Vermicelli

[Vale!]

Yes - definitely an amuse bouche that would delight even the most discerning Apistogramma!

Mine are Hyalella azteca or are supposed to be - there's a few similar-looking critters that go under the name 'scud'.

[FishBubs]

Do you keep them in live water too?

[Vale!]

Um ... I don't understand 'live water', sorry.

[FishBubs]

Sorry @Vale! , by live water, i mean green water such the chlorella environment for moina

[Vale!]

Ah! I should really have guessed that's what you meant.

No - they're just in conditioned tapwater. They don't do well in acidic water (much below 6) but my tapwater is mega hard so that's not a problem hereabouts.

I've just given them a windfall tomato, so I expect them to be all over that when it comes to tomorrow's photoshoot!

[Vale!]

This morning I thoroughly inspected the first batch of 'heat-stressed' animals. The only Cyclops, dead or alive, that I could see was a lone female who was pretty much comatose : I poked her several times before she offered any response at all (that's quite enough giggling, Mr. Spuddle, if you're reading this!) and that motion was barely detectable. So I removed her and felt confident enough to add the batch to a culture proper.

I then processed a second batch. Rather than typing everything out, I wonder if this pic of my notes might suffice (it should be expandable)?



The results were: no Cyclops, alive or dead ; a few Dero worms which had somehow got in there were OK ; and by far the majority of Moina looked fine.

However there were a very few Moina that appeared motionless. They were all the same size/stage of development - I don't know if that is significant. Anyway I looked closer at one or two of them (x40) and in fact they were still operational :



Again, the still image doesn't show its little heart beating and its little legs twitching - indeed as I watched it appeared to grow much stronger. Anyway, it appears that c40C (max was 41.5C) for ten minutes is pretty close to the heat-tolerance limit of the Moina. Noted!

I wonder why I can't see any dead Cyclops. Maybe they explode or something?! I'll try them on their own at some point and see if I can figure that out.

I'm collecting some ephippia from the heat-stressed batches to see whether their hatching is affected.

Next up: scuds (when their tank lights come on) ...

[Vale!]

This has stretched my already-sketchy photographic 'skills' to breaking point! Best I can do for the mo ...

They've nearly finished off the tomato :





That tank is very murky (hackneyed excuse #214) which makes it difficult anyway. So I invited some into a bowl ...









Hardly great camera work, but you maybe can get an idea of what they're like? I'm sure there's very much better images on Google Images etc.

[FishBubs]

Images are great @Vale! . I did actually go research them after your last post , couldnt help myself. I am also interested to know what happened to the cyclops when you find out

[Vale!]

Another batch subjected to heat-stress this morning. I verified that there were multiple male and female Cyclops in there before I started rather than just assuming that there were!

The major difference between today's and yesterday's tests was that I brought the glass temperature up to 40C very much quicker today. Max temp I saw was 42.5C ; same time (10mns) held at 40C or above.

Results:

Many more motionless Moina than before - again all seemed to be same size/stage of development. After half-an-hour in a cool bowl most/all of them revived.

One Dero worm who was/is OK.

There were no male Cyclops alive that I could see and, again, I couldn't find any dead ones! So I got one from my collection, put it on a slide and held a flame under it for 3 seconds. He died but didn't 'explode' :



I'm a bit baffled by this - but at least all the males appear to be no more!

I found 4 live female Cyclops. Again they were very sluggish and super easy to catch and remove.

I found 6 motionless female Cyclops. They were noticeably smaller than the just-about-alive ones. I took one out and looked at it closer :



She showed no signs of life whatsoever. I've had her on the windowsill for a couple of hours now and she hasn't changed condition. I did take the opportunity to look at one of her egg sacs (which I've not been able to do before) x200 :



So I'm going back to a slow heat-up of the glass and see if I can keep it slightly longer at around 42C.

[FishBubs]

Hi @Vale! , what is the difference in composition between male and female do we know? I am really intrigued to how they ‘evaporated’ yet females are affected in the same way or to same extent