livingart

Artemia Culture: Use a clear two litre soft drink bottle with the cap still attached, wash bottle to remove all drink residue. The bottom can be cut off the bottle then a 4mm hole drilled in the cap and a length of airline siliconed into the cap. I use another bottle cut at halfway to support the first bottle inverted in it then fix airline to valve then to the air pump, a one way valve can be put inline to prevent any backflow of water to pump. Put 1 litre of NSW (Natural Salt Water) or 1 litre of fresh water with four tablespoons of sea salt added to it, or 2tablespoons and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda then add 6–8 grams of Artemia cysts, and start gentle bubbles flowing. After 24 hours they should be ready to harvest, I do this by turning the air off and letting them settle, once settled I remove airline from the valve and let this run into a collection cup. Strain the nauplii through a brine shrimp net, rinse with clean salt water and feed out immediately. Filters: Some people use air powered sponge filters but they need cleaning in fresh salt water 1 to 2 times weekly as they can be fouled by Artemia naupulii quite quickly, the small plastic Bio-filters can be used and coral rubble can be used for bio-media as these do not need cleaning as regularly. Various hydroids and other "pests" can show up, (mainly in the brood aquariums) and need to be removed by stripping down that tank. At the very least, these hydroids compete with the Mysids for food, and at the worst, they may actually consume juvenile

CULTURING MYSID SHRIMP Various species of Mysid shrimp are cultured as live food for aquatic animals which prefer living foods, such as zooplanktivorous feeding fish, Anthias,seahorses and pipefish. Most other fishes relish live Mysid in their diet. This is the method I have used which includes phyto plankton and Artemia nauplii as a food source for the mysid as well. Equipment: I Use two 120 litre aquariums and twelve 20 litre plastic containers that I fill with NSW or synthetic seawater with a salinity of 1.025, water filtration is by air powered biological filters which I ran in the sump of a mature system four weeks to pre-establish the bacteria in them. An Artemia system capable of hatching from 8 to 10 grams of cysts (dry weight) per day is also required. Average water quality for mysid culture tanks: Temperature = 20°C Salinity = 20–22ppt pH = 8.2 Light = 6500k Ammonia = 0.1 mg/l Nitrite = 0.01 mg/l Beginning the Mysid Culture: To start you need as many Mysid as you can obtain from your own tank or there are areas where they can be found in the wild in N.Z. These are then added to one of the larger aquariums, I then start feeding newly hatched Artemia nauplii twice daily to these. When the mysid start spawning, the female's have a white brood pouch, I use a fairly coarse net to remove the adults into the next large tank, then a finer net is used to move young to the smaller containers for growing on. When adults spawn in the second large tank I follow the same process to transfer them back to the first tank that has been kept running. The young are fed phyto and Artemia nauplii twice daily. As the young grow they are fed out but keep about 200 to start a new breeding colony up, as productivity drops in the main tanks I feed those adults out and replace with the young adults. Prior to being fed to fish, Mysids should be fed Artemia which has first been fortified with phyto. Fortified Artemia can be fed to the Mysids at every feeding, but since this is a very time consuming and expensive process, routine Mysid feedings can be done with "bulk Artemia" as follows: Husbandry: Despite their widespread use as pollution bio-assay organisms, Mysids are not too demanding in terms of water quality (as long as the values remain within a reasonable range). No unusual mortality was noticed in tanks even when the ammonia concentration approached 1 ppm. Average water quality for mysid culture tanks: Temperature = 20c Salinity = 1.025 pH = 8.2 Light = 6500 Kelvin. Ammonia = 0.1 mg/l Nitrite = 0.01 mg/l