This may be a dumb question, but.

[terraincognita]

Hey, been doing a lot more research into cultivating and farming my own phytoplankton and copepods due to some recent threads i've been reading.

This may be a stupid question and I'm sure I could've researched it out, but I'm researched out for the day haha.

If I'm feeding ample amounts of pods and phyto, would I need to still continue feeding my fish additional food sources?

I'd be continuing to supplement Reef Roids, and Red Sea AB+ for other nutrients for corals, but would my fish be able to survive on just that living source of food? Or would I need to start cultivating and breeding mysis and brine shrimp as well for a full live diet?

Anyone with cultivating or advanced experience in these areas give me any input you desire i'm definitely interested in all of this.

 

[Pistondog]

Hey, been doing a lot more research into cultivating and farming my own phytoplankton and copepods due to some recent threads i've been reading.

This may be a stupid question and I'm sure I could've researched it out, but I'm researched out for the day haha.

If I'm feeding ample amounts of pods and phyto, would I need to still continue feeding my fish additional food sources?

I'd be continuing to supplement Reef Roids, and Red Sea AB+ for other nutrients for corals, but would my fish be able to survive on just that living source of food? Or would I need to start cultivating and breeding mysis and brine shrimp as well for a full live diet?

Anyone with cultivating or advanced experience in these areas give me any input you desire i'm definitely interested in all of this.

Its a food CHAIN. You have start and end links, but not the middles, like mysis and brine. If you add these, maybe self contained

 

[terraincognita]

Its a food CHAIN. You have start and end links, but not the middles, like mysis and brine. If you add these, maybe self contained

I would be separately cultivating all of these.

I realize i wouldn't be able to keep them all together and thriving haha.

Unless I'm mis-understanding what you mean.

Are you saying fish dont eat the pods and phyto? and that mysis and brine shrimp eat pods and phyto and fish eat mysis and brine?

because I'm like 90% sure they eat all 4.

 

[Pistondog]

I would be separately cultivating all of these.

I realize i wouldn't be able to keep them all together and thriving haha.

Unless I'm mis-understanding what you mean.

Are you saying fish dont eat the pods and phyto? and that mysis and brine shrimp eat pods and phyto and fish eat mysis and brine?

because I'm like 90% sure they eat all 4.

I am frequently wrong, but all fish don't eat phyto or pods, but most eat mysis maybe brine.

 

[terraincognita]

I am frequently wrong, but all fish don't eat phyto or pods, but most eat mysis maybe brine.

no you may be 100% right. I don't know either man. hahaha. hence the post title.

All fish may not eat pods. I may be under a wrong assumption.

 

[flampton]

Yes you would have to add other things like a macroalgae reactor growing something like ulva. You like would also need larger food sources like mysis, which are incredibly hard to culture because they're cannibals

 

[anth]

It depends on what fish you have, a manderin for example survives eating pods but a tang however needs algeas to be healthy

 

[terraincognita]

Yeah sorry just a little more backstory behind my thought, I want to keep a mandarin so was looking at culturing my own pods and phytoplankton.

Then was just thinking about overall feeding of my fish and the thought of being able to provide a full live diet.

But it looks like I'd have to have a mysis and brine cultivation system as well.

Which can be done but looks like a pain, it's like maintaining a full time separate aquarium.

It inspires me more and more to one day when I retire have my own fish store so I can supply local reefers with plenty of live food sources at a cheap cost just for the sake of helping out all the beautiful reefers in the world.

Re: Tangs and herbivores, I'd probably always just feed them nori pieces as nutrients....

The only immediate natural and easy way I could see would be to somehow have a section of the tank with all kinds of MAcro Algae, and then open it up twice a day for the tangs to eat, and then scare them away with a net and close it off. haha. Or to grow it in a separate system, which now you have like 4 systems for just providing live food sources. yikes.

 

[Pistondog]

Yeah sorry just a little more backstory behind my thought, I want to keep a mandarin so was looking at culturing my own pods and phytoplankton.

Then was just thinking about overall feeding of my fish and the thought of being able to provide a full live diet.

But it looks like I'd have to have a mysis and brine cultivation system as well.

Which can be done but looks like a pain, it's like maintaining a full time separate aquarium.

It inspires me more and more to one day when I retire have my own fish store so I can supply local reefers with plenty of live food sources at a cheap cost just for the sake of helping out all the beautiful reefers in the world.

Re: Tangs and herbivores, I'd probably always just feed them nori pieces as nutrients....

