I recently joined CMAS (Chicagoland Marine Aquarium Society). I went to my first meeting at September 22 2007.
We were lucky enough to have a very interesting guest speaker, Randy Reed from Reef Nutrition came to talk about his products and the marine aquarium lower food chain.
First thing we talked about was the amount of Omega-3 saltwater fish needs and the amount the things we feed them has. Many people recommend feeding frozen mysis as a great food for all fish, the problem, he stated, was that the mysis we get that’s frozen is a freshwater mysis. Freshwater fish don’t require as high amounts of omega-3 as saltwater fish do and therefore freshwater animals don’t give saltwater fish enough omega-3. One of our members question was that she has been feeding her Lionfish mysis for a very long time and the result is a very healthy lion. She asked why her lionfish was doing so well with a small amount of omega-3. Randy replied by saying that omega 3 comes from micro algae like phytoplankton. Phyto is extremely rich in Omega-3. The main diet of most of our pods in our tanks is phyto. The pods eat phyto giving the pods lots of nutrition and in turn the fish eats the pod which delivers a great amount of phyto to the fish which means the fish receives a lot of Omega-3. He then started talking about his business, how it started in 1995 as an unsuccessful oyster breeding facility. Oysters require a lot of phyto which he and his brother cultured themselves in low quantities. Suprisingly people did not come looking for oysters but instead came to get some of his phyto that he was growing. From then on he and his brother then knew that they were in the wrong business. They ate all the oysters and changed their business plan into a major micro-algae distributor. Now they are the biggest distributors of micro-algae in the world with various universities and countries buying bulk orders for scientific studies. His brother is the scientist (having a degree in marine biology) and he is the business man as well as the speaker. Since they grow so much micro-algae they expanded their business to other lower food chain animals. They started culturing rotifers which were fed phyto. They then moved up a food chain and started growing tigger pods which were fed phyto and if I remember correctly were also fed rotifers. These two new products were doing just as well as the micro-algae business wise. A Russian zoo-plankton farm then approached them and introduced to them actic pods that were harvesting in the Northern polar region. The bought one kilo and with a bit of studying by the marine biologist brother, then bought another 100,000 kilo order. They started selling the arcti-pods with huge success.
The speech then turned back to the food chain. Phyto is the beginning, it contains the necessary nutrition that higher organisms need. Phyto is free floating algae. It is very small (I think he said it was somewhere around 10-50 microns large, as a comparison a human blood cell is 10 microns). Phyto is vegetable matter and is eaten by herbivorous filter feeders such as certain worms, clams, oysters, soft corals, sponged, copepods, rotifers, zooplankton, and many more things. Phyto is richest in Omega-3. Next up the food chain is zooplankton. This includes pods, rotifers, krill, certain shrimp such as brine shrimp and many more things. Most zooplankton feed on phytoplankton through filter feeding. Zooplankton can be many sizes, from 100 microns to even 3000 microns and above. Zooplankton contains high amount of protein and omega-3 from the phyto they eat. Zooplankton is meat matter, it can be free floating, it can be cave dwelling, it can be free floating with tails as well. Fish and corals eat zoo-plankton which provides the omega 3 that fish require to survive. Soft corals, hard corals, shrimp, worms, fish, whales, various cnidaria and many other sea invertebrate are zooplankton eaters.
We then moved on to talking about individual types of zooplankton starting with rotifers. Rotifers is the main diet of many saltwater baby fish simply because saltwater baby fish are born very very very small unlike freshwater counter-parts. Many hatcheries around the world order large amounts of rotifers to aquaculture fish as food as well as aqua culturing fish for the saltwater fish keeping hobby. These are sold in concentrated dead form or you may directly order live rotifers from them.
Tigger pods are a type of copepods that are great for fish and other creatures in your tank. They live in your refugium and if predators or low, a small amount of them will live in the main tank. They are great food for mandarins and other pods eaters. These are sold live
Arcti pods are pods taken from the northern polar region. They are large 3000 micron pods. They contain lots of nutrition but are sold dead due to the fact that they wont live in tropical temperatures.
They also sell saltwater mysis but since saltwater mysis are highly carnivorous and cannibalistic, not many survive once they reach your house.
We moved on to culturing ourselves
Phyto – not recommended to culture yourself since nutritional content will be low, it wont be a dense concentration, and it is time consuming.
Rotifers – Easy, get a 1-5 gallon container, add live rotifers, and feed twice a day with a few drops of phytoplankton. After 3 days harvest 33% every day, you must get rid of this 33% every day, doesn’t matter how, you can dose your tank or throw it away. This way you can keep your culture concentrated since rotifers live for about 12 days but only makes eggs and babies on the 3-5 day mark. After that they eat the food but wont make babies.
Tigger pods – same as rotifers, it wouldn’t hurt to add a bit of macro algae to the container. No need to dispose of 33% every day though
Mysis – they need very long tanks, height does not matter, they need distance from each other otherwise will eat each other. We did not go in depth about mysis.
Then we saw a few pictures blah blah blah and questions etc.
