Background

Zlife is edited by a water-life creatures enthusiast (a0n0p) who finding and petting shore crab since 1990.

Although it is not a professional study from the past and until now, it have already found over 30 species of crabs and tried to pet 15 species at home. 

As my interest, I have also petted water-life creatures like fish and shrimp but what I really want to do is to learn how to breed it at home in a short period of time within 1-2 years. Because if someone just catch something to pet from beach for a while is not meaningful and it may affect the natural life if catching too much or hurt them while unsuccessful catching.

For the time restriction and personal study, optimize the result and control cost as much as possible, although many creatures can breed at home like fish and turtle, it take a long time to breed that can not be studied efficiency. Another reason not to breed fish and turtle because it already have many people know how to breed. Similarly, no more than 12 species breeding or studying at the same time. Otherwise, some of them will easy to be ignore.

In the year of 2003 Oct, I have started to build a website on Zlife because I want to share my experience on creature study from the past and showing the study process with all the visitors in live.

During my petting process while building the website, I find it is hard to breed crab at home. To eliminate the unsuccessful study and make the website target (breed at home) more realistic, I decided to breed lower class of water and shore creatures. When my website have certain data and I get more skill on setting up a good tank, I will step into study breeding water and shore crabs at home.

The definition of breed at home under Zlife website

For realistic,

Only study the creatures that have clear photo or video

Under home environment,

Creatures size that no larger than 25 cm

For breeding,

Breed inside the petting tank automatically

Breed them by buying or catching the creatures from the market or wild when they have eggs

Breed the eggs by searching from wild

Possible to breed
Except microorganism, eggs be found would consider important for continues breeding or the source for breeding

In order to make all visitors enjoy these various species of creatures,
all the data will keep record, no matter it is success breeding at home or not

Breeding method

two basic methods

stable tank  ------  without add other device, just keep water and nutrition level,
                             suitable for creatures under 3 cm, microorganism and plant

flowing tank  ------  using undergravel system to keep water quality and water flow,
                               suitable for creatures over 3 cm, plankton and eggs breeding