The Escaped Ape
In The Canopy
Or a novel way of providing what I need?
I've just set up a 64g tank in Tokyo, having moved here in March. The rock I bought had virtually no life on it, even though it was from the same vendor I bought from the last time I had a tank here and, that time, it had loads of critters. I've just added a little more aquacultured rock, which came with a bit more in life (I saw some microcrustacea and a brittle star when I added it to the tank and now I've noticed a tunicate on one piece, which is a result), I still want to give the tank's critter density a bit of a kick start.
Anyway, one of the vendors in Japan that sells direct from Okinawa does a "plankton pack". Slightly bizarrely, what they do is filter out the plankton from a certain number of kilos of sand taken from the sea and then send it to you in water, carefully packed to keep the critters alive. It's an expensive way to do it. If you order the 10kg pack (not 10kg, but the life from 10kg of sand), it costs about $60, including delivery. Still, you can odd small items to the order without increasing the postage and I'd end up having to pay at least $15 for postage anyway, so maybe it's worth it (I could order my CuC at the same time). I just can't make out whether their technique is an interesting innovation or snake oil (they also sell live aragonite sand, but it's just bacterially active sand, not sand taken from the sea bed).
Google translated plankton page
What do people think? Is this worth doing? It's striking to me at the moment that I have no bristleworms that I've spotted as yet and very few brittle stars. I've not managed to find a vendor here in Japan yet that does critter packs in quite the same way they seem to be available in the US.
I've just set up a 64g tank in Tokyo, having moved here in March. The rock I bought had virtually no life on it, even though it was from the same vendor I bought from the last time I had a tank here and, that time, it had loads of critters. I've just added a little more aquacultured rock, which came with a bit more in life (I saw some microcrustacea and a brittle star when I added it to the tank and now I've noticed a tunicate on one piece, which is a result), I still want to give the tank's critter density a bit of a kick start.
Anyway, one of the vendors in Japan that sells direct from Okinawa does a "plankton pack". Slightly bizarrely, what they do is filter out the plankton from a certain number of kilos of sand taken from the sea and then send it to you in water, carefully packed to keep the critters alive. It's an expensive way to do it. If you order the 10kg pack (not 10kg, but the life from 10kg of sand), it costs about $60, including delivery. Still, you can odd small items to the order without increasing the postage and I'd end up having to pay at least $15 for postage anyway, so maybe it's worth it (I could order my CuC at the same time). I just can't make out whether their technique is an interesting innovation or snake oil (they also sell live aragonite sand, but it's just bacterially active sand, not sand taken from the sea bed).
Google translated plankton page
What do people think? Is this worth doing? It's striking to me at the moment that I have no bristleworms that I've spotted as yet and very few brittle stars. I've not managed to find a vendor here in Japan yet that does critter packs in quite the same way they seem to be available in the US.
