Fresh Food Idea

[Hookup]

I am not sure if this was discussed here or not.  If so, sorry for the repeat.

I'm planning on adding about 10-15 blood shrimp to my sump.  The goal is to get them breeding, and "feeding" my display.  Last night at a buddies house, we flicked on the lights and within 10min saw the cleaner-shrip release about 500+ babies into the water, and the fish and corals went nutz.    We'll if this happens ever 2-3 months, a set of a dozen or so of these things might have it happening once a month, or even more often...

This would provide two benefits.

1) More critters will eat more un-eaten food so, it can help with filtering
2) Randomly available high-quality live-food - it's got to help stuff

Thoughts?  Experiences?  Ideas?

[jon1985]

sounds like a great idea.  My only question would be is there enough food going to the sump to sustain that many shrimp?  If not would the added food for the shrimp defeat the purpose of them cleaning up extra food?

[dan2x38]

I think peppermint shrimp breed easier. I know I have two one is berried off and on so must release at some point.

You could make a Tee off one DT drain. I did this using ABS WYE 1.5" x 1.5" x 0.5". I run the 0.5" as a feed to my fuge witha ball valve. it is on atrickle to supply a small amount of unskimmed DT water to feed macro & snails that stir my DSB. So far it has worked well on 2 setups.

I like the idea live food is always awesome but would be great if you could capture the released babies and gut load them with spirlina or something before releasing to DT.

[johnrt]

I agree that Peppermint shrimp would be better. They tolerate each other than Blood shrimp and are cheaper in the event that some get eaten.

These shrimp are simultaneous hermaphrodites, so each individual can carry eggs and also act as males as well. In short, don't expend an effort to get 'mated pairs'. There are scattered reports of single animals producing live spawn, but it is generally believed that they cannot self fertilize.

[Hookup]

I agree that Peppermint shrimp would be better. They tolerate each other than Blood shrimp and are cheaper in the event that some get eaten.

These shrimp are simultaneous hermaphrodites, so each individual can carry eggs and also act as males as well. In short, don't expend an effort to get 'mated pairs'. There are scattered reports of single animals producing live spawn, but it is generally believed that they cannot self fertilize.

Well there ya go!