View Full Version : JellyFish as a pet


joreed3
Feb 13th, 2006, 11:56pm
Is it possible..??

i need cuttle
Feb 14th, 2006, 12:12am
yes. there is a sponsor on Reefcentral.com that sells them i forgot the name though

joreed3
Feb 14th, 2006, 12:15am
where did you buy your cuttle eggs from ..?

alexmaymir
Feb 14th, 2006, 10:06am
i heard that they seldom survive in home aquariums for longer than two weeks, they're very likely to drift near a high power filter and lose their tentacles or some other necessary appendage.

Colin
Feb 14th, 2006, 10:30am
It is possible to keep cassiopeia but you'll need a krysler tank to do it properly... keeps them in suspension so to speak... i think that moon jellys are most commonly seen for sale

cheers

Scouse
Feb 14th, 2006, 11:53am
I saw some in an aquarium in South England last year that was about 1metre by 1 metre. The guide post next to the tank said they needed circular flow to keep in capitivity (from memory) but it just looked like they were in a washing machine to me!!

Some kept spinning and rolling round without being able to swim properly didnt look like fun from where I was.

What are you doin...buildin a breeder tank for a giant squid?!?!? :lol:

Andy Lister
Feb 14th, 2006, 01:36pm
Cass seem to do better in a fairly shallow tank with little water movement from what ive experienced as they have a similar symbiotic algae similar to that of hard corals and as such have to photosynthesize. They are called upside-down jellyfish so that the tentacles will have maximum exposure to the light. Therefore they will also need quite a lot of light... unfortunatly they do much much better in a dirty tank. I've got the irritating situation of having millions of polyps in my tank and about 30 ephyrae (babies) blibbing around my tank at any one time. If you have them feed them a mix of coral food, metal halide lighting and newly hatched artemia.

For pelagic jellies you'd definatly need a krysal tank however which is the washing machine design which Scouse described.

~Andy

TidePool Geek
Feb 14th, 2006, 01:45pm
Hi Jo,

Because jellyfish are such weak swimmers they should be thought of as
plankton. I think that the only way to keep one for any length of time
is in a specialized tank called a Kreisel, which is a circular tank
with a circumrotating current that prevents the animals from becoming
trapped against obstructions. Do Google searches on "Kreisel tank" and
"Kriesel tank" (note misspelling) for more information.

There are a couple of other problems to think about:

1. Lifespan - Most jellies of a size appropriate for a home aquarium
are quite short lived. Don't be surprised if they die after only a
month or so. [The Moon jellies already mentioned have a total lifespan
of about a year in cold (10C) water, probably a good deal less in
warmer water. Plus, you really won't know how old they are when you
get them.]

2. Food - Jellies of the appropriate type mainly eat zooplankton.
Copepods would be best but, since they don't live long anyway, you
might be able to get by with enriched brine shrimp.

Comb jellies (Ctenophores) are another possibility. They seem to be a
bit longer lived than jellyfish but are probably harder to feed since
they are smaller than jellyfish and have a more 'delicate' apparatus
for catching their food. We've kept these guys in our flow through
Kreisel quite successfully but I really have no idea what it is that
they eat exactly. Brine shrimp would be far too big and I even wonder
whether a ctenophore could subdue an adult copepod.


Planktonically yours,

Alex

cuttlegirl
Feb 14th, 2006, 09:04pm
Ctenophores eat copepods and other plankton. Some ctenophores eat other ctenophores. They apparently invaded the Black Sea and caused the fisheries to collapse (they ate all of the fish larva). Check out this link.
http://www.imagequest3d.com/pages/general/news/blackseajellies/blackseajellies.htm

chrono_war01
Feb 15th, 2006, 01:49am
Jellyfish are very very brittle animals, it's even harder than trying to keep a ceph, in my opinon, I've kept a few jellies before, a upside down jelly lived for half a year before dying of a unknown cuase. But moon-jellies are hard! The best is to forget the powerheads and such and try to keep a single one in a salad bowl, that's how I got the best result...which was sadly still only two weeks.

Graeme
Feb 21st, 2006, 06:26am
To be honest, I dunno why anyone would want to keep a jelly... Ceph's yeah, but I can't see the attraction with keeping plankton in a tank. They won't do much more than bob in the water column. But then that's just me...

Graeme

Tturtle
Mar 14th, 2008, 12:19pm
To be honest, I dunno why anyone would want to keep a jelly... Ceph's yeah, but I can't see the attraction with keeping plankton in a tank. They won't do much more than bob in the water column. But then that's just me...

