Starting to Raising Hatchlings (and a nitrate issue)

[scolopes]

I have two issues. The first is that the pH of my system has stayed at 20 for the last week and a half. Why isn't it going up? Should I be worried? My pH is a little high, could this be causing the nitrates to not increase? my ammonia and nitrites are staying at 0. I just dont know if I should be worried.

Secondly, I am going to be trying to raise some eggs to adulthood and I need to set something up to raise mysids for food.
1-what is the easiest/cheapest way to grow mysids
2-where is the best way to get them FAST?
3-any suggestions on other foods/good technique for raising hatchlings? (these are Euprymna scolopes squid- they are very small)


If I am able to raise them sucessfully I may have some to offer in the future. they are very cute (see my avatar) Any help is appreciated!

 

[scolopes]

I made a last minute change to the title which is why it says "starting to raising" instead of starting to raise...oops

 

[Animal Mother]

www.oceanpods.com is a good source for ordering live pods to start your population with. Some LFS's carry similar products, bottles with a piece of macroalgae, and sometimes visible pods.

I have HOB refugiums for our seahorse tanks. They are crawling with pods and I have a hunch that they would make great baby ceph nursery's. I ordered them on Ebay and paid about $30-$40 for them, shipping included. Here's the link to the store: http://stores.ebay.com/usa-refugium

If you can take the general idea and build your own out of something larger, it would be even more beneficial to your cause. I imagine you could take a 10 gallon, or even larger tank with a powerhead for circulation or just a small filter and a strong light, put a deep sand bed in it, a few pieces of live rock, and a ton of macroalgae, or just let some crazy hair algae go nuts in it. Probably sounds insane to most experienced marine aquarium keepers, but I have found that my pods boom in the nastiest places. The refugiums aren't pretty, but I can count dozens of pods at any given time.

 

[scolopes]

are pods the way to go? the paper I read on E. scolopes said to use mysids.

 

[DHyslop]

Here's a good article:

seahorse.org - Raising mysid shrimp as a home aquarium food