I have decided to once again propagate mysis shrimp and over 4 years ago sustained a population for over 4 months. It just got to be too much working full time and raising seahorse fry. I ordered 500 shrimp from MBL Aquaculture and they arrived 2 weeks ago. Currently most of them are housed in a flow through system consisting of a 20 gallon nursery, a 30 gallon tank and a 29 gallon sump. I do need to upgrade the out sleeve on the nursery to 1000 micron mesh and build a tray to capture the larval shrimp that are flushed out of the tub. Some of the shrimp have already been moved to other tanks and nurseries as food for my seahorses and some are being fed for deworming my wild caught pair. Currently I have 3 species of macro in each system since 31% of their diet is plant material. They are being fed coral food, such as, live pods, Reef Roids, Cyclop-eeze, phyto and Reed Mariculture Shell Fish Diet. They go crazy and swarm on the shell fish diet. Feeding is being done 3 times a day. One of the things I have noticed is these mysis are far more active, use every inch of a 16-24" tall tank and are much faster than I have seen in the past. Today I moved some of the pregnant females into a smaller tub until they deliver, as a experiment. I know they are cannibalistic so I need to separate the young from the adults and keep them all well fed.

I would appreciate any experience, suggestions, etc. that any of you have had working with them.

On a side note, it took some of my young seahorses a couple of days to figure out how to catch them and when they did the seahorses looked like little fat sausages.