Anyone culture mysids?

ThePurple12 · Sep 25, 2020

Has anyone had experience culturing Americamysis bahia? I just got mine yesterday and acclimated them to a 20 g. I'm feeding BBS. Circulation is 2 air stones. I'm not trying to do this on a large scale, I just want to provide some live food for my seahorses. I might set up another tank for baby mysids.

Jay Hemdal · Sep 25, 2020

ThePurple12 said:
Has anyone had experience culturing Americamysis bahia? I just got mine yesterday and acclimated them to a 20 g. I'm feeding BBS. Circulation is 2 air stones. I'm not trying to do this on a large scale, I just want to provide some live food for my seahorses. I might set up another tank for baby mysids.

You’ll need a second tank for the babies. I use sponge filters. I also feed the BBS with Selco before feeding to the mysids. I separate the adults from babies using two nets: green mesh and fine white mesh. Put the green net inside the white fine mesh and sweep the tank. The adult mysids get caught in the green net and the babies get caught n the white net. Dump the ones in the green net back into the brood stock tank, and move the babies in the white net to the tearing tank.
Jay

ThePurple12 · Sep 26, 2020

Jay Hemdal said:
You’ll need a second tank for the babies. I use sponge filters. I also feed the BBS with Selco before feeding to the mysids. I separate the adults from babies using two nets: green mesh and fine white mesh. Put the green net inside the white fine mesh and sweep the tank. The adult mysids get caught in the green net and the babies get caught n the white net. Dump the ones in the green net back into the brood stock tank, and move the babies in the white net to the tearing tank.
Jay

Thanks for the net tip. I collected today's babies using a pipette, but your method sounds a lot better.

Do the babies eat BBS? The BBS look a little big for them.

Jay Hemdal · Sep 26, 2020

ThePurple12 said:
Thanks for the net tip. I collected today's babies using a pipette, but your method sounds a lot better.

Do the babies eat BBS? The BBS look a little big for them.

Yes the babies will eat BBS also, but freshly hatched. Also not all Artemia naups are the same size. The "economy" brands tend to be larger with a lower percent hatch rate. The SF Bay cysts are the smallest, but most expensive. Here is an old article I wrote (from 1999) and the formatting is a bit tough:

CULTURING THE MYSID SHRIMP, MYSIDOPSIS BAHIA
AS AN AQUARIUM FOOD
Jay Hemdal

Various species of Mysid shrimp, (also known as opossum shrimp) have been collected
or cultured as a live food for aquatic animals which prefer living foods, such as seadragons,
seahorses and pipefish. Many other species of fish relish the addition of Mysid to their diet, but
difficulty in producing these crustaceans in sufficient quantity generally relegates their use to
only the most critical cases. The method described can produce over 2000 Mysidopsis bahia per
week with a time investment of less than 45 minutes per day. Equipment cost is minimal, and
the only operational cost of note for this system is the substantial use of Artemia naupulii as a
food source.

Culture area:
Using a rearing area with 80 - 100 square feet of floor space, establish three 30 gallon
aquariums and ten 10 gallon tanks with synthetic seawater (at a salinity of 21 to 22 ppt) and airdriven biological filters. It helps to pre-establish the bacteria in the filters by running them in the
sump of another marine system for three to four weeks prior to this time. An Artemia system
capable of hatching from 8 to 10 grams of cysts (dry weight) per day is also required.
Beginning the Mysid culture:
A starter culture of around 200 captive raised young adult Mysids is added to one of the
30 gallon brood aquariums. These are fed newly hatched Artemia nauplii “at liberty” twice a
day. When they become sexually mature, their young are removed twice a day, just prior to each
feeding. The young Mysids are housed in the ten gallon rearing aquariums at a density of
between 1200 and 1300 per tank. A new rearing tank is started when the last one reaches that
density. When all ten rearing tanks are filled, room for new baby Mysids is created by
harvesting the oldest rearing tank and utilizing it as fish food. When the first tank of collected
young Mysids reach 4 to 5 weeks of age, about 200 of them are used to set up the second 30
gallon brood aquarium. Continue collecting young from both brood tanks and then after another
month or so, select another 200 young adult Mysids and use them to set up the third brood tank.
The culture should now be at peak production. At some point, productivity in the first brood
tank will start to decline as the Mysids reach old age. At that time, the old adult Mysids are
removed, the brood tank cleaned and 200 young adults are selected from one of the rearing tanks
and set up in the first brood tank. In this way, a fairly constant, highly productive culture can be
maintained.

