The care and keeping of Triops

By: Wiktor

            So years ago I got a little packet of triops eggs off the internet after stumbling on to information about these guys on a website.  I followed the directions but after making a couple dumb mistakes they all died.  I resolved that one day I’d try again to raise these interesting creatures.  Some time later I came across another package at Hobby Lobby and then promptly put it on the shelf for several months.  After reading an article in tropical fish hobbyist about Triops I set about the task of raising them and I got bit by the Triops bug.  Despite the seemingly complicated process of raising them they are generally very easy to keep if you follow the rules.

Triops Australiensis, Note the grey area just above and between the eyes.

This is a third, simple eye! (hence the name Triops)

         The Triops is a crustacean and despite looking like miniature horseshoe crabs they are most closely related to brine shrimp and daphnia belonging to the branchiopoda class.  Branchiopoda meaning gill feet describes the breathing method of its members utilizing their many feathery legs to breath.  Like brine shrimp Triops produce cysts which can remain viable in a state of suspended animation called diapause reportedly for as long as 30 years or more.  Triops come from vernal pools which are only full of water for short periods before drying out much like annual killifish.  Also like annual killifish they have a very rapid lifecycle going from newly hatched to dead in a couple months tops.  Triops come from vernal pools which are only full of water for short periods before drying out much like annual killifish.  Also like annual killifish they have a very rapid lifecycle going from newly hatched to dead in a couple months tops.  An interesting fact is that the European Triops Cancriformis is the oldest still living creature on earth, pre-dating even the dinosaurs!

Triops eggs (hint they are the stuff that looks like sand)

            Back to the story, my kit only managed to hatch one Triops (the retail packages are very stingy) and it grew before dying to nearly two inches!  The process of rearing Triops begins with the dried eggs.  Triops hatch when they come into to contact with water which is both free from dissolved organics and dissolved solids, distilled water works best for this purpose.  It’s best to start them out in a small amount of water since they are essentially the size and appearance of baby brine shrimp upon hatching.  Being so small means that they need to eat similarly tiny food sources and to this end kits all include some substance which contains infusorian cysts since this will be the only food source small enough for their tiny mouths until the Triops reach a few millimeters long.  It is best at hatching to merely let them sit untouched for a few days until you can clearly see the baby Triops then feed them finely crushed foods.  One nice thing about triops is they are detrivores and will eat anything from fish food to duckweed.  Once they reach a size where they can eat the only thing left to do is feed them whenever they need more food (they practically do nothing but eat and swim rapidly all over the place).  They require no filtration and a volume of water 2 liters or so per Triops will do.  I raised my first in a jar of maybe 1 liter in volume though he would perhaps have survived a bit longer in something larger.  The trick with triops is to feed their massive appetites without letting water become toxic but they are very forgiving and once or twice weekly water changes do the trick wonderfully.

Triops Longicaudatus, This is the most common species of Triops in the US in kits

            Triops are tons of fun to watch they endlessly zip around their homes and seem to be having a great time.  I think if they made a noise it would be akin to a little kid squealing with glee while running around in circles until he passes out.  All in all Triops are not only fun but in a lot of ways cheaper and less labor intensive than raising fish, as well as a very exciting and unique pet.

Somebody call the fun police!

An experiment with almost no-tech planted tanks

 By: Wiktor

            One day while surfing the web I stumbled upon a site explaining a planted tank method referred to as the Walstad method based on a methodology laid out in the book Ecology of the Planted Aquarium by Diana Walstad.  After reading about it I was intrigued but found myself much too busy to try it out until several years later when spring fever caught me.  I couldn’t find very detailed info about what exactly I needed to get this working but from sifting through morsels of useful information I got my materials together and began.  Firstly you will need a tank, in my test run I chose a 10 gallon I had lying around and some soil.  I used a composted topsoil material which I would characterize as a sandy loam and got a bag with probably enough to fill a 75 gallon for 4 dollars at Oakland Nursery.  You want organic material to comprise the bulk of the soil but go composted to avoid the risk of rapid decomposition causing your tank to turn into a stinky mud puddle.  I before putting in the soil rinsed it out to separate floating woody debris like sticks and such this also helped to separate out the sand giving me the better for this purpose dark rich organic material.  I then placed an inch of this substrate into the ten gallon and covered it with a half inch to an inch of gravel primarily to keep the soil in place.  I then planted it as you would any planted tank and voila!  A little cloudy but that’s to be expected.

Tank at set up (10 gallon with the new and very sleek T5 standard strip $20 or so)

            This tank has no filter for two reasons, one to prevent loss of CO2 and two to slow down the conversion of ammonia and nitrite into nitrate since aquatic plants prefer these forms of nitrogen.  The foundation of the Walstad style tank is to balance plant growth with the waste and CO2 excretion of the fish and other animals inside.  As this is the first such tank I have ever worked with I played it cautious and didn’t add any fish for the first few weeks to see how things went.  I added some snails of various types notably malaysian trumpet snails to keep the substrate aerated and to help break down mulm.

Here is the tank at about one week, nice and clear and new growth appears.

           

At the one week to two week point water parameters are more or less ordinary for a newly set up tank with minimal nitrite and some nitrate and most of which likely came from the old tank water I seeded this tank with.

Tank at about a month some euglena hazing the tank but undetectable nitrite and minimal nitrate

            At this point the tank has been running (figure of speech) a month and has undetectable nitrite and less than 20 ppm of nitrate after a partial water change.  I have started growing a little euglena (green water) but since it is not growing much I doubt there is much nitrogen available for it.  Since the tank seems stable I have added a small corydoras and a platy to add nitrogen and CO2 sources to the tank.  They seem happy enough and I will keep an eye on them and the tanks parameters over the next couple weeks but so far this seems to be a resounding success and the plants are growing vigorously and I expect will grow even more lush with fish in the tank.  All told if you didn’t have most or all of the supplies just lying around this is easily an afternoon project with supplies totaling 30 bucks or so assuming you can provide your own plants.  I think this sort of set up would be extremely good for making a shrimp tank once you were sure the water had stabilized.

     After about 3 or 4 months The tank is lush and green with not a bit of algae in sight.  The Platy died somewhat unexpectedly however the Corydoras has done wonderfully and the tank could likely handle more fish.

The tank going strong at 3 or 4 months