Uhh, if your confused about something feel free to ask and I will try and answer to the best of my knowledge.
We were lucky enough to have a very interesting guest speaker, Randy Reed from Reef Nutrition came to talk about his products and the marine aquarium lower food chain.
First thing we talked about was the amount of Omega-3 saltwater fish needs and the amount the things we feed them has. Many people recommend feeding frozen mysis as a great food for all fish, the problem, he stated, was that the mysis we get that’s frozen is a freshwater mysis. Freshwater fish don’t require as high amounts of omega-3 as saltwater fish do and therefore freshwater animals don’t give saltwater fish enough omega-3. One of our members question was that she has been feeding her Lionfish mysis for a very long time and the result is a very healthy lion. She asked why her lionfish was doing so well with a small amount of omega-3. Randy replied by saying that omega 3 comes from micro algae like phytoplankton. Phyto is extremely rich in Omega-3. The main diet of most of our pods in our tanks is phyto. The pods eat phyto giving the pods lots of nutrition and in turn the fish eats the pod which delivers a great amount of phyto to the fish which means the fish receives a lot of Omega-3. He then started talking about his business, how it started in 1995 as an unsuccessful oyster breeding facility. Oysters require a lot of phyto which he and his brother cultured themselves in low quantities. Suprisingly people did not come looking for oysters but instead came to get some of his phyto that he was growing. From then on he and his brother then knew that they were in the wrong business. They ate all the oysters and changed their business plan into a major micro-algae distributor. Now they are the biggest distributors of micro-algae in the world with various universities and countries buying bulk orders for scientific studies. His brother is the scientist (having a degree in marine biology) and he is the business man as well as the speaker. Since they grow so much micro-algae they expanded their business to other lower food chain animals. They started culturing rotifers which were fed phyto. They then moved up a food chain and started growing tigger pods which were fed phyto and if I remember correctly were also fed rotifers. These two new products were doing just as well as the micro-algae business wise. A Russian zoo-plankton farm then approached them and introduced to them actic pods that were harvesting in the Northern polar region. The bought one kilo and with a bit of studying by the marine biologist brother, then bought another 100,000 kilo order. They started selling the arcti-pods with huge success.
The speech then turned back to the food chain. Phyto is the beginning, it contains the necessary nutrition that higher organisms need. Phyto is free floating algae. It is very small (I think he said it was somewhere around 10-50 microns large, as a comparison a human blood cell is 10 microns). Phyto is vegetable matter and is eaten by herbivorous filter feeders such as certain worms, clams, oysters, soft corals, sponged, copepods, rotifers, zooplankton, and many more things. Phyto is richest in Omega-3. Next up the food chain is zooplankton. This includes pods, rotifers, krill, certain shrimp such as brine shrimp and many more things. Most zooplankton feed on phytoplankton through filter feeding. Zooplankton can be many sizes, from 100 microns to even 3000 microns and above. Zooplankton contains high amount of protein and omega-3 from the phyto they eat. Zooplankton is meat matter, it can be free floating, it can be cave dwelling, it can be free floating with tails as well. Fish and corals eat zoo-plankton which provides the omega 3 that fish require to survive. Soft corals, hard corals, shrimp, worms, fish, whales, various cnidaria and many other sea invertebrate are zooplankton eaters.
We then moved on to talking about individual types of zooplankton starting with rotifers. Rotifers is the main diet of many saltwater baby fish simply because saltwater baby fish are born very very very small unlike freshwater counter-parts. Many hatcheries around the world order large amounts of rotifers to aquaculture fish as food as well as aqua culturing fish for the saltwater fish keeping hobby. These are sold in concentrated dead form or you may directly order live rotifers from them.
Tigger pods are a type of copepods that are great for fish and other creatures in your tank. They live in your refugium and if predators or low, a small amount of them will live in the main tank. They are great food for mandarins and other pods eaters. These are sold live
Arcti pods are pods taken from the northern polar region. They are large 3000 micron pods. They contain lots of nutrition but are sold dead due to the fact that they wont live in tropical temperatures.
They also sell saltwater mysis but since saltwater mysis are highly carnivorous and cannibalistic, not many survive once they reach your house.
We moved on to culturing ourselves
Phyto – not recommended to culture yourself since nutritional content will be low, it wont be a dense concentration, and it is time consuming.
Rotifers – Easy, get a 1-5 gallon container, add live rotifers, and feed twice a day with a few drops of phytoplankton. After 3 days harvest 33% every day, you must get rid of this 33% every day, doesn’t matter how, you can dose your tank or throw it away. This way you can keep your culture concentrated since rotifers live for about 12 days but only makes eggs and babies on the 3-5 day mark. After that they eat the food but wont make babies.
Tigger pods – same as rotifers, it wouldn’t hurt to add a bit of macro algae to the container. No need to dispose of 33% every day though
Mysis – they need very long tanks, height does not matter, they need distance from each other otherwise will eat each other. We did not go in depth about mysis.
Then we saw a few pictures blah blah blah and questions etc.
Uhh, if your confused about something feel free to ask and I will try and answer to the best of my knowledge.
