The build thread: 430gal. display

[Ummfish]

Thanks, Mike! Not much is different on the coral front. I've put in a couple of new frags. They are surviving but not thriving. I moved one of the Acans up from downstairs. It's doing fine. Maybe I just need to cover the tank in Acans.

Pro: Sure. I can sell you some rots. I can basically pull out enough for a couple of good-sized starter cultures every day (pretty darn dense). If you need more than that, I can start a new batch culture (inoculate a big container and grow it to full density) for you and harvest the whole darn thing in a week or so (which would be a whole lot of rots).

Rots are really small though. I doubt your horse would eat them. Even the dwarfs need baby brine or so.

There are all kinds of foods that you can grow rots on. They like to eat Nannochloropsis and that is easy to culture, but it's fairly nutritionally deficient. The rots'll grow fine but you have to supplement the rots to feed to anything else. There are yeast powders and algae-based products. I use a product called RotiGrow Plus from Reed Mariculture. It's expensive but the rots are in better shape to be used as food right after harvest. It's also made my cultures very stable. Before I started using it I had a heck of a time keeping cultures going.

So, let me know.

 

[prolawn_care]

Cool how much for a more dense culture? These horses snots are small and their always pluck things off of the glass and live rock... I'm assuming their either rots or copepods. But could be wrong! At any rate im willing to give it a go! Do you have any copepods?

 

[Zooid]

I use a product called RotiGrow Plus from Reed Mariculture. It's expensive but the rots are in better shape to be used as food right after harvest.

I second the RotiGrow Plus. Andy turned me on to it and I don't think I'll go back to anything else. Raising Phyto is easy but it's very time intensive. I'm trying to culture some now just for greenwater for the clown larvae.
You could always culture rotifers and copepods in the same culture. The horses are probably picking pods off the glass. Rotifers are about 5 to 10 times smaller than pods but corals will appreciate the rotifers.

 

[Zooid]

Thanks, I moved one of the Acans up from downstairs. It's doing fine. Maybe I just need to cover the tank in Acans.

LOL
I've thought exactly the same thing about encrusting montipora for my tank. LPS doesn't do well in my tank, but the encrusting montiporas (undata and confusa) are growing very fast.

 

[Ummfish]

Like I say, the rots will not likely be food for your horses. I do have a copepod culture going, but I just started it this week and it won't be ready for harvesting for a couple of months (copepods take a lot longer to reproduce than rots do). I can probably do a batch culture for you for ... $80? It would likely end up with a million or so rotifers. My continuous cultures run at about 50/mL, but I would feed a batch culture a lot more as the population built. I'm selling a starter tomorrow, but I could start it for you Saturday and it should be ready by the next Saturday.

 

[Ummfish]

Maybe I just need to cover the tank in Acans.

= the most expensive tank ever. Sigh.

 

[Mantid]

Andy, can you explain or link me to a good article on breeding copepods? Always wanted to do it but dont know where to start. Are amphipods harder to breed?

 

[Ummfish]

Depends on the type of copepod. Tiggers are pretty easy. They are substrate dwellers and just eat leftover foods. So, you try to maximize substrate and just try to keepp water quality decent. They'll eat anything they can fit in their mouth. You have to resist the urge to harvest them until the colony is really producing because they have about a three week reproductive cycle. That's pretty much their story.

 

[Ummfish]

Umm, I don't even know what to say about this photo:

The tree-looking thing, maybe some sort of colonial worm?

But there's also this crustacean(?), it looks like it's filter feeding off the pinnate antennae. (What a pose.) And there's an amphipod above it.

Sorry. I've never seen anything like this before.

These all have grown out of the rock at the base of coral.

 

[prolawn_care]

That an awesome picture!

I have some of those tree like looking things but the ones i have a red and they crawl around in the sand....

 

[prolawn_care]

Could that shrimp be a mysis shrimp? I was gonna buy 100 of so to feed the fish but just not sure if it's worth it...

 

[Ummfish]

No, it's not a mysis. They do not build homes and are free-swimming. Well, and have a very different shape. I have a bunch in my tank, I'll see if I can get a photo.

BTW, _very_ good food for the fish, but pretty hard to culture and pretty expensive. But once you get a colony going in a rubble zone, you are good to go.

 

[Ummfish]

No dice on the mysis photos. They are really fast and never stop moving. But they really look like larval fish (even more than larval fish do).

 

[prolawn_care]

I've heard they are pretty cool to just keep in a seperate tank, but i know i'd add something to the tank! And yeah they would become expensive food fast!

 

[lvlajestix18]

Mysis are awesome its the only thing my copperband will eat.

 

[Ummfish]

Do you culture them? I think my copperband is eating frozen ( ), but that means that he's not eating very many aiptasia ( ).

 

[Ummfish]

Oh, heck yeah (about the mysis in the separate tank). I _love_ watching mysis colonies swim around. It's good to have them in rubble rock, because the adults will eat all the babies if they can catch them.

 

[lvlajestix18]

No i feed frozen mysis. They seem tuff to culture. He has cleaned up all of my aiptasia problem.

 

[Ummfish]

And we have an answer:

The tall structure is a foraminiferan. They are acellular organisms that build a skeletal structure out of sand grains. In some tropical areas these are often found near sponges and build their structures out of sponge spicules. They have the name of "spicule trees."

The crustacean in the adjacent tube is indeed a filter feeder. It is also an amphipod.

These sorts of critters are common in the real world, pretty uncommon in tanks.

From Ron Shimek: http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic104709-11-1.aspx?Update=1

 

[jonthefb]

Andy, thats funny, because I was actually thinking foramniferan, but didnt think that it looked accurate! Good to know!
Cheers~!
Jon