Super Nano Tank With Brine Shrimp or Opae as Fauna

[zhiyuan]

Here's a novel idea, I thought, instead of stocking tiny (<1 gallon) tanks with shrimp or small fish, why not stock a nano tank with either Brine Shrimp (okay, I guess it would be a nano reef) or Opae Shrimp. I mean , both of these animals are so small that they could live comfortably in an otherwise insanely undersized container. Does anyone know how to raise small densities of Brine Shrimp to adulthood? What do you feed them? Would Spirulina powder do?

[NaughtyCashew]

I don't imagine that would be a very pretty tank. Those little guys would probably get sucked up into filters and require quite a bit of upkeep.

Maybe you should consider something like an electric blue or halloween hermit crab?

[zhiyuan]

What if you ran the tank unfiltered? Couldn't you just set up a regular pico reef or a planted nano tank and add the artemia/opae in? The real asthetic value of a nano tank seems to be more plant than animal based and the animals would just be there to provide some movement. I've had trouble raising brine shrimp to adulthood before, but that might have had something to do with not giving them the correct food. Maybe if I just dumped a sea monkey kit in a pico reef or something...

Speaking of hermit crabs...how big do those tiny guys that live in tidepools in the San Juan islands get?

[Ibn]

It's gonna be like jumping through hoops if you're interested in keeping and raising brineshrimp to maturity, especially in such a small tank (requires that you raise live food for the brineshrimp, which requires setting up cultures of microalgae to feed cyclops and such).

As for the opae, here's a site with some info on such a habitat:
http://ecosaqua.com/Opae%20Ula.htm

The hardest part about setting up either of these tanks has to do with salinity. As the water evaporates, the salinity levels will swing pretty dramatically, which can be worked around by continuously monitoring the water level.

[zhiyuan]

Are there any plants that would survive in brackish water?

[pufferfreak]

There are some, it all depends on how strong the brackish water is, I know Java fern can survive with a SG under 1.005. I believe dwarf hairgrass can live in brackish water but idk how strong.

[geekgirl]

With brine shrimp, the other problem will be temperature. They hatch quickly at room temp/ 78-80 deg, but they need declining temp to reach adulthood I believe. Or at the very least, temp fluctuations to mature.

I know they die pretty quickly at room temp if you buy live adult brine for food.

[Ibn]

That's due to the fact that they're usually dumped into freshwater when the fish store gets them in and there isn't any food to sustain them (with little to no aeration).

You can keep a brine shrimp culture alive at around room temperature (did so when I was growing out brineshrimp for some baby clownfish that I was raising at the time).

[Ray1214]

The one thing you are forgetting is copepods or amipods. Really easy to do. I made a .5 gallon pico reef. I had some small shrooms and added a piece of red gracileria for a plant. pods seemed to come from no where. (It helped I used a piece of cured live rock and the gracileria came out from my refugium). It was kinda neat. I also had a 1 gal tank with about 5 dwarf seahorses. Very hard to do if you do not have a temperature controlled room and do not do water changes with ro/di water once a day. I do keep 3 gal tanks and 5 gal tanks with growout corals from my main tanks, as well as small planted tanks at work and for work mates from my big planted killie tanks. I normally have to update the lights but I hear the JBJ nano cubes (12 gallons I think) are going to come with 48 watts PC really soon and dual fans.

Ray

[Aphyosemion]

First of all, keeping a desktop sized tank of brine shrimp isn't as impossible as the others seem to think. I did an experiment with brine shrimp to see if I could raise them naturally in a 1-gallon tank at home in high enough densities to feed them to my fish. I wanted fully grown brine shrimp though, not baby brine shrimp, which you just have to hatch. Anyway, to make a long story short, without filtration and in just a clear acrylic box, they survive fine on their own in the kitchen window at full strength saltwater. I just periodically scrape the algae off the acrylic and mix it in with the water. I also try to stir up the algae that has settled to the bottom once a day, since they are filter feeders. The experiment was a failure though, in that while they survive fine, they only survive in a density proportionate to the amount of food available, which in this case is not enough to feed my fish.
If I were going to do it away from direct sunlight, that would make it necessary to use the micro foods that you can buy from petwarehouse.com. They come in little tubes with a tiny spoon and you just mix it in with the water once a day or so. I am guessing that since you wouldn't want your water to be the brownish color the food makes it, you would probably want to change a little bit of the water each day, or once a week.

[zhiyuan]

What else could you feed them besides the microfood? Did you feed your brine shrimp or did enough algae grow in the water to sustain them?

[putty]

What about daphnia in FW? A school of daphnia is quite a sight and you only have to feed them greenwater. Should be no problem making that.

[pufferfreak]

what about Rotifers in SW?

[Aphyosemion]

When I first started my little brine shrimp experiment, I fed them the micro food from petwarehouse, which is just algae and fish meal, I imagine (There is also an egg one that I didn't try). After the algae started growing on the tank, I stopped feeding them that stuff and just stirred in the algae once a day or so. I imagine if you took full strength saltwater and left it in a window with a little fish food in it (for algae fertilizer), you could keep a steady supply of green water to feed them with, but if you aren't interested in carrying a little tube of greenwater to work every day, I think the micro food might be your best bet.

-Aphyosemion