Tieri's Dino-Bug-Fish Adventures!

[Mermaid Jaffa]

Name the next one, Lysander of Daggerfall.

[ShyMer]

How are your babies???????

[Starfrit]

Ack, I'm sorry I haven't been updating! Things got a little crazy on my end and I totally forgot about this thread! D: Here's pretty much everything that's happened since my last update!

So after Jarl Firstborn, there were 11 total Triops that hatched; three of them lived beyond the Jarl's "Delicious Newborn" stage, leaving eight-- And on April 29th, their colors had come in enough to determine that I had four Cancriformis, and four Longicaudatus.



Here you can see all but one of them (one of the Cancris is on the other side of the tank behind the gravel pile in this pic)-- The Triop on the left, on top of the gravel pile, is Jarl Firstborn. The others still weren't quite old enough to be distinguished clearly from one another, so The Jarl is the only one who's been named.

Another shot of the tank, same day:



This is around the same time that I started introducing them to some heftier foods-- up until this point I'd been dropping in some algae dust for the smaller ones, and the bigger ones were still on their hard who-knows-what kind of pellets that came with their eggs. I started adding in a couple of freeze-dried bloodworms and small chunks of brine shrimp, which they went absolutely BONKERS for. I wish I'd have gotten video, it's like the second they caught scent of the stuff they were off their freakin' heads!

Here's Jarl Firstborn clinging to a clump of brine shrimp:



It's really interesting watching them eat, and kind of funny too, because a lot of food is too big for them to eat while swimming at the same time so they'll roll onto their backs and cling to the food like some sort of sea-otter, and just sort of clumsily move around on their backs while they eat.



The Jarl, eating some brine shrimp. This is the clearest pic I was able to get at the time of his underside, which was a really beautiful crimson compared to the dark brownish-black of his carapace. He was pretty cool, and also about one and a quarter inches in length.



Another shot of some of the Longis, you can see the pearly pink and greens on these little buddies-- the colors made them REALLY hard to take good pictures of most days, as the water got murky so quickly after changing and the colors made them blend in too well for my camera to really make out. While The Jarl was about 1-1/4 inch, the other Triops were only maybe slightly under 1 inch.

Jarl Firstborn doesn't like babysitting the other Triops. The Longis sometimes get clingy.



On May 1st, I discovered that one of my Longicaudatus's wasn't having trouble getting his colors in or growing: He was ALBINO! Meet Ragnar the Red!



I also decided that I was sick of constantly having to clean out and change Morrowtank (The design is pretty, but made it REALLY hard to properly clean out the algae that had started to grow almost out of control at that point; I was changing almost half the water out of it twice a day), and decided that the Triops were all big enough to cross the border and move to Tankrim, the adult tank.

As a test, I moved the two largest Triops into Tankrim first-- Jarl Firstborn, obviously, as well as the largest Longicaudatus, Lysander of Daggerfall (thanks for the suggestion, Ireneho! ). It didn't take long to adapt to the change and soon after, Ragnar and the remaining Triops followed.

Alduin the Algae-Eater was not happy with me for a while. His precious sanctuary had become consumed in chaos as eight hyperactive Triops went crazy with excitement from the move and began to explore-- even finding Alduin's special hiding place inside the filter.

Later that night, I was checking on the Triops and found The Jarl flopping around on his back in the middle of the tank. Curling in on himself, then thrashing around, flexing, curling, thrashing... I almost had a panic attack, convinced that he was dying. Dave, my boyfriend, came in from the other room as I started to freak out and wonder what the hell was going on.

Then The Jarl shot upright and did this crazy superfast twirl in place, and-- POP! Off came his carapace.

Turned out, that's how they shed. They thrash and wriggle to split the dead exoskeleton and then spin around really fast to knock it loose. I'd NEVER seen any of them actually in the process of shedding before, and it was actually REALLY cool to get to watch. The shedding itself looks really neat, too-- It still keeps its perfect form, only its almost completely translucent. It looks like a ghost-Triop just sitting in the water. I'll see if I can get pictures the next time one of them sheds; Lysander shed today, but I threw out the carapace without thinking of getting a pic first. D'OH.

On May 2nd, shortly after I returned home from a job interview, I found Jarl Firstborn laying curled-up underneath Alduin's hiding place, unmoving. From what I can gather, he went into Alduin's hiding space, got too close, prodded Alduin a bit too much and Alduin ended up injuring him somehow in a territorial flail. The Jarl died fairly quickly, leaving a population of six.



After his passing, Lysander of Daggerfall, who by this point had outgrown The Jarl and was two inches long, succeeded in his place as Jarl Lysander.

On May 4th, the Triops had begun to mature to the point where I could now determine that my entire population consisted almost solely of females-- They had developed brooding pouches on their undersides that were already beginning to fill with eggs.

