Today, these formerly tiny shrimp (hatched on Oct. 7 2006, moved into seawater on Oct. 9, moved painstakingly back into freshwater in late November by Kim while I was off sitting on a beach someplace in SE Asia) seem to have grown up. The first female laid eggs yesterday.
So, that answers one question — it seems to take about 6 months from hatch to parenthood.
I had a few sets of larvae die before these few survived, and I varied conditions quite a bit during the raising of this batch. So, in order to learn what’s necessary and what isn’t, I’ve set up three similar tanks to raise the next set of zooaes.
That’s three 10-liter tanks. The rightmost tank is heated and aerated, the middle heated without aeration, and the leftmost aerated without heat. The heated tanks are at about 80°F. All three share a single 15-watt fluorescent light. Each is full of artificial sea-water, at around 35ppt, and seeded with a few CCs of Tetraselmis culture.
And now, I wait.