Graeme
Have you seen a movie called Bright Future? In that movie a pet jellyfish if featured. I know it's just a movie, but it seemed really cool until I started reading up on the reality of having a pet jellyfish.

monty
Mar 14th, 2008, 12:32pm
:welcome: to TONMO... have you considered a pet octopus instead? :grin:

dwhatley
Mar 14th, 2008, 10:47pm
We got very excited at the idea when our aquarium opened and had a great display but about 10 hours of research killed the idea. I even wrote to a diver collector in the keys about obtaining an "upside down" jelly that is very common there and his take was that they lived only a short time, would kill anything else in a tank (as they do in the wild where they take over) and would foul the tank for anything else in the process. There is a site I saw recently that is, however, selling them if you want to give it a go. I can't find their online store link but they also have an eBay presence:

http://stores.ebay.com/Reef-Scavengers-Inverts-and-Corals_Anemones-Jellyfish_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ1243181 19QQftidZ2QQtZkm

Animal Mother
Mar 14th, 2008, 11:11pm
They're cheap, so it wouldn't be a terrible investment, but yeah, very hard to keep. We considered turning our hex tank into a jelly tank since circular movement in the tank wouldn't be hard to accomplish. That tank kept busting seals though so we blew off that idea.

dwhatley
Mar 14th, 2008, 11:39pm
AM,
We were also going to use a hex tank (albeit 4' tall and only about 12" dia) until we decided against it. Not only are the impressive ones hard to get, are not at all suited to an aquarium, they only live a short time.

marinebio_guy
Mar 15th, 2008, 12:04am
Having worked with jellyfish before I can say they are difficult to keep not only do most need a specially designed tank that has to be "tuned in" so you get the right flow/movement but almost all require live food such as artemia, rotifers and a lot of the species are feed chopped up jellyfish that's enriched with various additives. The Mangrove jellyfish would be one of the easest to keep as they do not need the kreisel but would need high lighting and still some live food or you might me able to squirt frozen food to them. But in general jellyfish do not do to well in captivity they evetually get too bet up by running into the sides of the tank and die.

marineboy
Mar 15th, 2008, 02:34am
Well I did a small amount of research and apparently if you are willing to throw down a couple thousand or so you can purchase jelly-specific cages which are very much like the ones you might see at an aquarium exhibit.

here's just one that I found: http://www.jelliquarium.com/

this site features many different jelly fish set-ups, all of which are RIDICULOUSLY overpriced and dont seem to reliable. However, I did find a Cassiopeia specific aquarium for 1,560$ which would be the same if you had seen it at your LFS (considering how much of a rip-off they are).

Thales
Mar 15th, 2008, 11:22am
Do you have links about the reliability of jelliquarium stuff?

Octavarium
Mar 15th, 2008, 01:47pm
Jelly fish seem like a cool addition. Check out these bottom dwelling guys that are suppodily reef-safe.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Upside-Down-Jellyfish-Reef-Aquarium-Live-Jelly-Fish_W0QQitemZ290207362999QQihZ019QQcate goryZ66788QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742. m153.l1262

Thales
Mar 15th, 2008, 03:55pm
Not a cool addition at all. They are only reef safe because they won't harm anything, but the almost always don't survive very long and don't actually do well in a standard reef tank.

Paradox
Mar 15th, 2008, 04:02pm
I could see that thing chopped up in no time in my tank. =)

dwhatley
Mar 16th, 2008, 06:57am
The diver I do some webwork for suggests not considering them because not only do they die off quickly, nothing else lives in the areas of the reef that they populate. He has done a lot of hands on research (some with Martin Moe) on the dieing reefs in the keys and I trust his evaluation. If you should want to experiment (they are not endangered or even close), please consider a species only tank and start a journal for the rest of us that are curious ;>).

Thales
Mar 16th, 2008, 11:21am
If you search the online reefing/saltwater communities you can find plenty of people who have tried to keep these. So please, before anyone decides to experiment, please do some background reading! :smile:

Tturtle
Mar 26th, 2008, 05:47pm
Thanks for the welcome. An octopus might be good idea. I will have to do some research. thanks again

koaea
Mar 26th, 2008, 08:29pm
There's a japanese steakhouse / sushi bar in the Seattle area that has small fake jellies. It's cheating for sure, but obviously MUCH easier to maintain!

Look pretty real to I must admit!