hard to see exactly what is happening in this picture, but there are two baby hatchlings eating a ghost shrimp, one above it and one below it.
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So, even if they are tiny they can still eat quite a bit... :lol:
 
I just counted all the ones that were out on the glass and the ones in the net, I have 26 that are out as of 2am right now, with four more eggs in the tube with the mother (still alive).
 
I told you they did not need brine for encouragement! :sagrin:. Ghost/shore shrimp are a much better option. How did they get the shrimp (ie did you kill it and offer or did they find it themselves or somewhere in between?)
 

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