Breeding season update!
Well, now is the hardest part of breeding season! Waiting for the crabs to do their thing and create spawns for us. I cannot wait, but I am very impatient.
Whilst waiting for the crabs to spawn, its important to maintain the water quality in your salt water pool. Crabs are very sensitive to the water parameters for spawning, and if you do not keep the water correct, the crabs may drop the spawn on the sand.
I personally have not had a spawn, but I have had the privilege of watching many other breeders, and they have asserted the fact that the pool water quality is a must.
What I am doing to maintain good quality water in my salt water pool.
- Frequent water changes. Normally I do weekly 20 water changes in my cycled salt water pool, however now that breeding season has started, I am doing it twice a week.
- Frequent testing. Every other day I am testing the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. I do my best to keep them all as close to zero as possible. If they are a bit high, I will check for debris in the pool, and if no debris is found I will do a partial water change 30%. After the water change I will retest and try again.
- Keeping the temperature of the water is important. I am maintaining it at 28C with a aquarium heater, but the heater is not coming on often, as the tank is set to 29C, which keeps the pool warm enough.
- Syphoning out the gunk the crabs track into the pool.
Other things I am doing to actively support spawning.
- Slowly increasing crabitat temperature. – I usually run my crab tanks about 29C in winter. In summer it is naturally higher in nature, and same goes in my house. Its still cold winter here, so every week I am adding 0.5C temperature to the tank. I am hoping this helps to get them in season.
- Slowly increasing the photoperiod – As days get longer in summer, I am doing the same thing in the crabitat. In winter I run 12 hours a day, however in the depths of winter I reduce this by an hour or two. I dont do large changes, I do 30 minutes a week. I am now slowly ramping up to 14 hours a day for Spring and Summer.
- I have ordered and will be stocking Nannochloropsis. I want to use this to feed the filter feeding zoea along with baby brine shrimp.
- Feeding high protein foods.
- Keeping my Krisel tank running, and regularly testing the parameters, and maintaining the Chaeto culture.