Husbandry:
Despite their widespread use as pollution bio-assay organisms, Mysids are not too
demanding in terms of water quality (as long as the values remain within a reasonable range).
No unusual mortality was noticed in tanks even when the ammonia concentration approached 1
ppm.

Average water quality for mysid culture tanks:
Temperature = 75 degrees F.
Salinity = 20 – 22ppt
pH = 8.2
Light = 75 foot-candles
Ammonia = 0.1 mg/l
Nitrite = 0.01 mg/l

Artemia culture:
Prior to being fed to fish, Mysids should be fed Artemia which has first been fortified
with Super Selco. Fortified Artemia can be fed to the Mysids at every feeding, but since this is a
very time consuming and expensive process, routine Mysid feedings can be done with “bulk
Artemia” as follows:
Using an inverted, clear two liter soda bottle (with a cap) with a 1” hole cut in the
bottom, add 6 - 8 grams of Artemia cysts, four tablespoons of sea salt and fill with tap water.
Add an airline and harvest after 28 hours by removing the air line, letting the bottle settle, and
slightly loosening the cap over another container. Let the settled naupulii run into the container,
and tighten the cap back on before any of the empty cysts flow out. Strain the naupulii through a
brine shrimp net, rinse with clean seawater and feed out immediately.
Hints and tricks:
Three models of sponge filter were tested: All became clogged with Artemia nauplii, and
needed to be rinsed out in seawater every week or so. Eventually, the sponges became too
clogged to be easily cleaned. Bio-filters were constructed using plastic deli cups, 1” rigid tubing
and bio-media (figure 1) which did not clog as readily.
Various hydroids and other “pests” can show up, (mainly in the brood aquariums) and
need to be removed by stripping down that tank. At the very least, these hydroids compete with
the Mysids for food, and at the worst, they may actually consume juvenile Mysids.

When productivity is low, start up a new rearing tank after seven days, even if the target
level of 1200 baby Mysids has not yet been met. The reasoning is that if there is more than a one
week age difference, the older Mysids will prey upon the newly added ones.
Surplus adult Mysids can be frozen for later feeding, or added live to a large holding
aquarium, as sort of a “rainy day fund”.
The best way to remove larval Mysids from the brood tanks is by siphoning them out
using a flame polished glass tube attached to a length of 3/16” airline tubing. With practice, an
aquarist should be able to siphon out the babies at a rate of better than 20 per minute. The trick
is to avoid wasting time trying to siphon out three or four day old babies, they are just too fast.
Focus on the smaller one or two day old ones that are positioned on the glass of the aquarium.
Free-floating babies are able to escape the siphon in any direction, making them harder to
capture. Mysids crawling along the glass can only escape along a 180 degree plane, away from
the siphon.
Although time consuming, productivity in the brood tanks can be enhanced by selectively
removing most of the male Mysids. This reduces predation of the larva as well as the amount of
15
Artemia needed as food for the breeders. With a small net, capture the majority of the Mysids
which do not show the female’s white brood pouch. You may remove some non-breeding
females with this method, but the majority will be males. Even a 10:1 ratio of pouched to nonpouched animals will produce well.

Mysids as food:
Most zooplanktivorous fishes relish live Mysids in their diet. Once accustomed to
capturing the shrimp, most fish seem to feed on them with much more vigor than they show for
other foods. In one case, two Red backed butterflyfish, (Chaetodon paucofasciatus) were first
offered live adult brine shrimp. These the pair consumed at a calculated rate of 30 per minute.
When the butterflyfish were then immediately offered live Mysid shrimp, they consumed these
at a rate of 65 per minute. Some degree of caution may be in order as these butterflyfish
attacked the Mysids with such ferocity that their snouts became bruised from repeatedly hitting
the tank walls and bottom as they captured the shrimp. It is unknown if this vigorous feeding
response is due to the good “taste” of the Mysids, or if the shrimp’s swimming behavior more
closely matches that of a zooplanktivore’s normal prey.
Although the nutritional profile of Mysidopsis is not known by the author, anecdotal reports
indicate that as a food item, they are vastly superior to Artemia in both acceptance and
nutritional value. A group of new-born Hippocampus which had been fed Artemia nauplii for
the first six weeks were gradually wasting away. Mortality ceased once small Mysids were
offered as the sole food. Captive husbandry of seadragons requires ample supplies of live
mysids, with no other substitute seemingly available (Paula Powell, Dallas World Aquarium
personal communication).