Just a few comments from me:
You want to be careful feeding krill, silversides, and even shrimp - the reason is the Thiaminase, which breaks down Vitamin B1; by all accounts that I've heard, if predators develop a vitamin B1 deficiency, they will die from it.
Fresh/live shrimp is fine, but shrimp that has been frozen/stored for a long time will have some of the vitamin B1 it contains breakdown while the thiaminase stays in tact - this can lead to it adding to the thiaminase in a predator's diet with little vitamin B1 to counteract it.
Some kinds of silversides are fine, but a lot of silversides are high in thiaminase (there are a ton of different species known as silversides) - the last I've heard, San Francisco Bay Brand (January of this year) was the one with good silversides to use.
Krill is high in thiaminase, and should largely be avoided with predators.
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Personally, I'd really suggest reading through the links of lion king's below for food suggestions for your lions (and any other predatory fish):
Here's 3 of my most comprehensive threads on feeding lionfish and other predators.
I'm a health nut if you haven't noticed, this also translates to my pets. Today I will cover some of the dead foods I feed and why, with some nutritional info that I recall off the top of my head. This is by no means all the foods you can feed, these are just the ones I include in my feedings...
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I remember one the first things I learned about fish when I started this hobby; was the differences in carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores. Lions, eels, anglers, etc. are carnivores, among many other species. Carnivores need a dominant protein and fat diet with minimal carbs. Frankly I'm a bit...
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Ghosties, guppies, and mollies, oh my. These are the best, most available, safest, and nutritional choices to feed your predator. If you have a fish you have decided the inclusion of a live in beneficial or even necessary, these are the best options to feed. I can not recommend no other species...
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If you have questions on the thiaminase content of a species of fish you may want to feed to your lions, see the link below:
Hello I have some predatory fish (miniatus grouper, clown grouper, tesalata eel, small red tooth trigger) I am currently feed them whole fish sold at my local fish shop but its becoming quite pricey what other alternatives could I fees them from a supermarket?
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That said, salmon is pretty much the gold standard; mackerel is a decent second place to my understanding.
For getting them to eat frozen well:
Converting piscivores to feed on non-living foods
One basic principle of life in the sea is that big fish often eat little fish. Many carnivorous fish feed exclusively on smaller fish and are termed obligate piscivores. When brought into captivity, this feeding behavior can become a liability, as small, living marine fish are too expensive to feed to larger fish on a regular basis. When one of these fish is collected and brought into captivity, it may not have fed normally for up to a month prior to that time. The first consideration is of course to get the animal feeding as usual. This often entails offering the piscivore some small live fish, which are usually accepted with much gusto. Lionfish, anglerfish, trumpetfish and many others will accept live fish quite readily from the first day they are placed into an aquarium. The question is then; can this feeding regimen be sustained? For aquarists near the ocean, this may not be a problem as they can usually collect some manner of small live fish to feed their animals. Inland aquarists have more of a problem. Buying damselfish, marine killifish or other species becomes too expensive. Mollies and Gambusia can be adapted to living in seawater and then be used as a live food source. Live feeder goldfish and guppies may be accepted, but have serious nutritional deficiencies when fed to marine fish for long periods (See thiaminase section above). If nothing else, using live fish as food is abhorrent to some aquarists, and is never really a convenient or cost-effective food source. The alternative then is to train the piscivorous fish to accept some type of non-living food. The following process has worked for every species of obligate piscivore, as long as the aquarist spends the time and effort required to allow the method to succeed:
1) The first step is to stabilize the new fish and get it to accept any live fish of appropriate size as a first meal (At the same time, general quarantine issues must be addressed). Do not allow the new fish to spend too much time at this stage. It is very common to have fish become “addicted” to one particular type of live food if it is used for too long of a time. As soon as the fish is routinely accepting live fish, and has become somewhat conditioned to associate your approach with an impending meal, it is time to try step two.
2) Using the same species of food fish that the animal is accustomed to, freeze some, then offer the animal a mixture of living, and thawed / dead fish. By chance, it will likely swallow some of the dead fish while searching out the live fish. If this fails, try impaling a live fish on a broom straw or 3/16” clear tubing and offer it to the fish that way. Once accepted, switch to impaling previously frozen fish and feed in the same manner.
3) Continue introducing more thawed whole fish to the animal’s diet each day until the animal is not being offered any live or fresh food. It may help to forcefully toss the dead fish into the aquarium so that their motion is more likely to elicit a feeding response.
4) Eventually, the predator should be feeding solely on thawed, whole fish tossed into the aquarium. At this point, use a knife and remove the head of each of the frozen fish, so that the predator then becomes accustomed to feeding on just the fish’s body. The reason for taking this step is that most piscivores clue in on their prey’s eyes as a means to make an effective capture. When the eyes of their food item are removed, this primary feeding cue is removed and they may not recognize the item as food. Once the piscivore has overcome this need, they are one step closer to being trained to feed on prepared food items.