The only immediate natural and easy way I could see would be to somehow have a section of the tank with all kinds of MAcro Algae, and then open it up twice a day for the tangs to eat, and then scare them away with a net and close it off. haha. Or to grow it in a separate system, which now you have like 4 systems for just providing live food sources. yikes.

For a mandarin and best chance of success, get a captive bred one that is used to easy foods

https://www.liveaquaria.com/product/5146/?pcatid=5146

 

[anth]

Yeah sorry just a little more backstory behind my thought, I want to keep a mandarin so was looking at culturing my own pods and phytoplankton.

Then was just thinking about overall feeding of my fish and the thought of being able to provide a full live diet.

But it looks like I'd have to have a mysis and brine cultivation system as well.

Which can be done but looks like a pain, it's like maintaining a full time separate aquarium.

It inspires me more and more to one day when I retire have my own fish store so I can supply local reefers with plenty of live food sources at a cheap cost just for the sake of helping out all the beautiful reefers in the world.

I too have contemplated this recently as i have manderins. I also have a large refugium with ample amounts of pods living in it which goes a long way to keeping the manderin fat and happy.
I think the cost and effort in cultivating your own pods in a separate dedicated system is not worth it really. However if you could master it and have the time and resources to expand and supply other people with pods then i would say go for it.
Even if you only make enough to cover your cost it is still worth it if you love doing it BUT
One question i would ask myself is, would i still enjoy doing this 6 months down the line?

 

[ichthyogeek]

Uhhh....it's not really a food "chain" anymore, but more of a food "web", since there are so, so, so many different foods.

That being said, there are fish that would survive off of a zooplanktivore diet, but you'd have to change the pods you culture, probably to pelagic, calanoid pods like Pseudodiaptomus and Acartia. You'd probably also be best with microzooplanktivores that would easily eat baby brine shrimp...so something like dwarf seahorses, or dwarf dartfish. Ornamental shrimp larvae (peppermint, skunk, harlequin, etc.) and invert egg spawns (snail veligers, urchin eggs, etc.) would also make good supplements, as would very large rotifers. And yes you could use baby brine shrimp, but it's not nutritionally complete.

Next up the food web is larger zooplankton, things like mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, certain jelly medusae, and fish larvae. Mysis culture is...intensive, but here's a basic guide. Not impossible, but maybe a bit too much fro the base hobbyist. Zooplanktivores like this would be things like banggai cardinalfish (they relish fish larvae), and clownfish. Keeping a breeding colony of guppies (think like, 15 female guppies, and maybe 2-3 males, at the very least) or mollies would be considerably easier. That's not to say that they won't eat some of the tinier zooplankton...but it'll be harder to get in all the needed calories.

As for tangs...yeah, you'd need a looooooot of macroalgae. If you feed 2-3 sheets/day....that's dried product, so double it or something to figure out the actual volume you need to figure out how much to grow....per day.

 

[Paul B]

Hey, been doing a lot more research into cultivating and farming my own phytoplankton and copepods due to some recent threads i've been reading.

This may be a stupid question and I'm sure I could've researched it out, but I'm researched out for the day haha.

If I'm feeding ample amounts of pods and phyto, would I need to still continue feeding my fish additional food sources?

I'd be continuing to supplement Reef Roids, and Red Sea AB+ for other nutrients for corals, but would my fish be able to survive on just that living source of food? Or would I need to start cultivating and breeding mysis and brine shrimp as well for a full live diet?

Anyone with cultivating or advanced experience in these areas give me any input you desire i'm definitely interested in all of this.

Yes you still need to feed the fish. Live white worms would be your best, cheap easy and easiest live food to feed. But for a staple diet I would also add frozen food such as LRS food. That is what I feed besides the worms and my fish are spawning and only die of old age

 

[terraincognita]

Yes you still need to feed the fish. Live white worms would be your best, cheap easy and easiest live food to feed. But for a staple diet I would also add frozen food such as LRS food. That is what I feed besides the worms and my fish are spawning and only die of old age

ichthyogeek I think answered more along the lines of where I was really trying to go with this.

I think without either a large 1,000G+ system I’d need to have like 5-6 different cultivation tanks, and until/if I ever have a fish house similar to King of DIYs I don’t think I’ll ever really try this lol

 

[Kal93]

It depends on what fish species you are interested in. That would be an excellent setup for mandarins, but not for flasher wrasses/butterflyfish for instance. Most fish in the hobby would not thrive in that system; it all depends on their natural diet (i.e. carnivore, corallivore, spongivore, herbivore, etc).