Shrimp home aquaculture

[squall7733]

Has anyone attempted to aquaculture their own feeder shrimp for their octo?

Feeding is always a huge expense and so far for me something thats constantly on my mind. I'm always worried I wont have food to feed my octo later down the road. I was wondering if anyone had resources, or personal experience aquaculturing Palaemonetes vulgaris (Common Shore Shrimp, 1" Adult Shrimp)

I've been researching a little bit about this and discovered a article at my seahorse forum about culturing Mysidopsis bahia (1/4" Adult Shrimp). The method listed involves 3 thirty gallon tanks and 10 ten gallon tanks and produces 1600-2000 adult bahia shrimps weekly (thats alot really O.O). I was thinking this producing could be scaled down to 1-2 30Gals and a couple of 10 gallons. Maybe one big rubbermaid bucket for a broodstock and a couple of little buckets. But Bahia are a little small to be feeding octos, you'd have to toss a ton of them in daily for him to have enough food (not a bad idea if you want him to hunt all day though ). So I'm wondering if this can be done culturing Vulgaris, which would probly prove to be an acceptable long term source of food.

The only hitch seems to be you have to feed the food, likely with Artemia which is what is used to feed Mysis shrimp, likely the same for Vulgaris. Culturing Atermia (baby brine shrimp) seems much less complicated then culturing Mysis, although it could just be the process used.

If it worked you might never have to buy shrimp online again So my question is does this sort of food seem possible to feed an octo constantly, will methods listed be able to produce enough to feed an octo monthly? Does anyone have experience with raising shrimp ?

Just an idea worth looking into I suppose! Less money spent on food means more money spent elsewhere.


Resources:
seahorse.org - Raising Mysid Shrimp as a Home Aquarium Food
Article written by Jay Hemdal posted on seahorse.org .

seahorse.org - The Complete Guide to Artemia (Brine Shrimp)
Article written by Mike Gilbert and Bethany Wilson posted on seahorse.org

 

[Nancy]

There's a culture article on shore shrimp at the Aquaculture Store website (the Aquaculture Store supplies a lot of the fiddlers for our octo keepers). It makes it seem a lot less complicated:

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Nancy

 

[marinebio_guy]

You can culture mysid shrimp but its the expence of feeding them artemia of which they eat a lot that can become prohibitive but on a small scale like you would be doing it should not be bad. Hovever mysids will only work for baby octo's then you will need to move to something bigger like the other shrimp you where talking about. Those shrimp you can buy a pellet diet for so it is less of a problem. However it does take some skill and trial and error. And depending on what octopus you are keeping you would need a larger food item once they got larger. Overall it is probably cheaper and less hassel it you buy your food. It would only be adventagous to culture your on food if you where raising a lot of animals(octoupus, cuttlefish).