LittleRed
Active Member
I'm currently a graduate student at UNC Charlotte working on a PhD in biology, concentrating in coastal and marine ecology. My lab does a significant amount of research on fiddler crabs and right now we are focusing on a project using the Atlantic sand fiddler crab, Leptuca pugilator. UNC Charlotte is about 4 hours minimum from the coast and we therefore don't have access to a filtered seawater system.
Currently, we take carboys with us on trips to the coast and fill them with filtered seawater from the field station and we bring it back and filter it in the lab. We then keep ovigerous females in containers with the filtered seawater until they spawn, then we return them to where they were collected and rear the larvae for our research.
I know it's a long shot, but my question is, does anyone know of any instances where Ocypodidae larvae, such as ghost or fiddler crabs, have been reared in an artificial seawater mix such as Red Sea or Instant Ocean? I've been looking up papers and trying to find out if it has been done before, but most universities with marine biology programs have a filtered seawater system. We do know that the adult crabs do fine in artificial seawater, but the larvae are far more delicate and we can't really afford to risk any larvae to test it out. Does anyone have any resources or know of any instances where this has been done?
Currently, we take carboys with us on trips to the coast and fill them with filtered seawater from the field station and we bring it back and filter it in the lab. We then keep ovigerous females in containers with the filtered seawater until they spawn, then we return them to where they were collected and rear the larvae for our research.
I know it's a long shot, but my question is, does anyone know of any instances where Ocypodidae larvae, such as ghost or fiddler crabs, have been reared in an artificial seawater mix such as Red Sea or Instant Ocean? I've been looking up papers and trying to find out if it has been done before, but most universities with marine biology programs have a filtered seawater system. We do know that the adult crabs do fine in artificial seawater, but the larvae are far more delicate and we can't really afford to risk any larvae to test it out. Does anyone have any resources or know of any instances where this has been done?
