• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

my setup for breeding mysid shrimp

do over

well my first batch of mysids is prety much wiped out and been replaced by thousands of jellyfish hydroids i'm not positive but i think they wer in the decaped brine i was freeding the mysids, i still have some of these eggs left and i plan to do a small expairiment to see for shure but i don't have time for that right now.
i have a new culture of 400 mysids from sachs wich is a better product by leaps and bounds than the previous one i bought, the water was clean and their was nothing but healthy live mysids in the bag except for the ones that wer being eaten and they may have been live as well
i am also starting with a new bottle of ez hatch decaped brine from brineshrimp direct wich also looks like a much better product than the one from ANF. it's alot more consentrated with alot more eggs for the money and looks alot cleaner before and after hatching(hopefuly no hydroids) the color is more orange before and bright florecent orange after hatching with no black and brown flecks like the old stuf did they also seem to hatch sooner.
for now the mysids are back in the 20 long while i drain the 40breeder and clean it well(like muriotic acid well!!) thel ill give the babbie seperator another try with some 800 micron mesh i got to replace the 1000m stuff on the lift tubes.
i still have hopes for this system to work, i can allready see a differance in how much longer the food lasts in the tank without the hydroids grabing them up, i'm prety shure my last culture was out compeeted for food and i wound up raising hydroids instead.
 
I have not used muriatic acid but was going to mention Clorox (chlorine bleach) for the hydroids. They are nasty and you need to be sure you get all of them.
 
Very interesting set-up, much easier than the typical hand held seive every other day :smile:

That's unfortunate about the hydroids, they are a pain. Too bad there isn't a commercial cnidocide that wouldn't kill the shrimp.
 
im getting ready to take another shot at breeding mysids for upcoming baby cuttles. this time ive drilled the tank for a drain and return and added a sump/fuge and skimmer to help control algie and water quality, ive also made new baby sucker tubes with 800 micron screen instead of 1000 to get better separation of the smallest babys
 
looks like ill have to wait till next weak for my mysids, lousy fedex can't handle a little snow and subzero temps
 
hears the new updated setup with lighted sump/fuge,skimmer,filter sock,cheato,the whole works. this should keep the water quality up and alow me to overfeed the mysids so they don't eat each other 001.JPG
I decided to keep the bubble filter up top to help with particle filtration because ill be using very little flow from the sump when the mysids are in the tank.
 
picking up my mysids and cuttlefish eggs tomorrow at fedex, I have my first batch of brine eggs cooking now so I can feed the little monsters as soon as I get home
 
first batch of mysids was d.o.a. along with most of my cuttle eggs but I still had a few hatchlings in the bag that I had to try and feed so I orderd another batch of 500 from sachs wich showed up alive and well the next day.
so now after a little more that a weak I have around 100 baby mysids in the nursery side of the tank but im down to about 200-300 on the adult side having only fed about 50 to my cuttles so im thinking that just baby separation isn't going to be enuf to keep a self sustaining culture at least not with just one tank but at least im getting some return on my efforts and not just letting the babys get eaten and im still learning in the process and refining my system im thinking of adding a 10g grow out tank for the babys to be moved to for a few weaks before putting them back into the main adult tank unless they get fed to the cuttles first.
im finding this is a very labor intensive process and I don't think I have the ambition to continue it for very long without finding a way to improve my results and decrease canibalisum it's a good way to cut costs of raising a batch of baby cuttles slightly but my ambition for continuous breeding of mysids and cuttles is fading fast.
I would feel better about it if I had more than 2 cuttles to feed because id rather be feeding the mysids to cuttles that loosing them to canibalisum, even with 3-4 feedings a day I still se mysids attacking and eating each other and a single missed feeding will result in definite losses.
 
Thanks for attempting this - I always had a feeling that it wasn't worth the effort - and just had to bite the bullet on mysid costs in the beginning for cuttles. Raising cuttlefish is an expensive endeavor.
 
so today I scooped out the last of my adult mysids from the breeder tank to feed the cuttles then I started neting all of the ones that have collected in the baby collector side, by now the first generation of babys has grown into small adults so their wer no achual babys in their, im guessing by now they wer being eaten as soon as they come out of the tube. this is wear I believe a second grow out tankwould deffinetly be beneficial in increasing the yield of my little breeding program but with all this going on in my bedroom space for more tanks is minimal.
I think that after 2 weeks into the start of the breeding process the first batch of babbys should be removed from the nursery side to a growout tank or another breeder tank.
on the bright side I was surprised to find that I still had about 100-150 mid sized adult and juvenile mysids, some already visably carrying young so im feeling a little better about the project as a whole and im thinking it might be possible to raise my numbers back up again after the cuttles start eating frozen foods and possibly making some of my money back selling the mysids to local seahorse breeders.
at the very least I have managed to make a single order of 500 mysids last more than 3 weeks while keeping my cuttles well fed and that seems to be a lot longer than they last for most posters I have read about so im calling it a success
 
As an observer, I would call that a win and think this will be useful for others who want to experiment. If you continue with the project, please post.
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top