Feeders im Refugium?

[Goodair]

**Feeders in Refugium**sorry for the title, typing on my phone.

Has anyone tried/had any luck breeding feeder fish or shrimp in a refugium?

Could be something like cherry shrimps or mollies.

Concept is to have something to feed predatory fish from time to time to mix it up with frozen food.

 

[lion king]

Kind of depends on what you are feeding, and how much patience you have. Breeding mollies is easy, and they do breed like rabbits; but the time it takes to grow them out can kill you. For me the size I needed took at least a month of grow out so I am just willing to spend the money at the lfs. Cherry shrimp I am not familiar with but the fresh water guys at the lfs I get my feeders at, do raise them. Cherry shrimp are small, I would need like 100 a week to feed my guys. Research ghosties and you will find it's likely not worth it.

For your purpose of mixing it up it might be worth a try, it really is easy enough. Get yourself a few females and a male and acclimate them in and let nature take it's course. They will eat the fry but the macros could provide cover. That would be the easiest to do, I actually ran 2 tanks, I would pull the female out when she ready to birth and keep the fry in a different tank.

You are talking about in saltwater right, mollies would be a go but I don;t think cheery shrimp

 

[Goodair]

You are talking about in saltwater right, mollies would be a go but I don;t think cheery shrimp

Yes saltwater, it would be the sump for the tank housing a 1 radiata lion and a puffer. You have mutiple big lions (from other posts I believe) and mollies make more sense for your setup.

Double checking the cherries are freshwater, I saw that they are less likely to eat thier own fry compared to ghosties but did not see they were freshwater sadly.

A chaeto does seem ideal for the fry , maybe even a mangrove or 2. How long does it roughly take you for a fry to be a decent edible size?

 

[lion king]

Yes saltwater, it would be the sump for the tank housing a 1 radiata lion and a puffer. You have mutiple big lions (from other posts I believe) and mollies make more sense for your setup.

Double checking the cherries are freshwater, I saw that they are less likely to eat thier own fry compared to ghosties but did not see they were freshwater sadly.

A chaeto does seem ideal for the fry , maybe even a mangrove or 2. How long does it roughly take you for a fry to be a decent edible size?

My main food are ghosties, I feed mollies to my old fu manchu and rhinopias and everyone else gets them occasionally; they would need to be at least a couple months old for my purpose. Your radiata would be the same size as many of my lions. Breeding in salt water seems to take longer, the female could take almost 2 months just to produce babies, then a couple months grow out, so I don't have that kind of patience. If you supplementing just one radiata it would likeley be better for you to just buy a few a month, unless you are doing it for fun, then go for it.

I'm feeding an antennata, zebra, 2 fu manchu's, blackfoot, yellow spot scorpionfish, rhinopias, and a black ribbon eel. The antennata, zebra, and ribbon eat some dead food, the other all live.

 

[JDtimk]

I just bought 12 dalmation mollies to put in my 75 gal refugium. I am just now acclimating them to full salt, so I will report back on how it goes. There is only a small two spot candy hoag in the 75gal now and he is only in there as a grow out because he is too small for the DT and the dwarf lion would eat him. I am hoping I can get a population going where I will be able to harvest two a week or so.

 

[lion king]

I just bought 12 dalmation mollies to put in my 75 gal refugium. I am just now acclimating them to full salt, so I will report back on how it goes. There is only a small two spot candy hoag in the 75gal now and he is only in there as a grow out because he is too small for the DT and the dwarf lion would eat him. I am hoping I can get a population going where I will be able to harvest two a week or so.

Did you sex the mollies, what male/female ratio did you use. How big is your refugium.

 

[JDtimk]

Did you sex the mollies, what male/female ratio did you use. How big is your refugium.

I think I have 2 or 3 males out of the 12. The refugium is 75 gallons.

 

[JDtimk]

So far i have raised the salinity from freshwater to 1.021 and no losses. Fish are eating flake and graze on algae a little. I am wondering if they will be significant algae grazers or make no difference at all.
I still have them in a separate quarantine tank were i am letting the evaporation take the salinity to full 1.026 before i transfer them to the refugium. LFS said they have had losses when they tried to raise the salinity with mollies too quickly and suggested a week to make the change. Don't know how true that may be, but i am not in a hurry anyway so i am taking it slow.

