Caridina cf. Propinqua Project

**Jammer** · 28th Sep 2010, 12:06 AM

After a few short weeks:

Now the hard part begins.

**Summit MicroFarm** · 28th Sep 2010, 02:28 AM

Congrats! She is beuatiful!

**Olso** · 28th Sep 2010, 04:09 PM

good luck,like do you write,the hard part begin

**Jammer** · 28th Sep 2010, 04:32 PM

Yep. The bad part is little to nothing is known on this wonderful species. Kind of surprises me actually.

**Jammer** · 28th Sep 2010, 11:55 PM

Second lady expecting. Gotta get these rearing tanks set and ready.

**Jammer** · 29th Sep 2010, 10:58 PM

One things for sure, I won't be suffering from the lack of zoes when they are ready. Here' the latest find:

This is now three berried females. It's interesting as the first one looks to only have half the amount of eggs as the last two.

Lets get some parms:
pH: 7.4
Temp: 77
NO3: 10
GH: 6
KH: 4
TDS: 139

Picked up a small repti habitat. Looked like it was a gallon in size but turned out to be a bit short. Would really like to have 1 gallon rearing tanks for the testing. Guess I'll have to use a couple of the repti ones. Will begin getting that set up shortly.

**Jammer** · 30th Sep 2010, 05:40 PM

Microalgae and other equipment now on order. Figured I'd have a little more time to work with though.

Will start playing with mixing the salt water to get the salinities I want to start working with.

**Jammer** · 1st Oct 2010, 09:04 PM

Check of the tank today reveals (6) berried females now. The other three have about as many eggs as the first one. My first thought was that they started dropping eggs. But then I found the others still holding a ton.

Starting to work on my salinity formulas.

**Jammer** · 7th Oct 2010, 11:33 PM

Starting to formulate my salt mixes for the breeding tanks. Will start with 1/4 salt to 1/2 gallon of water and go from there. Breeding tanks are just shy of a gallon which should be good.

Have almost all the necessary components for growing the Phytoplankton. I have four specimens that I'm ready to start growing. I'm just waiting on the Micro Algae Glow to come in and I'll be good. Specimens are sitting in a dark, cool spot waiting.

All (6) females still carrying. A couple of the ones that had smaller amount of eggs looks like they dropped some. Should have a fair amount of zoe to work with still.

**Jammer** · 8th Oct 2010, 02:18 AM

I have 2 gallons of medium made up.

The first should be close to sea water at 35PPM ~ 1.026
(mix was 1/4cup + 1tbsp salt to 1/2 gallon water)

The second will be my upper limit on brackish side at 17PPM ~ 1.012
(mix was 3tbsp salt to 1/2 gallon water)

Now I'm not familiar with making salt/brackish water so these numbers may be a bit skewed because doesn't temperature play a factor in this?

Once the Micro Algae Grow arrives, I will aerate for 24hrs and retest.