I think too much trouble to scoop out the larvae. I just gonna convert the tank they're in. I gonna take out the mother and put it in a small pail and let her hatch the rest. Then I keep pouring the water from the pail into the already marine tank. Can save lots of time and saltwater like this .

The zoes have reached the sea. Full salinity now... but I can't really tell if converting killed some zoes. I definitely see less now, but there was so much debris from killed things + dying things that I can hardly see many of them. Most I counted was 5. Lots of freshwater things died, planaria, nematodes, some sort of water flea, snails.. don't have anything to feed them yet, feeding them baker's yeast which is all I have... getting golden pearls from my girlfriend's sister (who helped buy them) tommorow possibly. They also have a habit of sticking closer to the surface now which makes them even harder to see. Possibly due to the increased gravity of saline water..

Put mother shrimp in a little mug, hope to pour the water with newly hatched zoes directly into rearing tank day after day and refill until she's done hatching all of them. Hope she doesn't get too stressed and die :/. fingers crossed and que sera sera.

When they are bigger, you can keep some in my tanks...

If i got too many sure. XD. I doubt i'd be very succesful for my first attempt.

Now the debris has cleared i'm relieved to see the zoes again. Healthy number of them over 10-ish. Temperature at 27 C. Gravity at 1.25. I'm a marine noob. All I know is it smells pretty much like the sea. Didn't bother to test pH or ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. pH should be 8-ish. Says on guide that they're not really bothered by water quality.. which makes sense. I mean if they're floating around the ocean and being tiny and can only float around helplessly... least they should worry about is water quality... they're probably culled by the hundreds by just one anemone. Considering they just went through what would kill most water creatures... total osmosis shock... I think they're pretty tough. Hope to see more zoes from mommy shrimp soon.

http://caridina.japonica.online.fr/Im4011.jpg

credits to caridina.japonica.online.fr for pics

They look exactly like this.. but i'm nowhere near that sort of quantity. I dunno why my hatch yield is so low :/. Maybe I stressed the female too much by isolating her too soon into her pregnancy. Yet there's still plenty of eggs under her. LET IT GO.

Motivational speech for mother shrimp worked. This morning almost all eggs hatched. Added roughly 20+ zoes to rearing tank. I don't know why I didn't think of doing this before. Zoes a lot easier to count against a bright yellow background, they look like black dots. Will let the mother shrimp finish up and gonna release her back into the community tonight. I was in too much of a rush this morning to check if many of the zoes died due to lack of oxygen. But since the mother is still alive.. the zoes wouldn't die from being in a large mug with no aeration. Mother would die first I reckon.

just wondering how do you plan to catch those survived yamato later from your marine tank?
btw, can i use sea water directly for the yamato larvaes? heheh... took back some sea water from ... cannot tell ... lately.
;p

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I'm guessing you can, but the sea water we can easily get tends to be polluted with stuff like mercury and other heavy metals... so.. I guess if it's not polluted, you can use it. But salt mixes for marine set up not that expensive, about RM20++ you get a 2kg pack and I only used half to get the desired salinity(I don't know if it's the correct salinity). Anyone with marine experience can tell me how to test to get the ppt of salinity? Aiming for 34ppt. I've been only using a hydrometer to get gravity measurements.. you know the one that looks like a floating thermometer?

I plan to suck the larvae out with a pippete, or i'll try to get a turkey baster as the pippete's opening may be too small when it grows. If they're large enough i'll use a fine net. And I'll put them in plastic cups to slowly acclimatize them to freshwater again. This method has been described on
caridina.japonica.online.fr which I think is pretty good but labour intensive!

Came home today and I think the mother shrimp has hatched it all, no more clumps under her. Returned her to community tank. She looks kinda pale and frail. No strong markings like the females in the community. Found another 20+ shrimp at least. Zoes much more visible in numbers now. At least 50 shrimp in there floating around and whirling around. They have a strange habit of bending their bodies and swim downwards while spiraling. They look a bit like mosquito larvae with their heads hanging down. I sure hope my dad doesn't put ABATE in there mistaking them for mosquito larvae. Fed 5-50 micron Aquaz Golden Pearls and diluted liquifry. Don't know if they're eating but the water seems to be clearing up... something must be eating it. Now that the conversion and hatching is done... hopefully I can get to relax a bit as I watch them develop. Will post pics next week.

All my female yamatoes are visibly berried. From my observation the eggs go through a couple of colour phases

1. pale green
2. black
3. khaki
4. and finally white/grayish.

Khaki(tea with milk colour) seem to signal the hatching to be within a week or two. White is definitely the hatching phase in contrary to the report i've read about them hatching while in the khaki phase. I find it almost impossible to spot the eyes on the eggs like the breeders on the net have posted. I'll have to go by colour. I need to get the timing right for the future, so I can have all the females hatch in the convenient mug. It's so much more efficient than having the female in the tank by herself.. considering i've so limited tanks available.

how long do the hatchlings need to grow into a size that is stable and less fragile??