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stomatopods: beautiful nightmares.

Started by Guest_Auban_* , May 09 2013 01:05 AM

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3 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_Auban_*

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Posted 09 May 2013 - 01:05 AM

for a while now i have been doing a lot of research into how to raise stomatopod larvae. supposedly, it is very difficult. in reality though, very few people have actually given it a shot and tried to take all of their special needs into consideration. i believe that it wouldnt be too hard as long as i can maintain the larvae in separate containers, keep the water clean and stable, and keep them well fed. most of the people who have tried to raise the larvae made the decision to do so AFTER they ended up with larvae. by then, its pretty much too late. they need food almost immediately, within two days they can starve to death.

those dont really seem all that difficult to me. well, it seems like it will take a lot of planning, and a lot of work, but it seems that it wont be too difficult to achieve.

so, here are the things that make them difficult:

they are cannibalistic. for this reason, they have to be separated. by cannibalistic, i mean they WILL eat each other if given the chance, not that they may.

they need live food: they wont go after anything that isnt moving, they dont eat off of any surfaces, and they have to have small foods. this leaves us with pelagic critters in the plankton. they will only eat something that is swimming through the water column. frozen foods may work sometimes if you can get them to move around in the water as if they are alive.

they have a very demanding diet. in captivity, if you feed them frozen foods and dont enrich them, they will die. even live foods must be enriched. for this reason, whatever food source is cultivated for them has to have the ability of being enriched, which is not as easy with suitable marine options as it is with fresh water critters. unfortunately, however, some of the best phytoplanktons for enriching live foods just so happen to grow in salt water...

they are very sensitive to poor water quality and organic compounds. so, dont even think about waxing the floor around them. they will all die. and you better change their water within a few hours of each feeding...(i do have plans of getting around that one)

that is the basics of why they are difficult. it seems as though the biggest part of the challenge is putting everything together to create a system that takes care of most of it so that it can be done in a hobby setting. thats the part that interests me. someone once said i wouldnt be able to, and i want to find out how to prove him wrong. in the mean time, i hope to learn a thing or two.

what i have in mind is trays, full of cups with mesh bottoms, made from PVC pipe cut to a few inches long. the cups will have mesh bottoms, will float just an inch or so above the floor of the trays(tested this already), and water will constantly be flowing underneath them from one side of the tray to the other. the tray(which you could call shallow tank) will be connected to a couple such trays, all placed on shelves one above the other. at the bottom will be a refugium slammed full of algae, growing algae just as fast as i can grow it.

i plan on growing several types of live food and enriching them with nannochloropsis algae and one or more of the live phyto products available for reef tanks. hopefully i will be able to enrich them enough to keep the stomatopod larvae alive.

anyone have any thoughts? i have been thinking about this for a couple years now, and it may still be another year or two before i get to start, but hey, the more i think about in the mean time better!

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#2 Guest_EricaWieser_*

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Posted 09 May 2013 - 01:18 AM

supposedly, it is very difficult....i believe that it wouldnt be too hard...
anyone have any thoughts?

Set a cap beforehand for how much you are willing to invest in them. I have invested the last year and $1663.64 into spawning synchiropus splendidus, a species that I thought I could easily spawn even though no one else does. I had it all planned out: I'd do several key things differently and was sure it would work. Turns out there's a reason no one else has done this. It's hard. Trying to spawn these fish has caused me so much stress that I switched all the rest of my fish room to livebearers. Sometimes you get burnt out. But yeah, so, set a spending cap before you attempt this project. And make the reward worth it. Or maybe the reward advice is bad advice; if a single surviving spawn of the s. splendidus didn't sell for minimum of a grand, maybe I wouldn't have wasted so much of my time and money and effort failing to get them to spawn. *sighs*

Sometimes there's a reason no one can get it to work. Maybe set a time limit or a spending limit, and then move on.

Edited by EricaWieser, 09 May 2013 - 01:19 AM.

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#3 mattknepley

NANFA Member

Smack-dab between the Savannah and the Saluda.

Posted 09 May 2013 - 07:09 AM

I like the tray of individual mesh-bottomed cups idea. I know nothing about stomatopods, not sure I can even pronounce their name correctly. But for a while I kept various anurans, and was interested in raising them. Tadpoles can have some of the same issues your stomatopods do, so individual containers for each tad of some species is the way to go. I had NO desire to change multiple cups of water each day. With some thought, I envisioned a plan very similar to yours, only it consisted of one long chute in which the cups were placed, and which was very slightly elevated on one end so gravity could help move the water from beginning to end of the chute, down to a filter, and be pumped back to the high end of the chute. I also had an idea where the chute was level, and the cups rested on two long rods/dowels/arms/whatever that ran the length of the chute. The arms were to be able to be propped up, so as to allow for a fast water changes. In this set up the water would drain through the bottom into a filter to be filtered over a period of several hours while a previous "batch" of filtered water was pumped in to the chute. In theory this was to happen in a matter of seconds to reduce "hang time" on the tads. Never had the time, energy, space, or disposable income to try it out. But it seemed quite logical, and hardly revolutionary. I mean, it's a lot like the runs you see in trout hatcheries, only with the ability to separate individuals and temporarily lift them out of their water for practical husbandry.

Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."

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#4 Guest_Auban_*

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Posted 09 May 2013 - 07:23 PM

Set a cap beforehand for how much you are willing to invest in them. I have invested the last year and $1663.64 into spawning synchiropus splendidus, a species that I thought I could easily spawn even though no one else does. I had it all planned out: I'd do several key things differently and was sure it would work. Turns out there's a reason no one else has done this. It's hard. Trying to spawn these fish has caused me so much stress that I switched all the rest of my fish room to livebearers. Sometimes you get burnt out. But yeah, so, set a spending cap before you attempt this project. And make the reward worth it. Or maybe the reward advice is bad advice; if a single surviving spawn of the s. splendidus didn't sell for minimum of a grand, maybe I wouldn't have wasted so much of my time and money and effort failing to get them to spawn. *sighs*

Sometimes there's a reason no one can get it to work. Maybe set a time limit or a spending limit, and then move on.

no worries there, my wife is always quite helpful in keeping my spending in check.

so far as getting stressed and burnt out, i dont think ill have that problem. i actually prefer the long journey of learning along the way. once i master something, i usually lose interest. i like problems like this because it gives me something to wrestle with for years. it gives me a drive to continue learning, which always leads to more problems to solve.

i absolutely LOVE problems like this.

the first thing i usually do when trying to breed a fish is learn as much as i can about its environment. to that end, i even went all the way down to the florida keys and snorkeled around the reefs where a few species of stomatopods live. i looked close, i took samples(legally) and looked at what might be available to the larvae as food, then did as much research as i could to get an idea of what kind of nutrition they might get. i then looked up how i might produce foods that have similar nutritional value, and looked at my options to find out what would be most practical for a hobby setting. i scrutinized everything i thought might have an affect on the larvae, directly and indirectly.

at this point, without going back to sample the reefs to see what natural prey item i might be able to culture, im pretty much reduced to thinking, reading, and discussing. well, im not entirely ok with not being able to see something and work with it, so i have decided to apply some of the ideas i have bouncing around in my head to some freshwater systems and see if they work in fresh water the way i hope they will work in salt water.

one thing that drives me right now is the monotony of studying a single topic for 14 hours a day. when i finally finish all my school work and homework, its a relief to think about something else.

Edited by Auban, 09 May 2013 - 07:24 PM.