Mysis Shrimp Tank

[randoma]

Here's some pics of my very first real acrylic project. Outside dimensions are roughly 22"x11.5"x7".

Yes, the bottom piece really is yellow - I had it laying around and was too cheap to buy more. Of course, if you consider that it took me something like 4 hours to get all the paper off of it (really old sheet of acrylic), I probably would have been much better off buying a new sheet!

1000 micron removable screen, theoretically separates the baby shrimp from the adults. In practice, the baby shrimp don't seem to understand that they're much safer on their side of the tank and keep swimming back to the adult section! Although, a large percentage of the BBS end up on that side too, so hopefully the baby shrimp will ultimately decide they prefer their side.

I'm using two pumps right now to see if the higher flow helps keep the baby shrimp downstream. As far as I can tell so far, it doesn't seem to make any difference. I also tried keeping the light on the other side, but that seemed to effect the adults a lot more than the babies..

 

[GinaD]

This is pretty cool - how long have you had it up and running?
Is this for mysis or brine? Your title says mysis, but you mention BBS in your thread. Are you feeding the BBS to the mysis?

 

[randoma]

The mysis eat baby brine.. They'll also eat copepods, I think, but BBS is much easier to grow. They used to live in a 5 gallon tank, but infant mortality was quite high due to adults eating all the baby shrimp. The new tank has only been up for 2 days.... I still see baby shrimp in the adult side, but fairly infrequently, so even though the partition is not ideal (because the baby shrimp can go back across) it is definitely better than just a single volume!

On the other hand, I haven't quite worked out how to get the older juvenile shrimp back to the adult side.

 

[JohnK]

Cool C.S., whatcha going to build next, I can't even imagine??

I hear you on peeling the paper off of old acrylic, A while ago I picked up 3 4x8 sheets that had all sat damp for a long time. I must have spent days scraping, peeling, cursing, and scraping some more...

Is that a glass heater sticking up in the corner? If so be careful it dosen't get jostled, hit air and shatter. The little shrimp probably wouldn't like that much .

BTW, I'm going to try the tile thing for the clowns. Jeremy said %100 of the time there's a %50 chance they will go right for it.....

jk

 

[smithcreek]

Not sure if you read this article, but they did get into how to separate the smaller and larger shrimp, I think....

http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/mysisCulturing.shtml

I saved the URL in case I was really motivated some day. Those mysid shrimp are very expensive to buy live.

 

[randoma]

I had read that article, but they're manually siphoning the babies out, which seems like a lot of work to me. Plus, their scale is a bit larger. There's also an excellent article in the Breeder's Net column, which has a multi-tiered system which seems like it would work quite well if you had the space.

 

[smithcreek]

Please keep us posted on your success. Your setup looks much simpler than the one described in the article. Simple enough I might actually try it myself.

 

[Jim Tansey]

Nice!!! I think it would be a real interest to many of us if you would expand on your experiences with raising Mysis, it would be a great topic for the advanced forum.

Jim

 

[ChemDumb]

Nice to see that their's finally water in the tank. it's looking good. I was wondering how you were going to keep them from going back, but I guess seperating out the ones that grow faster is just as much of a challenge.

 

[randoma]

"Finally water in the tank"? Man, I only spent a day building this one! I think you're thinking about the 36g.

So far, the screen doesn't seem to be working too well... All the baby shrimp go over to the baby side during the day, but in the morning when I first turn the light on they're over on the adult side. Maybe the adults don't eat them at night? I think I gotta figure out some way to actually count them!