- Joined
- Jan 18, 2008
- Messages
- 569
With the (still remote) possibility of raising another generation of O. mercatoris on the horizon, I've begun thinking about trying to culture my own baby food. $20/bottle for Tigger pods and $36/200 mysids gets really expensive when you have to do it every 3 or 4 days! (One of you creative types needs to make a smiley of an octopus stealing money from a wallet!) I'm hopeful that planning this far ahead will give me enough time to generate a substantial population of feeders!
Tigger pods - These were perfect for the first couple of weeks, but I've read some articles stating they require cooler temperatures than typical reef tanks for reproduction. A small LED next to the glass draws them to one spot for the baby octos to feed on.
Mysid shrimp - These were great feeders. They swim along the bottom and walls where the babies can easily reach them, but most accounts indicate that culturing them requires an extensive set-up and a lot of work. Gjbarord once mentioned a low-effort method with two 10 gallon tanks that yielded ~100 mysid per week, but I never found the details on it.
Copepods - I'm specifically referring to the larger species as shown in the link. Again, they feed on film algae on glass and also on fine hair algae, making it easy for babies to catch them. They are plentiful in one of my tanks where I don't clean the glass regularly (the one with no fish or shrimp) and would seem to be low-effort, but how fast do they reproduce and what kind of population density can they reach?
Gammarus amphipods - These "scuds" require more effort for the babies to catch since they often hide in the liverock, but the larger ones provide a decent meal and they are extremely easy to culture... a tupperware container kept in the dark with the occassional addition of hair algae or fish pellets seems to work fine.
Shore shrimp - I've had several pregnant females, but the hatchlings don't survive in a filtered tank. How much work is it to raise shore shrimp hatchlings to 1/4" size?
If anybody has experience culturing any of the above or has recommendations for something else, I would really appreciate your input!
Tigger pods - These were perfect for the first couple of weeks, but I've read some articles stating they require cooler temperatures than typical reef tanks for reproduction. A small LED next to the glass draws them to one spot for the baby octos to feed on.
Mysid shrimp - These were great feeders. They swim along the bottom and walls where the babies can easily reach them, but most accounts indicate that culturing them requires an extensive set-up and a lot of work. Gjbarord once mentioned a low-effort method with two 10 gallon tanks that yielded ~100 mysid per week, but I never found the details on it.
Copepods - I'm specifically referring to the larger species as shown in the link. Again, they feed on film algae on glass and also on fine hair algae, making it easy for babies to catch them. They are plentiful in one of my tanks where I don't clean the glass regularly (the one with no fish or shrimp) and would seem to be low-effort, but how fast do they reproduce and what kind of population density can they reach?
Gammarus amphipods - These "scuds" require more effort for the babies to catch since they often hide in the liverock, but the larger ones provide a decent meal and they are extremely easy to culture... a tupperware container kept in the dark with the occassional addition of hair algae or fish pellets seems to work fine.
Shore shrimp - I've had several pregnant females, but the hatchlings don't survive in a filtered tank. How much work is it to raise shore shrimp hatchlings to 1/4" size?
If anybody has experience culturing any of the above or has recommendations for something else, I would really appreciate your input!