My "new" shrimps

[Palinurus]

While I was in Poland to my sea water tank occured an accident which killed all shrimps, the sea urchin, the only fish, most of snails and all planarians!!! (thanks god) Only nearly all hermit crabs, small seastars, few scuds and one kind of bristle worms survived. The reason: the skimmer for proteines was full an the toxic liquid got back into the tank, the tank was not refilled with normal water in exchange for the vaporized water and the salinity was considerable high. (I must look out for some idea to make the tank fitter for my being absent.) The whole inner surface was covered by a thick layer of cyanobacteria, which suffocated all sessile beings. Now I try a new start with shrimps which are sold as food for fish and great actinia. Problably it´s the Palaemonetes varians, (couldn´t find an english name, translation of the german name: swimming shrimp) a shrimp which can live either in freshwater or in normal sea water, and in all brackish grades between these two. (of course after a slow accomodation) They swim more than most shrimps do. After some days of acclimatisation some of them got a nice pattern while other remained rather colourless and translucid. I´ve got another hermit crab, too. Its a Calcinus laevimanus with a big left claw for closing the snail´s shell. It likes wandering around the day over, and the first thing was changing the shell.

[Ulli Bauer]

Hi Wolfgang,

sorry to hear things went so terribly wrong in your marine tank!
Your new shrimp look promising, I think Heike also has them.

Cheers
Ulli

[Palinurus]

Hi Ulli

With a marine tank you need a reliable vacation replacement or a lot of expensive technical things. For the overflowing skimmer there is a simple solution, but I thought, that without feeding there would be nearly nothing to skim. Error!! And now I make some experiences for the replacement of water only mechanically, without electronic. It´s the principle of watering birds in a cage, but with 30 liters.
We´ll see!

Cheers
Wolfgang

[Ulli Bauer]

Please keep us posted.
I was thinking about something to maintain the salinity stable in my salty breeding tank, but never got around to building it...
I wanted to measure how much water evaporates (given that the temperature and the air humidity don't change - which they do, just to make things more interesting) and then just fasten the tube of an intravenous drip set to one of my desalinated water canisters. It should be possible to adjust the water supply in a way that it just replaces what's evaporating, don't you think?
Always given that the surrounding conditions don't change, or at least not very much...

Cheers
Ulli

[Palinurus]

Hi

It´s a bit more complicated. Not only water evaporates, but also there is a loss of salt. After a while everything above the water is covered with salt crystals, not only by splashes but salt is also creeping up the panes, cables, tubes etc.. But the variations normally ain´t so strong and most of animals tolerate it without problems. There is also a drain of special minerals which must be refilled from time to time, especially magnesium, calcium, and some others.

Cheers
Wolfgang