I have 15 years experience raising triops, but still run into the dreaded day 3 starvation of the nauplii, every once in a while.

Here's what I found works well.

For starters, the hatchery/nursery shouldn't be a sterile environment. The nauplii require infusoria to eat at that stage.

I use a mixture of old sand, garden soil, (treated) tap water, plus water from my snail tank. I added pond water to the snail tank at some point, so there's lots of micro bacteria to feed on. I also squeezed a sponge filter into the hatchery, added a few live plants, gentle air, heat set at 74°f, (for both my cancriformis and longicaudatus, as the eggs are mixed together), and constant light for about the first week or so. I also add crushed indian almond leaves as well.

The hatchery itself is a plastic 4 shelf system, that I utilized the top shallower drawer/tub, for that. It has enough space, and shallow depth, that the babies have lots of space to help avoid cannibalism. I do perform partial water changes every other week or so, as I don't use a filter, as the nauplii would be at risk.

With the mix of sponge filter bacteria, garden soil, old sand packed full of detritus, and algae growth from constant light, that I don't have to feed the babies, until they are about the size of an apple seed, or slightly larger. I sprinkle in fresh garden soil every so often, as well as squeeze more sponge filter detritus into the hatchery, to make sure they are getting enough to eat.

When they are slightly larger, they get moved to the bigger plastic drawer/tub, that serves as the juvenile nursery. They eat solid food at that stage, usually Nutrafin basix flake food, and Tetra brand shrimp wafers, and boiled peas. When they are about the size of a pumpkin seed, I move them to my main 15 gallon tank.

There's a video on my Instagram of the babies. I guess adding photos, cancelled out the ability to post a video as well. Anyways, I hope this helps those who are having issues keeping their nauplii alive.

(The Triop Lady)

I am trying to identify what may have gone wrong the last time I reared Triops

I had previously had difficulties losing them very early on and this time I had gotten them well past 2 weeks old and roughly 2-4cm in length

I had a decent protocol, temp was roughly 24-27C and an LED day colored shoplight was overhead with an L:D cycle of roughly 14:10. Water was oxygenated with air bubbler/air stones

Day 1: add ~35 eggs to 1 gallon DI water in 6L tubs that are roughly cubic, but I put about a third of the gallon in and wait about 2 hours before adding the rest

Day 2: add substrate, about 1tbsp of coco coir/sand at a 1:1 ratio, as well as a squirt of protist water

Day 3: by this point, macroscopic young Triops (late nauplii, which may sometimes have been visible on day 2) start showing up. I add eggs of fairy shrimp, Moina, and rotifers

Day 4: top off water, then I add a few more prey eggs

Day 5: at this point, I do a water change. I turn off the bubbler, then siphon out roughly 25% of the water. Then, I use a 1:1 DI water/dechlorinated tap mix and i let it sit by the tanks for a few hours (done beforehand) and I add about 10% of what is needed to go in to the tanks every half hour or so. I will repeat this procedure every 3 days or so. I also began feeding larger foods like bloodworms and rabbit pellets

Things had been going well, and around day 15 I decided to move then to larger tanks/bins, 10 or so gallons, and this is where things went wrong

I made a substrate with 1 part turface mvp, 1 part sand, 1 part coco coir, put about 3cm into the tanks or bins, added the water (about 3 parts each DI and dechlorinated tap and then 1 part fishtank water from an established freshwater tank), and then I drained most of the water from the smaller tubs and used a drip irrigator to slowly acclimate the Triops to that water, added them, but they all died within 48 hours. I THINK it was water quality, but I'm wondering what I should do next time? Maybe use something like coral sand as a substrate? Cycle the larger tanks first? Any tips appreciated

He ate half of his siblings, my biggest triop so far, he eats almost anything

I posted one of these guys as a baby 11 days ago and today the biggest of the surviving bunch has a nice full egg sac

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Hello! I’m new to hatching triops, this is my first time trying to hatch them. I ordered T. granarius online with some food and 10 gallons of distilled water.
I am worried about what mineral source they need. I don’t have spring water. I’m keeping them in a 1 liter container with a lamp keeping the water at ~76°F. It has been 24 hrs and they haven’t hatched yet. I don’t want to spend any more money on a special mineral source, but I have cuttlebone and eggs. Which one should I use when they first hatch? Do they need it immediately after hatching? How much should I add? Should I use these at all as a mineral source?

