Good Idea

[Richard]

On another forum a guy posted a pic of simple cage for mysid shrimp that he keeps in his tank. It's just made out of nylon window screen. This way the mysid shrimp babies can just go through the screen and provide a steady food source for his fish. This is a great idea since mysid shrimp are very nutritious. Would be great for keeping things like mandarins.

The mysid shrimp he uses (Mysid bahia) are very prolific but are difficult to culture because the adults are very cannabilistic and tend to eat all the babies. So I thought this was a great way to do it.He feeds the adults cyclopeeze.

[cpreefguy]

Now that is pretty cool, as long as you dont care about having that screen thing in your tank. And those mysids are expensive!

[SoLiD]

Though Mysid's can be very cannibalistic they aren't like Tigers that go looking for baby shrimp to eat. They stay in pretty much the same spot and make figure 8 swimming patterns until they are disturbed. In my limited experience that is what I have observed. I bought a culture of supposedly 100 Mysid Shrimp a little over 4 months ago. I put about 50 in a Seahorse\Pipefish Nano tank with little rock and tons of feather caulerpa and in about 3 months they were pretty much all gone. I wasn't mad because that's what they were bought for. I put about 10 in a fishless Nano Cube Frag tank and now I have about 75 in there. I put 6 adults (yeah only 6) in my refugium that is loaded with grape caulerpa. In the refugium I also put a big block of blue filter foam out of my Aquapod for the baby Mysids shrimp to hide in. In 4 months there are about 50 adults (that I can count) in my refugium and about 50-100 collectively in every small crevice and crack in my main tank. You can only see them at night as their eyes reflect the light from my pen light. The only way they could have got there was through my Blueline HD-55 (1100 GPH) pump. If you give them enough food and rock work and places to hide in they will fill every nook and crevice in your tank. If you cage them I believe you’re just setting yourself up for failure as they have a maximum life span of about 8 months from what I’ve read. Plus the females release the fully formed babies as they molt. If you guys want to try a starter culture, I am trying my hardest to build up my culture for distribution. The best thing is that they will continue to feed your fish and corals though out the day. -David

[Richard]

Yeah I forgot to mention that he collects some babies by putting a light on the side of the tank at night and the babes are attracted to the light. Then grows them out to keep the culture going. I made a larger setup to put on my 58 gallon seahorse grow out tank. So I'll see how it works.

Solid - do you know what species you have. From your description yours sound like the little ones I have in several tanks (I don't know the species). Really fast suckers that run around in figure 8's.The bahia mysids tend to stay out in the open on the bottom of the tank. I put 500 in a 58 with 2 seahorses thinking that it would take a long time for the horses to hunt them down. They ate them all in a day! That was an expensive treat.

I order them from Cheasapeake Cultures since they are a little cheaper. 200 for $50 or 500 for $100. They also have amphipods at the same pricing.
http://www.c-cultures.com/