5) The next step to take is to switch the fish to begin feeding on a different type of fish flesh such as smelt. To make this transition, use a sharp knife to cut a piece of smelt into a good facsimile of the headless fish that the animal has been used to feeding on. Drop these smelt pieces into the aquarium and they will usually be accepted with little problem.
6) At this stage, the predatory fish is usually willing to begin accepting almost any food item including prepared gelatin foods. Never allow the fish to “backslide”, avoid the temptation to give it a live fish as a treat from time to time. The fish may relapse; and you may find that you will have to start the training process all over again.
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Now, with regards to this:
My son was wondering if we could make breeder tank and give them live food. Any thoughts on that?
Yes, you can make a breeder tank and give them live food - the typical suggestions for this are Guppies, Mollies, and Ghost/Grass Shrimp (these are brackish species, so they're nutritional profile isn't bad like most freshwater species, but they also breed fairly easily and can adapt to/breed in full saltwater salinity).
There are two main concerns with breeding feeders - disease, and keeping a steady feeding population.
You can avoid the disease aspect for the guppies and mollies by either getting these breeders from freshwater and keeping them in freshwater, or by giving them a full, medicated quarantine. The ghost shrimp just need kept in a fishless tank for 60 days to be disease free.
Don't add any of the feeders unless they're from freshwater/until they've been QT'd (if fish) or in a fishless system for 60+ days (if inverts).
After the QT/60+ days in a fishless tank, you can feed the QT'd fish/shrimp to the lions if you want, or (likely a better decision) you can start breeding them and use the offspring as feeders.
For the steady population - I honestly wouldn't expect to keep a steady population of feeders for a while (I'd guess it would take some time to get used to breeding them successfully), and even when you do have a steady population, I wouldn't expect you to breed enough of them to feed the lions with exclusively the live feeders (you might be able to, but I wouldn't expect it).
I'm not much help with the mollies/guppies, but you should be able to find info on breeding them readily enough. I can help with ghost/grass shrimp breeding though:
Hey everyone!
TLDR summary at bottom.
I've seen a few people on here ask about how to culture marine ghost/grass shrimp species in their tanks, and the responses I've seen have ranged from it's not possible, to use Google Scholar, to you just add them and they breed. Knowing that Ghost/Grass Shrimp (Palaemonetes spp.) are important feeders in the hobby (especially for predator tanks), I thought I would just simplify what my research has shown me on the matter. Keep in mind, most of the research I could fine that was done on actually culturing these guys is from 1980 or earlier - most current research I found has been on the effects of different metals/toxins on the survival of the larvae/adults.
1)You absolutely can culture some of the Palaemonetes species in your tank - species like P. pugio (which Rusalty tells you on their page that they keep at 1.022-1.025 salinty to breed) and P. vulgaris are some of the most common for this. There are a few freshwater species that would not be able to survive/reproduce under marine conditions, but there are some that can. Supposedly (and believably), most of these species have higher rates of fecundity/larval survival in brackish conditions (~"17-23%" - actually 17-23 ppt or 1.7%-2.3% salinity) rather than full marine, but you can (and should) still be able to get a good birth rate and survival rate in full marine conditions.
2)They are actually relatively easy to breed, and you only need to culture Artemia to rear a good number of the larvae to maturity. The young eat the Artemia nauplii. I've seen survival rates for just Artemia fed ghost shrimp range from just under 50% up to about 60%. Under brackish conditions (including conditions that weren't brackish enough to be ideal) and fed just freeze-dried squid, about 27% survived. Fed just beef heart or mullet roe, about 1.7% survived. They're really not terribly picky comparatively, so just offer some Artemia nauplii and any other small feeds you feel like offering and they should do fine.
3)Raising the temperature to mimic their natural breeding season should be able to induce spawning (the shrimp are mature after 1 1/2-2 months). 25-30C (77-86F) seems to be the best range. In theory, the females should carry the most eggs at ~30C, but for obvious reasons, this temperature might be too high for your tank. I'm not sure how big of a change in temp would be required, but I'd imagine 75-77 (or 77-80) would be enough.
4)Exposing the broodstock (the parent shrimp) to UVA (315-400nm) increased egg production drastically "(>4-fold)" over 50 days.
5)Depending on how many eggs your shrimp lay (and the quality of your Artemia species), you should (theoretically) get anywhere from ~50-250 larvae surviving to maturity per female broodstock shrimp.
