I have a sick feeling I already know the answer to this, but I could use some advice from anyone with experience breeding these guys.
Nearly all of my C. elegans slings have died this last week. Here's my setup:
The heat in my gravid mamas room is 80 during the day and 78 at night. The humidity in the mechanical mom is 85%, with a fan outside the tank that comes on periodically to provide good airflow through the room. The sac hatched out successfully under these conditions.
How they hatched:
Mom had them for 2 weeks. I then pulled the sac and continued to turn it another week before opening to check the progress. We had a few clumps of bad eggs, but the majority looked healthy and we had good development. Out of 172 approx eggs (hard to count the clumps), 119 developed into eggs with legs. I put them into a deli cup, moist soil in the bottom with a soft papertowel hammock and left them in the bottom of the mechanical mom.
Everything looked good. I left to visit my sisters' for two days and when I came back, the elegans were dead or dying. My husband had kept an eye on things as much as he's able. He can verify that we had no temperature spike or power outage. Some had molted, but there didn't look to be anybody stuck in molts to suggest a humidity problem. Never the less, I took them out of the hammock and put them directly onto damp soil, thinking maybe they require access to direct water much earlier than any of my other slings. Only 32 were alive at this point.
For the next day and a half, slings kept dying, then it stopped. I have 9 1st instar slings still alive on damp soil. Was this coincidence? Does anyone have any idea what happened here? I've never had to 'water' eggs with legs before.
Nearly all of my C. elegans slings have died this last week. Here's my setup:
The heat in my gravid mamas room is 80 during the day and 78 at night. The humidity in the mechanical mom is 85%, with a fan outside the tank that comes on periodically to provide good airflow through the room. The sac hatched out successfully under these conditions.
How they hatched:
Mom had them for 2 weeks. I then pulled the sac and continued to turn it another week before opening to check the progress. We had a few clumps of bad eggs, but the majority looked healthy and we had good development. Out of 172 approx eggs (hard to count the clumps), 119 developed into eggs with legs. I put them into a deli cup, moist soil in the bottom with a soft papertowel hammock and left them in the bottom of the mechanical mom.
Everything looked good. I left to visit my sisters' for two days and when I came back, the elegans were dead or dying. My husband had kept an eye on things as much as he's able. He can verify that we had no temperature spike or power outage. Some had molted, but there didn't look to be anybody stuck in molts to suggest a humidity problem. Never the less, I took them out of the hammock and put them directly onto damp soil, thinking maybe they require access to direct water much earlier than any of my other slings. Only 32 were alive at this point.
For the next day and a half, slings kept dying, then it stopped. I have 9 1st instar slings still alive on damp soil. Was this coincidence? Does anyone have any idea what happened here? I've never had to 'water' eggs with legs before.
