So Far So Good with P. venusta

Today is day 8 for the P. venusta larvae and they're doing well. Because I have a dark floor on the tank I cannot see the deeper larvae and I have no clue how many we have left. There are definitely quite a few less than we started with and that is expected. I am happy with the numbers I am seeing and not being able to get a good count just makes things difficult in terms of collecting data.

The following photos were taken yesterday at day 7.

Most of the larvae are fairly uniform in their development. When viewed from the top the gut is plump and the larvae are looking strong. Here is a larva viewed from the side. Notice the pink/red hue which is the vascular development at 40x.

Here is a closer look at 100x of the vascular development, (the red veins).

I always like to check the gut and here is a nice plump tummy.

Here is the gut at 100x and you can make out some semi digested copepod body parts.

The larvae are certainly feeding well and yesterday I had to add 117,150 food items which consisted of both cultured copepods and wild caught plankton.