TLDR; Palaemonetes pugio and P. vulgaris. Raising the temp a little should trigger spawning. 77-86F seems to be the ideal temp range for breeding/rearing. Brackish salinity (~17-23 ppt) is probably best, but full marine (35 ppt) works too. Feed them Artemia nauplii and you should have decent rates of survival. Using a UVA (315-400nm) light should drastically increase egg production.
Hope this helps!
(P.s. I do have sources for this info if you want to see them).
Let me know how it goes - I’m particularly curious right now about point number 3 above, as I’ve been doing a bit more reading up on these guys, and I’m seeing some conflicting info on the temperature for the broodstock (I’m fairly certain the info listed in point 3 is accurate, but I’m curious to have some people with firsthand experience verify if it is or isn’t at this point). If you can, please let me know also about if raising the temp does induce spawning, and how much the temp has to change for it to do so, as I’ve only found a couple of sources that discuss this point, and I’d like to get some more data behind the accuracy of it.
Edit: just to add, there are enough studies done that agree with each other on the other points that I’m confident those are accurate, it’s really just the ideal temp for broodstock and the rising temp induced spawning that I’m seeing either conflicting info or very little supporting studies for.
This thread has good info on setting up a larval rearing tank for shrimp (sounds complicated but it's not):
Hi, Im going to post a breeding guide of palaemon elegans shrimps here. Two females are preparing for spawning so if you are interested you may want to stick with me. This breeding guide will be interchangable for every kind of shrimps but i stick elegans because: - With cleaner shrimp we are...
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For rearing the Brine Shrimp (Artemia) to feed the shrimp:
For the brine shrimp and phyto - culturing your own is ideal (it gives you a stable, constant supply that doesn't break the bank), but that may feel too overwhelming at the moment in addition to trying to rear hermit larvae, and you can make do with buying as needed (the phyto is much harder to come by in a pinch than the brine shrimp for these purposes).
If you don't want to try culturing them, then you can buy a thing of brine shrimp eggs and just add enough per day to the tank to feed each hermit larva when the brine shrimp eggs hatch (honestly, you probably wouldn't even need 2 oz for a single batch of hermit larvae if you have a decent hatch rate).
[Ideally, you'd hatch the eggs out of the tank, remove the shells, and add just the nauplii, which you can do in a number of ways (with a hatchery, a net/sieve, or by decapsulating the eggs before adding them), but that is an extra step which I would honestly ignore if it makes the attempt feel more daunting at the moment. You can always worry about this with future attempts.]
I would however, recommend culturing your own phyto regardless of if you want to culture the brine shrimp. Isochrysis would be ideal, but it's notoriously difficult to culture. So, instead, you may want to go with something like Tetraselmis, which should be much easier to culture. If you have somewhere that stays warm and gets plenty of sunlight, you wouldn't need a light for the phyto culture; if you don't have somewhere like that for it, then you would need a light (you can absolutely get a cheap light for this, you definitely do not need a fancy reef light).
For the eggs:
The universal live feed for all fish fry and invertebrates. Offering Great Salt Lake Artemia, Small Strain, and Decapsulated brine shrimp eggs.
www.brineshrimpdirect.com
This place also sells stuff like hatcheries, nets/sieves, etc.
For the phyto:
Genus: Tetraselmis Type: Green alga Size: 10-15 microns Density: 2 million/mL Why we love it: Rich in proteins and carbohydrates *Guaranteed to stay alive for 7 days upon arrival 10% discount for pick-up and bottle refill orders.
www.holdfastaq.com
(Amazon links often don't work on here anymore, so if this link doesn't work, it's Mercer of Montana 16 oz Tetraselmis [~500 ml]).
You can definitely breed your own brine shrimp (and rotifers, copepods, etc.) - you just need a little culture container for them and some phytoplankton (which you can also culture if you want) to feed them.
A lot of people like to use brine shrimp hatcheries; you can find specific culture instructions online at places like Brine Shrimp Direct easily enough if you want an intensive rearing method.
If you're willing to decapsulate the Artemia cysts (the brine shrimp eggs), you can use the links below as well:
Brine shrimp live in and are harvested primarily from natural salt lakes and solar salt operations around the world. Two natural sources of brine shrimp in the United States are the Great Salt Lake in Utah and San Francisco Bay in California. Adult brine shrimp are also called "sea monkeys" and...
edis.ifas.ufl.edu
Brine shrimp eggs, essential for feeding small fish in hatcheries, require separation from their non-digestible shells and unhatched eggs post-hatching. This document explains the decapsulation process using chlorine removing the outer shell, simplifying separation and sterilizing the eggs. This...
edis.ifas.ufl.edu
Edit: If you'd prefer videos, this may help too:
Brilliant video from none other than Mr Rich Ross on Artemia breeding. Very informative and interesting.
www.reef2reef.com
P.S. Sorry, I know it's a lot of info.
