Saturday, February 28, 2015

Flash mob

Baby crabs love the light. Swarms of them jitterbug on the aquarium wall by a side light. Here they are, dancing attendance on a visiting Nassa snail.

She may be eating a few as she goes.

When I collect an eyedropper-full of these and look at them under the microscope, most of them are the wriggly, leggy crab zoea. Some will be copepods, and there is a certain amount of detritus; floating bits of shrimp, snail poop, shreds of algae and the like. I wash off the slide in the water, and within minutes, the critters are dancing in the light again.

1 comment:

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger