Coming soon: baby american lobsters

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bosoxlobsterman

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Aug 20, 2011
Messages
116
Location
Allston, MA
So I'm doing my masters thesis in Maine on the health of juvenile lobsters in acidified water, and I spent all summer raising them (several thousand) from hatch for 90 days, by which point they had all (a couple hundred) settled to the bottom and become benthic.

One group had more than three times as many by the end of the experiment, and I couldn't see sacrificing all of them when there wouldn't be any increase in scientific accuracy... so I continued to raise a few in the tanks there.

I've finally got a tank up and running for them, although it still needs to cycle before I bring them home. The background was a DIY project from this summer that I conditioned for about two months in freshwater, but never filled after that.


It's important to note that the females which supplied the nauplii were caught on a government license, and the larvae were also raise on said license; it's still illegal to own lobsters smaller than the legal size without the right permits in Maine.
 

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Looks top notch. Are you using a chiller? I'd love to know more about the set up.
 
Not using a chiller yet; I raised them at 18-20 C (64-68 F) to get a shorter larval period, and I'll probably keep them around that temp. My apartment is poorly heated on one end so I'm keeping them there to keep the temp down during the winter.

Even though they are most abundant in the cold waters of the Gulf of Maine and up into Canadian water, their southern range extends down to North Carolina. In fact, several of my professors are hoping to study similar effects over a four year period in at or a little bit lower temp water to try and get sexually mature animals.

Other than not having a chiller, I was basically just going to have a HOB filter and do frequent water changes to keep everything low.
 
Very cool and interesting. I'll definitely be following.
 
That's awesome! I'm working on my masters also. Anyway u could share ur preliminary findings. That's a really interesting topic and could have some far reaching affects. What are you gonna do with them once they are grown?
 
Haha yeah, when I get some results. I've been spending the past couple months working out the kinks in the processing part; I'm at a bit of a disadvantage because for the first year and a half being here I couldn't get any money to do my research, so I'm playing catch-up and trying to everything by May.

I'm looking at two main parts of their health - the expression of three immune genes and shell concentration during development. One paper found that juvenile european lobsters lost ~50% of their calcium and similar amount of magnesium between stages 3 and 4 (when they transition from planktonic to benthic and subsequently switch the form of mineral they use in their shells). The genes have been looked at in adult lobsters, but not yet in developing lobsters.

Perhaps I'll post some EM images of the animals and their shells when I get some more, but I don't really know where that would fit into AA :confused:
 
Oooo... for the last bit, I've already completed the experimental part, I just had some leftover that I'm going to raise and probably release when I run out of space for them.
 
They're home :p

So, I've had to take them home a bit earlier than expected; my tank isn't quite cycled yet but the system where they were housed is being taken over for a cod experiment so I didn't really have a choice in the matter. Watching nitrate, nitrite, and ammonia levels constantly though!

Tons of pics, though!
 

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Pics above are are of my fancy-dancy acclimation tank aka a 5 gallon Lowes bucket. The big guy isn't actually a blue lobster though... as you can see he grew fast than the others on the same diet during the experiment, so it's a result of less of the nutrients he needs :(


La gata was very useful in babysitting the lobsters while they acclimated on the floor...
 

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Happy in their new home :)
 

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Well, I probably won't keep them for more than a year or two, but by that time they should be a couple inches long. In the wild, though, they can get huge (I think the biggest one caught was ~42 inches long and was 40-50 pounds).
 
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