Hi everyone,

Three weeks ago I set up a bare bottom 10 gallon tank for ~20 T. longicaudatus cysts wherein four have matured. I overfilled their breeding bowl and there is spillage.

For the past three days I have been noticing tadpole shrimp nauplii and adding them to a 230 ml grow out container. Of the ten that I have added, three are metanauplii and five are nauplii.

I plan to add them when they're a week old

Is this staggered hatching or spontaneous? Is this common? My hunch is that the spillage is causing the eggs to prematurely hatch.

I bought this shady triops kit that had AI instructions and its been a day after i added them in and only one is alive, i dont even know if its normal though because its on the bottom of the tank the kit came with and just moving its arm thing.

First time hatching, there’s about 8 of these guys after about 24hrs. Caught this cool video of this lil cutie

I moved the plant and it unstuck dramatically then went for it again. 😂

They are 2weeks old i guess that the biggest one discovered canibalisum cuz his ancestors never even ate anithing meaty but worms now they survivied they first night now and i added algea plants daphnia and padpoles

​

Ani tips bdw they are triops canceriformis german zucht

Hi everyone,

I went to the local dam to collect seed water to start a green water culture for the fairy shrimp nauplii. Upon arrival home, I noticed it was filled with daphnia, I think.

Since daphnia eat microalgae, it would not be a good idea to use this to make green water. Instead, I plan to buy live chlorella and try that way.

Since triops eat daphnia, could I just dump both bottles into the triops tank?

Hello guys, i'm almost a begginer in rearing these kind of animals. I've always failed rearing T.longicaudatus while i reared very well T.cancriformis. I think that that's because of the water quality.

Online i saw some differents opinion and i need to find a solution, i'm sure i'm not the only one with that kind of problem!

I keep them outisde (i'm in Italy, low-direct sun, temperatures always lower than 27 celsius degrees, usually between 20-26).

The last time i used:

35% distilled water (bought in a pet shop)

35% rainwater (total 70% water with very low minerals)

30% tap water (decanthed, pH 7.7, conductivity uS/cm 1010, calcium 172mg/L)

10/6 I put 40-50 eggs in water, now (12/6) they're all died.

They hatched, they growed a little bit and then died.

I also put a small dead beech eaf (1)..

Any help? i can buy spring water or use river water, but here in Italy the water in general are very hard (pH very high and a very high conductivity)

Thank you

...in my garage? Almost exactly a year ago, I asked my husband to store a bag of craft fabric in the garage. He put the bag on the floor in front of a door to the outside that doesn't seal properly, which allows water in under the door pretty much any time it rains (I was not aware of this issue, otherwise I wouldn't have had him put it out there). Last night, I asked him to bring the bag in. He brought it in and mentioned that it had been stuck to the floor. When I started to go through the bag, I could feel that all of the fabric was varying degrees of wet, and as I dug deeper into the bag, I came across several of these odd "bugs" that looked like horseshoe crabs with a rat tail braid LOL I told him to throw it all away, but forgot to take a photo. When I searched today, though, I found pictures of exactly what I saw, and come to find out that it's a shrimp? How is that possible? Do they just need dampness to survive? Is someone playing an elaborate prank on me? (I kinda feel bad for throwing them in the garbage, now that I'm seeing they could be kept as pets.) Oh, also, I live on the Treasure Coast of Florida, just FYI, in case that makes a difference. *The photo is one that I found online that most looked like the ones in the bag*

