There are probably multiple ways to do this, but it's pretty easy given anything like a friendly environment for the shrimp...and if you feed mysis frozen cubes, you're constantly providing eggs, is my theory, wihch will hatch in a typical tank environment.
My first experience with them was a mysterious rock in the DT: it had a cave about the size of a quarter which was always aswarm with small moving thing. Yep.
And they turn up in the fuge. Much of my fuge gets quite a flowthrough, being simply the middle chamber of my sump, which is driven by a 20 foot downfall from upstairs and pushed by a 2000 gallons an hour pump at the end of the tank.
There is, however, a very active colony going in one corner of a 20 gallon fuge. What are their conditions? A shallow sandbed not at all well-maintained, a massive lot of cheato making a stable wall around their 'space', a 6500 k CFL floodlight in an 8 dollar aluminum shop-light clip. They're on the 'inflow' end of the fuge, in a low-flow area created by the massive cheato lump, in a corner, and the water conditions are 'reef', meaning 1.025 salinity, 80 temperature, 8.3 alk, 420 calcium, and 1300 magnesium. There's also live rock rubble around and about, overshadowed by the cheato mass.
In other words, it's a junky area, it's quiet, it's minimal light for a reef, and there isn't much predation there unless you count a couple of fat aiptasia (no, I don't stress about a few aiptasia unless they encroach on a coral up in the DT, but down here, they're just part of that 'circle of life' thing.)
What benefit to grow-your-own mysis? Well, they WILL get through the pump alive, and they can also breed and grow in the DT, in nooks and caves, and they're free fishfood, besides adding to the biodiversity of the tank, along with amphipods, copepods, etc, carrying the kind of nutrition marine fish need. And probably doing their bit to clean up waste. Some people don't like 'unscheduled' life in their tanks, but I do: there are very few predatory species among the 'common' sorts of things that arrive, and of the lot, the mysis and 'pods are the edible sort that make for happy fish, rewarding their hunting in a natural way.
So if you have a fuge, use rock rubble to wall the cheato out of a quiet corner, feed mysis, and see if you don't find an unscheduled population turning up.
My first experience with them was a mysterious rock in the DT: it had a cave about the size of a quarter which was always aswarm with small moving thing. Yep.
And they turn up in the fuge. Much of my fuge gets quite a flowthrough, being simply the middle chamber of my sump, which is driven by a 20 foot downfall from upstairs and pushed by a 2000 gallons an hour pump at the end of the tank.
There is, however, a very active colony going in one corner of a 20 gallon fuge. What are their conditions? A shallow sandbed not at all well-maintained, a massive lot of cheato making a stable wall around their 'space', a 6500 k CFL floodlight in an 8 dollar aluminum shop-light clip. They're on the 'inflow' end of the fuge, in a low-flow area created by the massive cheato lump, in a corner, and the water conditions are 'reef', meaning 1.025 salinity, 80 temperature, 8.3 alk, 420 calcium, and 1300 magnesium. There's also live rock rubble around and about, overshadowed by the cheato mass.
In other words, it's a junky area, it's quiet, it's minimal light for a reef, and there isn't much predation there unless you count a couple of fat aiptasia (no, I don't stress about a few aiptasia unless they encroach on a coral up in the DT, but down here, they're just part of that 'circle of life' thing.)
What benefit to grow-your-own mysis? Well, they WILL get through the pump alive, and they can also breed and grow in the DT, in nooks and caves, and they're free fishfood, besides adding to the biodiversity of the tank, along with amphipods, copepods, etc, carrying the kind of nutrition marine fish need. And probably doing their bit to clean up waste. Some people don't like 'unscheduled' life in their tanks, but I do: there are very few predatory species among the 'common' sorts of things that arrive, and of the lot, the mysis and 'pods are the edible sort that make for happy fish, rewarding their hunting in a natural way.
So if you have a fuge, use rock rubble to wall the cheato out of a quiet corner, feed mysis, and see if you don't find an unscheduled population turning up.
