who is culturing live foods, esp copepods and phyto?

I am interested in finding other food that I can culture for salt water fish. Mysis and Hawaiian red shrimp (Halocaridina rubra) are too much trouble to culture in high enough number, although European reefers seem to enjoy breeding Hawaiian red shrimp. Brine shrimp is slow to mature.

I read in a few places that saltwater fish should not be fed with the food for fresh water fish. However, some of us use the food for fresh water fish such as bloodworms, daphnia, and mysis from fresh water lakes. I read that Martin Moe experimented with blackworms for salt water fish in one of his books. (He did not discuss whether it was a good thing or not.) A lot of live food for fresh water is easy to culture in a high number. I suspect that some fresh water fish food is okay to feed our salt water fish as long as a variety of other food is also used. Those used for breeding fresh water fish is high in fat content to fatten up breeding pairs to go into reproductive mode (a switch from the maintenance level.) Grindals are great if I can use them in salt water fish. I guess I just have to try....

Tomoko
 
i raised thousands of FW angelfish with ONLY live brine shrimp, way to many people say how lacking they are nutritionally but i had great results with them exclusively for the breeder tanks as well as the grow out.
 
Instar-I nauplii of artemia is great fish food for sure. Furthermore, adult brine shrimp is not devoid of nutrition like some people say. I am afraid that a lot of them are just repeating the myth they heard. They are low in lipid content, but this can be remedied with bio-encapsulation as you know.

According to Laboratory of Aquaculture in University of Gent, Belgium, the protein content of adult artemia is higher than that of instar-I nauplii and they are richer in essential amino acids. A faster growth and/or an improved physiological condition has been demonstrated in lobster, shrimp, mahi-mahi, halibut and Lates larviculture when fed with adult/ongrown artemia.

So you see, you are right about feeding artemia to your angelfish.

Tomoko
 
Tomoko, did i understand that higher fat content foods will help encourage breeding behavior? (as in, they are healthy and happy and more likely to breed, or naturally there is a greater abundance of high fat foods during succesful breeding times of year?)
 
BBS are higher in fat, lower in protein, adults are higher in protein lower in fat, i grow them out on the live Nanno mostly which is very high in EPA and use a few ml/10g tank of Isochrysis IA for DHA enrichment.

Tim, the high fat foods allows the female to build up a fat reserve which promotes the production of eggs/fry, if they only get enough fat to get them by, they have nothing extra to put into reproduction so high fat foods promote brooding.

with the Bangaii i try to give the males both high fat and high protein foods because if their body starts to suffer from the lack of eating while holding, they'll spit the brood.
 
(in humans) dha can be made from epa? or the other way around?

since you use both, i assume fish cant do that too?

(good answer btw!)

thanks
 
i haven't a clue to tell you the truth Tim, I'm a hobbyist not a scientist :) but it was suggested to me once that adding 10% Isochrysis to the Nanno would make a remarkable difference in nutritional value and i can defiantly tell a difference in the grow out rate when i do. i use IA for space savings over running another phyto station setup. when i get back to full swing with the clowns and the Bangaii I'll likely goto IA for Nanno too.
 
Thank you for fielding the question addressed to me, JetCat. You are always very helpful and give good answers.

As for Isochrysis, I find it very easy to culture. You don't even have to set up another station if you convert one pair of bottles to Iso from Nanno. I prefer live phyto over a frozen algae paste. Instant algae is convenient but costly (I only know a frozen form of it and no one around here carries it) and can foul up water if overdosed. Additionally, Tetraselmis is also easy to culture and known to be very good for your fish larvae. It supposedly have some antibiotic effect that young fry needs.

Since you have bred Pterapogon kaudarni, you might be able to help me with my situation. My P. kaudarni has been single since it killed its mate three years ago. I am a bit afraid of introducing another one for it. I don't know if mine is male or female. My apogons (both A. cyanosoma and A. leptacanthus) get along fine with conspecific newcomers, but I heard from time to time that Pterapogon kaudarni kills new ones. Have you had any problem introducing new ones into a tank with a dominant one already in it?

Tim -

Fish cannot synthesize some omega-3 fatty acids which DHA and EPA are part of. They get these fatty acids from phyto plankton eating organisms. IIRC, copepods can produce some omega-3 fatty acids on their own.

Our body can synthesize DHA and EPA from another essential omega-3 fatty acid, Alpha-linolenic acid, which we must obtain from food.

Tomoko
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10939278#post10939278 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Tomoko Schum
...I don't know if mine is male or female...
Click to expand...
I think that pretty much answers my question but I'll ask it anyway. Is there any way to sex P. kauderni if you are not able to find an established pair? Aquarium Designs had about ten or twelve of 'em Sunday, but I'd like to get a male and a female if I'm gonna buy some.
 
you can sex them by their jaw line when they are of that age, when younger then about 8 months it can be difficult unless you've got a brooding male, you can put another male in the tank with him and he'll know it immediately :) he's never wrong either.
 
I must have had two males, then....

It's very easy to tell a male from a female with A. leptacanthus (blue eye cardinals.) A male has huge jaw and its mouth is usually full of eggs. Although they seem to form strong breeding pairs, a number of them tend to hang out together. Is this true with Bangaiis?

Tomoko
 
when they are holding it's VERY easy to pick out a male because of the chipmunk cheeks :) i know a few breeders who swear there are no differences till they are holding but i can look at the jaws in every one I've had that was mature and see a difference in the lower jaw line.

they'll hang out as a group when they are juveniles and if they are of the same brood even on up after they start to pair off But once they pair off they don't intermingle quiet as much, they tend to find their corners of the tank and stay hide out there rather then as a group out in the middle of the tank like they'll do before they start to mature. FWIW there are no strong pair bonding, the female will 'jump the fence' as soon as her mate is holding :)
 
so a few weeks in and my phyto is growing like gangbusters. i put a shop light (400w MH) on it for a few hours every other day, and they darkend up pretty quickly!!!

i split one container, dosed half in three tanks and recycled the other half, hopefully it will be full strength again in two weeks (alternating bottles); best would be full strength with no shop light. i'm not adding fertilizer this week--if i can get on the every two week cycle i'll add to the f/2 level the first week, let it get consumed for two weeks, and then dose/refil/fertilize.

next is culturing pods or rotifers?

:)
 
for me it works best to add the fertilizer to the cut water rather then topping off the cut and then adding it directly to the bottle.
 
400W MH on a 500 cc bottle? Wow, that's a lot of wattage. My overhead light fixture is a regular 4 feet fluorescent shop light with two 40W bulbs. These bulbs are very old (and dim) since the fixture was used for starting vegetable seeds for many years. Since the fixture is only a few inches above my bottles, my phyto grow very fast. I really don't think they need so much light. I hate to waste energy/money if it's not necessary.

Tomoko
 
we bought it at HD for $4 (stand alone work lamp) and i wanted to try it out, and my wife has let me leave it there for a week...i dont see that lasting much longer (imagine a foot tall work light in your kitchen and you'll realize why i dont see me getting it much longer!)

is the 1.020 just to conserve salt? it doesnt bother them to go to 1.025 when i put it in the tank?
 
Is it a MH lamp like you said or is it just a halogen lamp? You know that a MH lamp needs a good size ballast. On the other hand, a halogen lamp does not use one although a 400W halogen bulb looks like a double ended MH bulb.

1.021 is not for conserving salt. It's supposed to be the optimum specific gravity for the phytoplankton. Why do you care if phyto gets shocked when you feed it to your tank? They should be alive for a few hours even when they get shocked. You don't want phyto to multiply in your tank, do you?

Tomoko
 
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