 

[Goodair]

What algae do you use for your Refugium?
You can prob try a mix of gha with cheato. Put a lil of both where your acclimating and see if they focus the gha. If not maybe a algae thats a lil harder to pick on.

 

[lion king]

So far i have raised the salinity from freshwater to 1.021 and no losses. Fish are eating flake and graze on algae a little. I am wondering if they will be significant algae grazers or make no difference at all.
I still have them in a separate quarantine tank were i am letting the evaporation take the salinity to full 1.026 before i transfer them to the refugium. LFS said they have had losses when they tried to raise the salinity with mollies too quickly and suggested a week to make the change. Don't know how true that may be, but i am not in a hurry anyway so i am taking it slow.

I've acclimated them every which way and believe it or not, saw no difference either way. Some people have actually added mollies to their reefs for algae control, although they are are grazers. I don't find them to be that efficient for that purpose, and like all attempts like that it's hit or miss if they work or not. I like feeding my mollies a variety of marine foods, especially micro pellets, figure it's gut loading whether you see them or not, like you can see the pellets with ghosties.

 

[JDtimk]

I've acclimated them every which way and believe it or not, saw no difference either way. Some people have actually added mollies to their reefs for algae control, although they are are grazers. I don't find them to be that efficient for that purpose, and like all attempts like that it's hit or miss if they work or not. I like feeding my mollies a variety of marine foods, especially micro pellets, figure it's gut loading whether you see them or not, like you can see the pellets with ghosties.

Do you think mollies would eat enough GHA or copepods or whatever else can be found to eat in a refugium that would naturally gut load them or do you think a specific food like micro pellets is the only way to gut load them?

 

[lion king]

Do you think mollies would eat enough GHA or copepods or whatever else can be found to eat in a refugium that would naturally gut load them or do you think a specific food like micro pellets is the only way to gut load them?

Pods are a great source of nutrition, I would likely feed some pellets as well at least right before I was going to pull one for feeding. I use OmegaOne micro pellets, a small jar will likely last you years. Likely not necessary as a whole live mollie is a complete source of nutrition.

 

[Goodair]

Any progress with this?

 

[JDtimk]

The mollies acclimated fine. They eat flake, some gha, some frozen, pellets. No babies yet that I saw. Could have been eaten without me noticing though.

 

[Goodair]

@JDtimk
any updates with the mollies?

 

[ctopherl]

I've acclimated them every which way and believe it or not, saw no difference either way. Some people have actually added mollies to their reefs for algae control, although they are are grazers. I don't find them to be that efficient for that purpose, and like all attempts like that it's hit or miss if they work or not. I like feeding my mollies a variety of marine foods, especially micro pellets, figure it's gut loading whether you see them or not, like you can see the pellets with ghosties.

What’s your process for getting the ghost shrimp to eat pellets? Do you use a separate holding tank first?

 

[lion king]

What’s your process for getting the ghost shrimp to eat pellets? Do you use a separate holding tank first?

I go through 200 ghosties a week, I keep them in a 20g. You can use anything as simple as a poly Tupperware type container with a sponge filter. Its always good to give them good food before offering them as food. I use Omega Ome micro pellets.

 

[ctopherl]

I go through 200 ghosties a week, I keep them in a 20g. You can use anything as simple as a poly Tupperware type container with a sponge filter. Its always good to give them good food before offering them as food. I use Omega Ome micro pellets.

I would only have a single dwarf lion so my needs would not come close to yours although it’s possible my puffer or trigger would snatch some

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I go through 200 ghosties a week, I keep them in a 20g. You can use anything as simple as a poly Tupperware type container with a sponge filter. Its always good to give them good food before offering them as food. I use Omega Ome micro pellets.

Out of curiosity, how many fish do those 200 feed?

 

[lion king]

Out of curiosity, how many fish do those 200 feed?

Those primarily feed 4 adult lions; a radiata, fuzzy, antennata, and zebra. My 3 little waspfish will get the little ones, which is usually only a few every couple of weeks. 3 of the lions also get a couple of mollies a week, the zebra still won't eat fish, what a weirdo. I've seen him catch them, then it must freak him out; next thing I know the molly is swimming out of his mouth. He is the smallest one at about 6",the fuzzy at about 6.5", and the other two around 7". My rhino eats about 6 mollies a week and will grab the occasional ghostie if they are big and fat and walks right up to him, he won't chase them.