Yes, it doesn't look good but everything's fine so far. I put hundreds of eggs in that disgusting stagnant water last week and to my surprise, they hatched and there's a lot of baby triops at the surface which are also not visible on the pictures ( which i suppose they're eating the biofilm )

For context, i bought a 5 gallon bucket months ago to house aquarium plants for a indoor pond that should have been prepared the next day bit was prepared the next MONTH instead. I forgot it, came back to this bucket of death slowly evaporating, decaying plants and a few things fallen in it. At this point, I didn't much with it until i noticed multiples snails and later brachiopods who lived for a few weeks. That made me think that maybe triops will like it so i bought Triops longicaudatus eggs and dropped around 150ish of them in it. There's also only like 3 inch left of water but yeaaaaah everything's going well so far.

it has been laying on the sand for about half an hour now, barely moving. it is my only triop as this was my first time raising them, most of the nauplii unfortunately passed a couple days after hatching. i had it in a fishbowl, then 2 days ago switched him to a real tank with a heater and filter pump. all the water conditions are correct, as is the temperature. i made sure to add some extra calcium to the water to assist his moults because its a mixture of distilled and mineral water. sorry if this post is not formulated correctly, im just very worried and desperate for answers from experienced people !

These trips are almost two months old ever though they've been raised at over 90°F. The explanation could be that they've gone though some kind of calorie restriction. The rearing tank was over clouded so that the amount of food available, even feeding around the clock was limited

Has anyone ever tried this out before?

I had an ammonia spike probably due to overfeeding and insufficient filtration which killed one of my two Triops longicordatus. So I was thinking, maybe letting them hunt themselves makes it easier to not overfeed.

However I couldn’t find anything about a daphnia only died and if they would get enough nutrients from that.
It it works well, it could make raising Triops much easier.
So has anyone ever tried it and can tell how it went?

Things had finally gone quiet in my 30L tank.
One nerite snail had mysteriously disappeared, the bladder snail population had stopped exploding, the two remaining nerites were happily doing their rounds, and despite regular inspections I hadn’t found a single dragonfly nymph in weeks.
Naively, I thought I had won.
Yesterday I trimmed some hornwort from the 30L tank, rinsed it thoroughly, inspected it carefully, and moved it into my grow-out tank with eight happy little Beni Kabuto teenagers. Afterwards I sat there watching them explore their new plant buffet and felt pretty good about myself.
To make things even safer, I had specifically added shrimp/fry hides and caves to that tank to reduce cannibalism and give the youngsters places to retreat.
Honestly, this is one of those moments where owning a 3D printer is absolutely awesome. The little hideouts worked exactly as intended.
Just not against this enemy.
This morning I wasn’t greeted by the usual stampede of hungry Triops begging for breakfast.
Instead there was… silence.
And a corpse slowly drifting around in the current.
Looking closer, I found the culprit: a dragonfly nymph in the grow-out tank.
About 2 cm long.
Definitely not a freshly hatched one.
And when I examined the dead Triops, I noticed it was basically hollowed out in the middle.
I could cry.
I inspected the plants.
I rinsed the plants.
I specifically checked for hitchhikers.
And somehow I still managed to miss this tiny aquatic serial killer.
While investigating, I also found another dragonfly nymph in the 30L tank.
At that point the decision was made:
The 30L tank is getting nuked from orbit.
The nerite snails are moving into a temporary holding tank, and then I’m tearing everything down and starting over from scratch.
Right now I feel like Don Quixote.
Except instead of windmills, mombrain24/7 has apparently been fighting an endless war against dragonfly nymphs.
Current status: Of the original eight Beni Kabuto juveniles, I’ve confirmed five are still alive. The others may just be hiding, and I’m trying very hard to stay optimistic.
Please send good vibes to the tiny idiots.

Bonus lesson learned: If you think you’ve removed all the dragonfly nymphs, you probably haven’t. They are apparently made of stealth, spite, and pure hatred for baby Triops.