Jarl Lysander of Daggerfall is easily my prettiest Triop. Seriously, this specimen is perfect. Beautiful colors, excellent carapace shape, and her butt-prongy-things haven't broken once and are super long and flowy. The picture below was taken the other day; Lysander is now a little over two and a half inches long!



(Also pictured: Aela the Huntress, easily distinguishable by her short, kinked-up buttprongs).

The rest of the week went by pretty much without incident; the Triops have been behaving themselves, and have learned not to bother Alduin, and Alduin is being a good little worl-- er, algae eater.

On May 8th, the Triops had matured enough to start laying eggs; in a few places in the tank you could see little rust-colored eggs nestled in with the white sand.

This also meant that the Triops had begun to obsessively dig everywhere to create holes for laying these eggs. Which, by the 9th, led to another problem.

When I first set up Tankrim, I took the two decorate coral structures and laid them, as well as the Marimo moss ball, and laid them on top of the sand. The Triops quickly decided that they liked digging under the structures to lay their eggs. I lost one Cancriformis to a "mining" incident when they decided to clear all of the sand out from underneath one of the support ends on a coral structure, causing it to shift and crush them. I didn't notice in time-- by the time I had, the others had dug it out and decided that the best way to deal with the body was, uhm... eating it.

Yeah. So, that left five in the tank.

About an hour later I was leaning back in my computer chair, watching from across the room as Lysander dug in circles around the Marimo ball, effectively making a little trench all the way around. Then, in an utter stroke of brilliance, decided to dig directly underneath the Marimo, causing it to shift and roll on top of her. Thankfully the Marimo wasn't too heavy, it just kind of pinned her in place and left her wiggling a bit. I went over and used the end of the dropper to gently roll the Marimo away and free Lysander, who... Proceeded to try and dig under the Marimo again until I nudged her with the dropper and made her lose interest.

So I started looking around in the tank, and... Oh boy. Do you remember earlier when I mentioned that one of the Cancris had disappeared shortly after the move into Tankrim? Yeah, Lysander found him on the 10th. Or what was left of him.

He'd done the same thing shortly after moving into the tank-- He'd gone into the back and dug under one of the 'feet' of another one of the structures... Structure shifted, he was crushed. I couldn't see him any time I checked the tank, and with all of the digging the others were doing, where he was ended up getting buried. So Lysander ended up digging around there and found the old, decomposing remains.

I took the structure out completely and used the dropper to pick up the remains and put it in a plastic cup. I chose not to take a photo... You could hardly tell it was a Triop. And the smell... Dear god, the smell. He'd been rotting for a while-- it's a wonder the others never got sick.

With that, I decided I had to declare a State of Emergency, fill a bucket with some fresh water, move the heater into it to warm it up, add some sand on the bottom of it and move the Triops and Alduin into the bucket so I could completely clear out all of the water and sand, scrub the dirt out, and rearrange the structures so they couldn't crush any more of my Triops.



As circled--

Red: Ragnar the Red
Orange: Lydia
Yellow: Jarl Lysander of Daggerfall
Green: Aela the Huntress
Blue: Ma'iq the Liar
Purple: Alduin

None of them were happy about the sudden disturbance and move into this tiny bucket, Alduin least of all-- any time the Triops got too close he'd lash his tail and throw sand on them. He resorted to trying to hide underneath the thermometer, with minimal success.

Ragnar started having problems from the get-go, though; she was having trouble swimming around in the emergency bucket, and often moved really, really slowly when she did. I assume it was shock from the change in water; she was a bit smaller than the other Triops and not as hardy, and the water was about two or three degrees colder than Tankrim was. The others didn't mind the temperature, but it really got to Ragnar, I think.

I worked fast to reorganize the tank and get everything set up again. The process took a few hours, mostly because I needed to go out to Wal-Mart and grab a few jugs of distilled water, since I didn't have the time to distill my own and wanted the Triops back in Tankrim as quickly as possible.

That night I had everything reinstated, the structures firmly rooted to the bottom of the tank, the Marimo ball partially buried, and the water ready to go. So I began the quick process (save for Alduin, he's a stubborn little arsehole) of moving them back into the tank.

Ragnar died shortly after. It was the first time I cried over it, and even now I'm still kind of beating myself up over it. Thinking about all of the ways it was my fault, and so on.

So the tank population is currently down to four Triops; three Longicaudatus, Jarl Lysander of Daggerfall, Aela the Huntress and Lydia; and one Cancriformis, Ma'iq the Liar. Thankfully, they all seem to be handling the change in the tank really well. Hopefully things stay that way!

[MorningSun]

It's the crazyest still colest pets I ever heard! (cous I never heared abot "domesticated" triops)

I'm curious if this dynasty still lives.