REPLY: Aloha David: Try cutting a bunch of Q-tips swabs and taping them to a chopstick in an overlapping pattern to scrub off the algae. Leave the residue in for a day or two and some of it will go to the surface. Use a turkey baster to suck off the film off the surface and removing 1/2" or so would be okay. Bring level up with distilled water. If necessary, repeat in a week or so. Stop feeding for a few weeks makes sense.  ~~~David

May 3, 2004: First sighting of a berried female and report to Fuku Bonsai. Told that incubation period was 38 days. Observed 6-7 eggs, with swimmerets seemingly fanning water over the area.

June 2, 2004: Observed one of the eggs hanging below the others, trailing towards the rear of the egg clusters.

June 3, 2004: 8:00 AM First baby shrimp! Little transparent body, mostly in the upside-down, or head down position. About 3/16" to 1/4" in length. The head area is a little darker, tapering towards the more transparent tail area. Seems to drift, but there is obviously no current in the tank. Will "popcorn" for about 1/2"-3/4" when in contact with other adult opae-ula. Changes direction of drift, so under some kind of power. With a magnifying glass, I can see movement in the area of the four front legs that in the adults have claws.

June 3, 2004: 12:00 noon. Female shows about 4 eggs left. Female tries to shake off the babies, but they are coming off one at a time as they are ready. Can see eyes in the more "mature" babies. They are drifting all over the tank, up and down, left and right, and popcorning whenever they encounter the adults. The adults do not show any curiosity, and pretty much ignore them. Some of the babies have a light red color already.

June 4, 2004: 8:00 AM. (Friday) All babies now separated from female. Count eight of them. A few are moving while in the horizontal position, but seemingly up-side down. The babies are so small! Some of the adults have grown to about 5/8" in length. My tank started with about 25-30 shrimp. The incubation period from first observation of berried female to hatching was 31 days. This is a virtual population explosion  --- the number has increased by 25%! Aloha, David

        JUNE 7, 2004 Monday.

        Great photo with the dime, and a very good sketch. Since my tank is on my desk at work, this is a 3-day report.

        All of the babies seemed to have survived the week-end, but I would not be surprised if there are some that expire, as the tiny creatures are hanging around the edges, and the adult shrimp are streaming around, sometimes colliding with the small offspring. It is like the freeway traffic in there, with the adults barreling around with abandon.

        There have been periods where 4-6 babies are drifting around the center of the tank near the outside wall. This is where they get run into often, say at least a couple of times per minute, sometimes more often. Now later in the day, the babies are pretty much clustered near the bottom, where there is hardly any cross traffic. It was as if someone told them: "Stop playing in the middle of the road, you are going to get run over".

         I've noticed that there are a couple of darker spots on the generally transparent tail section of the babies. If the tail section was a football field, the darker areas are on the 20 and 35 yard line. Aloha, David

        I got your materials on Friday, a state holiday, so it was only this morning that the babies were isolated. I did not use the net. In my home tank I had mosquito larvae, and the shrimp basically left them alone, and they were getting fairly large, so I bought a turkey baster and sucked them up and dumped them down the sink drain. The mosquito larvae are evasive but there was enough vacuum to get them into the baster. Sometimes I got only water, but usually it worked. I even got one juvenile opae-ula by accident, but squirted it back with no ill effects so far. I decided to use the same method with the baby shrimp, and it worked very well, and with minimal disturbance to the adults in the tank. This is the only way to do it, if you ask me. Relocation and isolation was done 11 days after "hatching".

        Once isolated, I counted nine (9) babies! I think isolation is a great idea, because they are now peacefully drifting around in the small plastic container, which is just the right footprint size. No adults to crash into them, and very little popcorning. In the tank with the adults, the babies were getting crashed into all the time. By and large, the babies are still in the head-down position. The babies sometimes run into each other, perhaps because they are usually moving backwards. Movement can be in any direction, but is usually backwards; head down, with the back inclined about 60 degrees from horizontal. With the loupe I am able to observe the legs moving and these may be the only means of locomotion. The swimmerets may be working, but if they are, it is too small to see. Perhaps development of the swimmerets is necessary for horizontal locomotion. I think isolation will be a big benefit to the baby shrimp. Aloha, David