live plankton

[blueboy]

i was thinking about adding 4 or 5 pep shrimp, or maybe a couple of urchins to my fuge for production of eggs/gameates as a food source for my main tank which houses a variety of mostly soft corals, polyps, and several planktovorious fishes. i've searched this site, wetwebmedia, and reefs.org and found no info on using shrimp, or urchins for this purpose. any suggestions/experiences with this?

[Ram_Puppy]

I have heard of this being done with fuges, snails, shrimps, all sorts of invertebrate life, copepods, amphipods, you name it, if it has free floating larvae, I see no reason not to go forth and have fun. If you would like to take the bullet for the club, go to IPSF.COM and get some seabunnies, they apparently reproduce on a daily basis, I can't say I wouldn't enjoy getting a few off ya if you do! (I just don't want to spend 60 bucks (I am guessing at cost with shipping) on 2 snails!

[blueboy]

yea, i did an IPSF order when my fuge was just set up. i was really interested in the sea bunnies, but they didn't offer the bunnies in their 9 for 99 special, and i was already spending $100 on a bunch of bugs and snails so, you understand. does anyone out there know with what frequency i might expect pep shrimp, or urchins to reproduce?

[scuba_steveo]

i do not think that ipsf will ship bunnies to texas

[wkopplin]

They will not ship the bunnies to Texas. They are considered an "invasive species" I believe.

[Ram_Puppy]

I would love to know how a sea bunny could make it to the gulf coast alive from here (besides in a bag.)

[GaryP]

Ram,

That's easy, the same way that all the guppies and mollies made it to the San Antonio River. People are always dumping aquarium critters.
For that matter, they have some pretty huge oscars and peacock bass in Fla. If you haven't heard, there was a pretty big scare over snake heads in the Carolinas. Admittedly they are all FW but I think you get the idea.

Personally, I'd like to see some Peacock Bass in a few lakes around here. Yahoo!

Gary

[blueboy]

yea, over here in san marcos we have a serious problem with ramshorn snails that were introduced, now they're killing off the endangered wild rice. just cuz some yahoo thought the best thing to do was dump his tank in the river

[Bigreefer]

Get your plankton nets ready!!!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...s/storm_blooms

[Ram_Puppy]

yea, I get your point Gary, I my somewhat humorous point was that I saltwater species would have a hard time making it from San Antonio to the gulf and not be a tad bit crispy by the time it arrived.

but it is a valid concern, as blueboy said, I used to work in san marcos, and am well aware of the damage being done there, I mean heck, if you want to see what an invasive species can do, just look at all the elephant ears growing on the river bank, some idiot at aquarena springs thought they looked nice, and they move further down stream every year.