1 and a half month at least from the larvae to shrimplet and fully survive in fresh water.

They're actually the most stable and least fragile while they're these tiny things. I mean check them out.. they survived being thrown straight into saltwater... no filtration, only aerated. Have not fed for 3 days. No idea what ph is but ammonia would probably be around... they're most fragile when they convert to the freshwater living creatures. Many are lost in this transformation according to most reports. About 50% die in this process and have to be converted to freshwater slowly, not like the larvae which can be dumped straight into full salinity..

Interesting thing, the zoes have stopped swimming with their heads down and have adjusted a bit horizontal wise. Now they look like white nike logos. The joys of swimming horizontally are upon them. I think i've underestimated their numbers. They are way over 50. When I saw the thick mass of them swimming against the back wall... I just realized how numerous they were. I'd set the estimate to about 80 to a hundred.

I've already isolated another female for hatching last night Hopefully I can churn out two batches with the same saltwater mix (kiasu). My dog ate another very expensive bottle of golden pearls... what about that thing is so nice to the dog... I dunno, all I know is it's smelly.. just like my dog. I also buying a bottle of liquifry for feeding marine invertebrates. Hope this works.

I was wrong in one of my previous post about it adopting a side to side swimming approach, because it's still heads down. They only go side to side in the morning for some reason and revert to heads down at other times. Feeding liquifry for filter feeders at the rate of about a drop a day(contains dextrin, yeast, pea flowers, egg yolk and etc). I don't see how this is for marine filter feeders only.. ingredients show it would work for freshwater fish fry too. The larger bottle makes it much more less irritating to deal with than egg layer liquifry! Not much morphological changes in the zoes. Some have grown like a half of a millimeter. Porbably the earlier hatchlings. Still tiny, but much more visible. I'm every bit the worried parent... don't know if they're eating.. too small to see stomach contents. It's white... so is it a good sign? It's always been white. They've also gained a much more visible 'spine'. It's a line of whiteness extending from head to tail. These used to be just transparent. I've read about them getting cannibalistic as it grows.. dunno if i'll have that problem. Time will tell. Water's getting a bit cloudy from feeding. A bit worried about ammonia and nitrite as there's no form of filtration. I would think about installing a sponge filter powered by an airline. Any ideas where to get a good small one?

A little update. I don't know why but I'm only seeing about 3/4 of the numbers of zoes as I used to. A good number of them could have perished. Probably from very bad water conditions. Tip if you're breeding these shrimp in a small tank.. don't overfeed. They don't eat an awful lot in the beginning. Water is cloudy, but some of the shrimps seem to be growing well, much larger than some siblings. One or two individuals are actually double the size of the smallest ones. I'll probably stop feeding for another week or two and hopefully the water will clear up and i'm going to have to get some material to soak up ammonia and nitrite as there's very little biological filtration in there.. and since it's saltwater... even nitrates gonna be a problem. Ahhh!!!! One lesson learnt... don't overfeed. You can't change the water because they're so tiny and would get sucked into your siphon.. and it's saltwater... it's hard to replace saltwater with the same salinity in such a small tank.

On another thing... the other berried female yamato I isolated dropped all her eggs..... for some reason... I put her back into the community tank and i'm still keeping the eggs. I wonder if I aerate them if they'll hatch... time will tell.

good luck with the unhatched eggs!

btw, you doinkdoink! the shrimpies so small you overenthusiastic feed sooo much :P i hope the water will clear la :P

Unhatched eggs haven't hatched yet... I think they won't ever..

Anyway a little update on my zoes. They've turned orange in colour and a few individuals have grown to about a cm in length. I can now see visible eyes on them. Growing bit by bit, and a healthy number still in tank. Will get pics when I can get hold of a camera... *glares at someone*

the unhatched eggs you put keep them submerged in formaldehyde? formalin? whatever that's used to preserve things la :P worse come to worse, use vinegar...hahaha...your very own special souvenir!

poke you ah! you think i wanna have exams wan meeeehhhh? we can try out the video method when i'm available...NEXT WEEK! WHOOO!

*glares at university of london examination body*

hahaha!

Two weeks plus and I think I lost 3/4 of my hatchlings. I can see only a few today after coming home. I think it could be because I topped up some water yesterday... and I didn't aerate the salt properly to mix it. The number of shrimp i see today is very few compared to the swarming mass I started with. Bad bad call to top up water yesterday, they seem more sensitive to things like that now. Should've left them alone. I think a rough estimate would be about 15 shrimp, and I see some have grown very large, relatively speaking. One of them look like a mini-shrimp already. I dunno when i'm supposed to take them out for freshwater. Guide says they shhould go through metamorphosis first, start behaving like shrimp and scrounge at the bottom instead of just float around aimlessly. I think a lot of the shrimp was badly affected by the top-up yesterday. Probably because i'm such a newbie with adding water of the same salinity. They probably experienced some sort of osmotic shock. I dunno. Aiyah... I read many casualties happen during the change to freshwater.. with the numbers I have.. chances are i'm going to be left with 1 or 2.

what's done is done. hopefully your yamatos very fertile la can breed many many more times

btw you beeech. you haven't replied my email yet.