Are amphipods good for our aquariums?

GlassMunky · Apr 13, 2024

Reef By Steele said:
Yes, I think being in a system where they have places to hide in the rocks etc, and probably a larger area. I wanted to get some started even before we started our business as I wanted as much live feeds as possible. This is just what I found when I researched how to culture them. May be true, may be just one opinion. I plan to DIY a separated tank to overcome this, but it all takes time.

I have a good population in one of my DT’s but they came as hitchhikers as I haven’t ever purchased any.

Yea im not exactly sure where mine came from originally either. They had to have shown up as aHH somewhere. They thankfully established in the sump of our 75G holding tank. And then when i setup this new tank, i took ALL the rocks and other stuff from the sump of our old 75G system, and even all the water and moved it into the sump of the new tank so that ALL of the babies and everything would get moved.
Thankfully now i can see full grown adults even in the rocks of the display tank at night now when i come shine a flashlight.
They really are cool little creatures. I love how they seem to always be swimming "upside down"

Seansea · Apr 13, 2024

i put came in as a hitchhiker because inadded 20lbs of live rock and a couple scoops of sand out of my lfs's 40 year old live rock vat. Came with a billion pods, 4 inch long bristle worms and all kinds of other stuff. I still have them running around all over even with 17 fish in a 75g. Pretty sure its the only way my 2" watchman goby i never see hardly survives.

twentyleagues · Apr 13, 2024

I have a large mysid population in my 30g. When I set up the 80g I used all dry rock and was worried about getting "critters" like pods and worms and mysid into it for diversity. I didnt want to put any of the live rock from the 30 into the 80 lots of undesirables on it bubble algae, aiptaisa, few other things. So when corals got transferred I inspected each coral dipping bases in peroxide looking for aiptasia and removing any I found. I had to hand catch the stuff I wanted and didnt know if they would survive or flourish. So far so good. I put 3-4 bristleworms in, a few mysid maybe a dozen, copepods from reef by steel, a few amphipods. I see them in the sump and tank so must be doing ok. Not to the populations in the 30g but they are around.

Reef By Steele · Apr 13, 2024

twentyleagues said:
I have a large mysid population in my 30g. When I set up the 80g I used all dry rock and was worried about getting "critters" like pods and worms and mysid into it for diversity. I didnt want to put any of the live rock from the 30 into the 80 lots of undesirables on it bubble algae, aiptaisa, few other things. So when corals got transferred I inspected each coral dipping bases in peroxide looking for aiptasia and removing any I found. I had to hand catch the stuff I wanted and didnt know if they would survive or flourish. So far so good. I put 3-4 bristleworms in, a few mysid maybe a dozen, copepods from reef by steel, a few amphipods. I see them in the sump and tank so must be doing ok. Not to the populations in the 30g but they are around.

Wow, thanks for the shout out. Sherry @Ocean_Queenie and I are always so happy to hear positive comments like this as it reinforces our belief that we are doing our customers right.

Very smart in how you describe transferring. I think a lot of the time, that extra attention really pays off in the long run.

Thanks for your support.

twentyleagues · Apr 13, 2024

Reef By Steele said:
Wow, thanks for the shout out. Sherry @Ocean_Queenie and I are always so happy to hear positive comments like this as it reinforces our belief that we are doing our customers right.

Very smart in how you describe transferring. I think a lot of the time, that extra attention really pays off in the long run.

Thanks for your support.

Oh yea that lr from the lfs was chock full of stuff. Too bad with good also comes bad. I am very careful with frags. I do not qt them like I used to but I do dip and inspect and if its on a frag plug I intend to keep it on the plug gets dipped in straight peroxide also if I can. So I know the bubble algae came in on the lr and most likely so did the aiptasia. Now I just need to catch a few more micro brittles out cruising at night.

biophilia · Apr 16, 2024

Reef By Steele said:
Sorry, not currently. Looking into that next. Working on a culture tank design as they will eat their young so have to have a method to keep the adults separated.

The Shedd Aquarium has a nice modular mysid culture shelf system set up that separates the adults nicely if you’re able to find any info on it.

Land&Sea · Jul 5, 2024

Breeding/culturing marine mysid shrimp is actually pretty straightforward, but it is by no means easy. They are truly canabalistic with their young, so u have to do a split tank with some fine mesh that the adults can’t swim thru, put one flow pump on the far side of the adults so it pushes the water & babies thru to the other side of the mesh, and then you have to be extremely vigilant in removing any juveniles/adults from the baby side and put them in the adult side. The bigger the tank, the more you will have. The hard part is the maintenance of said setup. Because if you don’t have any biological filter (and even if u do, it will almost certainly not be enough to keep up with the CONSTANTLY raising nutrients), so your going to have to do 80+% water changes EVERY SINGLE DAY, as the constant feeding of baby brine (3-4 times a day) and the waste that the mysids create will foul that water FAST and kill off everything. Obviously as you go along you will get better at thinking of/finding new & different ways to do it, and obviously you’ll learn as u go thru trial & error (I suggest keeping vigorous notes). And obviously there are a million ways to succeed at any one thing. But, this would be your best starting point. I really hope this helps and that u succeed, because this hobby really needs more vendors selling CLEAN, aquarium cultured live mysid shrimp. I ordered mine from USMysids, but they are wild caught and really meant for labs, public aquariums, and people who own cuttlefish, squids and the like, mainly because the price is pretty astronomical, especially if you have a ton of fish that will eat them faster than they can breed and need to keep ordering them. They sell a 3000+ pack for $125 plus $85+ dollars FedEx overnight shipping or a 500 shrimp “sample size” that includes shipping. I was buying the 3000+ packs until I noticed that they started thriving in my aquariums/refugiums and never had to order them again.

Oh, and on a side note, they will eat most of ur copepod worse than any amphipods ever have. I still see tisbes running around. But anything larger than a tisbe are100% gone (at least to the naked eye). So now I find myself ordering copepods on a regular basis just to always have some in my tanks. Amphipods on the other hand can & will hold their own against them and they can flourish side by side. Luckily all my mandarins eat everything and anything I give them (even pellets), so I probably don’t “need” copepods, but I just like knowing they’re in there, and so I do a monthly subscription.

There will always be “predators & prey,” as this is the food web we all strive to mimic. You just have to decide what’s more important to you… an aquarium COVERED in copepods, or more diversity with less of each item. I strive for diversity. Not to mention, the babies are tiny and make GREAT nutritious snacks for nano fish & corals (even the smallest polyp SPS). And the adults are amazingly nutritious for any/all fish, crabs and shrimp. So I really never understood why people worry so much about having wall to wall copepods, when having the best of all worlds, even at smaller densities, is probably better for our reef tanks anyway. The only reason I could see someone preferring wall to wall copepods and not wanting to add mysids is if they have a fishless reef. But, even then, I would put more care into creating more biodiversity and trying to mimic the natural seas/reefs as best we can than worrying about why I used to see thousands of copepods and now I’m only seeing 50. Because, believe me…there’s still A LOT more copepods in there hiding from their newly added predators within the gravel and rock work than u will ever know. They’ve just learned to try to stay clear of their newly added roommates who like to eat them… I mean, wouldn’t you do the same thing? Lol!