RIreefGuy
Salt life
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2019
- Messages
- 236
- Reaction score
- 787
- Location
- Cranston
- What state or country do you live in
- Rhode Island
Wanted to share my setup with y'all (I'm not from the south but since I'm a farmer now I thought it was appropriate) I recently and unexpectedly became the owner of a mandarin and knew I'd need to supplement. The good news is that she eats frozen well but I know they like to eat often so a steady supply of pods was my quest. I now have a culture of tisbe and tiger pods going and have harvested the tigers once and restarted the culture. Tisbe will harvest the first time over the weekend. I also have started a phyto culture to feed said pods. Finally, I've been hatching and adding brine shrimp. The good news is that this was all pretty easy! I use $3.50 gallon jugs from Walmart for the pods and phyto cultures and 2 halves of 1 litre bottles for the brine. I use 1 super cheap air pump to bubble all 4 containers with a splitter and they live on a shelf in the basement with a 4' florescent over it all that is on a timer. Future plans:
At the next harvest of pods, I'm going to start 2 new cultures of each type for redundancy.
I'll add apocalypse pods to the mix. Cool name. Why not. Will look to get to 2 cultures of those too
I'm thinking about different lighting. Possibly grow spectrum LEDs. Or at least mounting the florescent on the wall sideways instead of overhead.
I'll prob start using 2 gallon ziplock bags inside the 1 gallon vessels to eliminate cleaning / contamination. Some testing is needed here to see how they will sit in the vessels
I'm going to start using 2 air pumps with metal splitters. These are 100x better than the plastic ones but I only have one metal on hand. I do have the spare air pump.
I need to make a stand for the brine shrimp culture. The 2 1 liter bottle are good but I'm afraid they are going to fall over so I snuck my wife's margarita pitcher to the basement for the time being. I promise to bleach it before returning it to its rightful place lol
In the end there will be 6 pods cultures 1 phyto and 1 brine going at any one time.
That's my story. A few pictures below. I think it's pretty cool to seen the phyto darkening up a week later in the pics!
I'm certainly no expert but I hope my experience is of interest and or helps some out. I would be more than happy to answer any questions from future farmers y'all. Also please please feel free to critique my setup. I can take it!!
At the next harvest of pods, I'm going to start 2 new cultures of each type for redundancy.
I'll add apocalypse pods to the mix. Cool name. Why not. Will look to get to 2 cultures of those too
I'm thinking about different lighting. Possibly grow spectrum LEDs. Or at least mounting the florescent on the wall sideways instead of overhead.
I'll prob start using 2 gallon ziplock bags inside the 1 gallon vessels to eliminate cleaning / contamination. Some testing is needed here to see how they will sit in the vessels
I'm going to start using 2 air pumps with metal splitters. These are 100x better than the plastic ones but I only have one metal on hand. I do have the spare air pump.
I need to make a stand for the brine shrimp culture. The 2 1 liter bottle are good but I'm afraid they are going to fall over so I snuck my wife's margarita pitcher to the basement for the time being. I promise to bleach it before returning it to its rightful place lol
In the end there will be 6 pods cultures 1 phyto and 1 brine going at any one time.
That's my story. A few pictures below. I think it's pretty cool to seen the phyto darkening up a week later in the pics!
I'm certainly no expert but I hope my experience is of interest and or helps some out. I would be more than happy to answer any questions from future farmers y'all. Also please please feel free to critique my setup. I can take it!!
