Invert refugium?

[WhistlingBadger]

Hi, all. I'm thinking about trying some setups that would require live food, and I've been reading "An Alternative Aquarium" by Matt Owens (heckuvan interesting book, by the way: I don't agree with all of it, but it sure got me thinking).

When I first set up my South America tank a few years ago, it ran for about six weeks with no fish and developed quite a fascinating array of worms, water fleas, seed shrimp, and God only knows what else. The angelfish wiped out all this interesting stuff pretty quickly, of course.

Anyway, I think an invert refugium would be pretty nifty, and I have a 10 gallon tank just sitting around empty. I want self-sustaining populations of daphnia, blackworms, cyclops, scuds, and seed shrimp, both for a different kind of display, and as a food source for wild caught fishies. If anybody has tried this, I would be most interested in picking your brain.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I'm utterly useless to you, sadly, but fascinated! I like the sound of it, and I'm sure the fish would love the variety of fresh live food! Following for inspiration

 

[The Lumpfish Guy]

So Refugium are common in marine tanks (as I am sure you know) and one of the reasons is a repository for copepods and other plankton and small invertsfor the main tank. As well as a whole host of other things.
I always make sure to have one in my marine tanks, but never really considered one in a fresh setup before.

I suppose the first question is are you wanting to connect this to your main display tank or have this as a separate system, from which you can take out some of these live inverts and transfer to your main tanks?

 

[vanalisa]

"heckuvan" ?

Nicely done.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

"heckuvan" ?

Nicely done.

It is important that one's folksy sayings be grammatically correct.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I suppose the first question is are you wanting to connect this to your main display tank or have this as a separate system, from which you can take out some of these live inverts and transfer to your main tanks?

I am thinking of it as a separate system, yes.

 

[The Lumpfish Guy]

I am thinking of it as a separate system, yes.

Ok, so what I would probably do it try and create a green water tank, where it is just full of algae in the water column. It's easy to do, take some tank water, maybe some sludge form the filter and get it either by a window or with a nice big light on it.
You should be able to buy daphnia from LFS, Amazon or ebay and just seed the 10gal with daphnia.
Make sure there is some air flow and you should be ok. Change the water regularly with water from your aquarium.
Now there is an issue with this one tank method in that unless you let the daphnia population eat all the algae you run the risk of adding it to your display tank.
Basically having to start again every time you want to feed the tank.

Now using one tank would not be the way that I would do it.
The way I have done it in the past is create one tank of algae and one tank of daphnia (or in my case Copepods). just sieve out the algae from the tank water when you do a small water change to then feed the daphnia culture in the other tank.
Then top up the algae tank with dirty water from your aquarium. And when you need to sieve out daphnia from the tank and add to the display aquarium when required.
This method does require a little more work,.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Ok, so what I would probably do it try and create a green water tank, where it is just full of algae in the water column. It's easy to do, take some tank water, maybe some sludge form the filter and get it either by a window or with a nice big light on it.
You should be able to buy daphnia from LFS, Amazon or ebay and just seed the 10gal with daphnia.
Make sure there is some air flow and you should be ok. Change the water regularly with water from your aquarium.
Now there is an issue with this one tank method in that unless you let the daphnia population eat all the algae you run the risk of adding it to your display tank.
Basically having to start again every time you want to feed the tank.

Now using one tank would not be the way that I would do it.
The way I have done it in the past is create one tank of algae and one tank of daphnia (or in my case Copepods). just sieve out the algae from the tank water when you do a small water change to then feed the daphnia culture in the other tank.
Then top up the algae tank with dirty water from your aquarium. And when you need to sieve out daphnia from the tank and add to the display aquarium when required.
This method does require a little more work,.

Yes! I like the idea of a green-water tank. I wouldn't be too worried about the green water polluting my fish tank because, first, the fish tank is going to be densely planted, and second, I plan on having a pretty healthy invert population in the fish tank, too.

But...I keep thinking about how cool that 29g looked with nothing in it but inverts. I'll have to think about that.

I was watching videos about breeding imbellus bettas, and one guy has come up with a most elegant solution to the problem of how to feed the fry: He simply nets them and pops them into his green-water refugium to grow out.

Here's another fun factor: Last summer, we discovered a fairly large pond (an acre or more) that apparently has no fish in it. It is FULL of leopard frogs and tadpoles. It also contains a fairly dense populations of scuds and other fresh-water macro crustaceans. So, I see some fun collecting trips in the works next spring. The scuds are really fun to watch. The leeches, less so, since "watching" them usually involves scraping them off one's legs. I told the Badgerling they are aquatic mosquitoes, which is good enough to keep her in the water. Mrs. Badger ain't going for it, though.

 

[Colin_T]

Live food cultures should be kept as single species cultures because some prey on the others, and some breed at different rates.

The following link has information about cuturing live foods for baby fish but many of the foods can be fed to bigger aquarium fish.

Back to Basics when Breeding Fish

STARTING OUT Make sure you have a pair, (1 male + 1 female). There is nothing worse than spending your hard-earned dollars buying a couple of fish to try and breed and ending up with a pair of fish of the same sex. Let's face it, to reproduce fish you need a male and a female. Two males won't do...

www.fishforums.net

If you want an interesting tank with invertebrates in, get some Triops. You can buy eggs online and they live in freshwater aquariums.

 

[mbsqw1d]

@AbbeysDad has written some bits on keeping Daphnia

Keeping Daphnia

I've been keeping daphnia in here (about 1 gallon) as a live food source. I threw in some anacharis in a bid to keep the water filtered. Theres some alfagrog and a piece of wood just for cosmetics. There's very little substrate. Its kept in the windowsill to promote algae growth. I'm not sure...

www.fishforums.net

 

[AbbeysDad]

There are many articles on culturing live foods on the Blog...
Daphnia 1
Daphnia 2
Brine Shrimp
Blackworms
Vinegar Eels
White Worms
Micro Worms
Redworms

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Cool, that will provide some good bed-time reading. And probably give me really weird dreams.