Culture Journal, Species: Americamysis bahia (Mysid shrimp)

General
Species:  Americamysis bahia
Species description:  Mysid shrimp, small saltwater shrimp, bigger than brine.
Culture source (link if possible):  Reed Mariculture
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  3/19/14
Continuation Date: 

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  27 ppt
Temperature:    64F
pH:  8

Vessel description:  Two 5 gallon buckets linked with a pipe, airlift added
Lighting description:  ambient
Lighting cycle:  10 hours dark, 14 hours day
Aeration description:  just what goes through the airlift, which is a lot of air, kind of a slow boil

Methodologies
Split methodology: I will switch the filters and the airlift as the nauplii and juveniles mature to adults, discarding or using as feed, the older parental adults.  In this way, I should continue to generate nauplii and juveniles without parental predation.

Culture medium description: 
27ppt saltwater with live Isochrysis, Reed algae paste, Otohime A, bits of frozen mash, rotifers         

Cell count:
 unknown         

Reference links:  

Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 



You will be required to provide photographic evidence and as much detail as possible about your project in this thread.
If your thread does not contain detailed enough photos  and information the MBI Council will not be able to approve your reports.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

After reading Jazzybio's journal, I thought I would give these a try.  I have to say, they are rather fun to keep, and watch, and I'm feeling pretty good about them.
Initially, I poured them in a bucket of saltwater and as I walked the plastic bag to the trash can, I noticed that there were still some in there.  I rinsed the shrimps into the goby larval tank, just to see if they would add anything.  They have survived there very well, have made some juveniles, and don't seem to bother the gobie larvae or goby eggs at all.
 
For the majority of the shrimps, I kept them in the bucket for a week or so.  These shrimp are supposed to eat their young, and after a week or two, it seemed that I had no juveniles, so I decided to make a culture system that would automatically separate adults from their young.
 
 I made set of two saltbuckets, connected with 1 inch PVC, and an airlift to transfer water from one bucket to the other.
 
Bucket A is the adult shrimp bucket and bucket b is the nauplii/juvenile bucket. I put a 1 mm needlepoint fabric filter on the bottom of the airlift to keep the adults in their place while the water and juveniles could be transferred to the nauplii side of bucket assembly. On the  nauplii side of the bucket connector, I used a 100 micron filter to keep the nauplii and juveniles in their bucket.

 

 
It seems to be working, as the nauplii bucket has a nice population of juveniles in it now.  I do have to wash the 100 micron screen daily, as it clogs and the water levels in the buckets become uneven.  These buckets are right near the sink, so it is easy to take care of this.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

I'm thinking about giving these a try soon. Can you post a pic of your set-up?

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

See above, which I was populating with pix while you were posting, Tal.
 
Here's one of the adult side:

 
and the larval side:

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Great, thanks!
 

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

I like this set-up...I think I may switch mine over to this sometime this weekend.

Cool design Kathy!
 
If you add a 3rd bucket you could do a continuous round-robin system.  A senior bucket, adult bucket, and a juvenile bucket.  Once you see juveniles in the 3rd bucket you remove the seniors (feed them to whatever) and then place that now empty bucket on the "bottom rung" and wait for juveniles to show up again.    Now I am itching to try to keep a mysid culture even more! 

It seems to be working.  Despite not really knowing what they eat at each stage, i've got them growing.  Nauplii turning to juveniles and adults breeding and making more.
I used:
2 buckets
2 uniseals, 1 inch, for bulkheads and the right size hole saw to install them, (make sure you put them level the same distance from the bottom on both buckets.
I used some 1 inch PVC pipes and fittings that I had lying around. You will need 2 elbows, slip is best, and several unions for connecting the two buckets and also for making filters for both the airlift and the connector. Also some kind of glue to hold the filter material on.  For the needlepoint, regular PVC cement did not work, so I used silicon.  There is not a lot of pressure on this filter, so if it is not permanent it is no disaster.
fine needlepoint plastic or 1mm filter
I think I used 300 micron, might have been 100, polyester for the nauplii screen.  One might want to use an adapter instead of a union, so you can get more surface area.
A reasonably strong air pump.  The smallest hobby pump won't work as an airlift.  You need something stronger.
Various feeds, live phytoplankton, dead phytoplankton, rotifers, tiny feed like Oto A, stuff like that--not sure what they are really eating.
 
Apparently, you don't need a heater, or even much filtration, if you do some water changing.
 
Reed mariculture is now selling mysids, although there may be others.
 
I'm really having fun with this, and I hope you do too.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Waldend, when the juveniles are mostly adults, I'll drain their parents' bucket, refill with clean water, reverse the filters and the airlift, and keep going.  Two buckets take up less real estate.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Ha. My brain completely blocked the thought of two buckets working. I think I am working too much and playing with fishes too little!

Thanks for all the info!  I actually probably have everything I'll need except for the buckets lol
 
I just have mine in a 10 gallon tank and I feed them live nhbbs (and sometimes older ones).  They pretty much get what I remove from water changes for the invert larval containers.  They clear out the bbs pretty quickly, so they must be eating them.  Not sure if adding rotifers would help the smaller ones eat more or not...might be worth a shot.

Hey kathy, excellent work figuring out this! I'm talking to my dad to get a culture going, and he believes this could work for ghost shrimp and Arcatia tonsa. What's everyone's thoughts on this?

Can you post a pic showing the actual mysis (for your report)?
 
Also, have you harvested any yet? I have found that siphoning them to be a bit of a bugger because they are so fast.  So far I have had better luck using a net with a large mesh size (it came with a 1 gallon fish bowl "set" from walmart, IIRC) that captures the larger ones, but the smaller ones can escape from.

Very cool idea Kathy!  You are so creative...

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

How could I forget those pictures?




 
Click the video:

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Mindy, it was not my original idea. but thanks.
 

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

 
I'm going to tell it like it was. 

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

Kathy, I just want to verify/check a few things about your bucket set-up.  You have the connector pipe that goes between the two buckets...do those have screen on them?  And then you have your airlift that has a screen to keep the adults from entering, correct?
 
I just started to make my new bucket set-up last night and got as far as putting the one of the pipes into one of the uniseal  holes before I tuckered out for the evening lol

I made mine with a union between the buckets so I can disconnect them if I want to, but actually that would be really inconvenient, I think, and I've just been siphoning to clean the buckets.
 
I have a needlepoint screen on the bottom of the airlift that throws water into the juvenile side from the adult side.  The juvies go through the screen.  I have a 100 or so screen on the juvie side of the connector pipe to keep the juvies in and the adults out.  That said, a couple of adults got into the juvie side, and I still see juvies on the adult side.  The sedimentary schmutz, however, always ends up on the juvie side.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Alright, that clarifies it for me.  Thanks!  

Well, I lost interest in these, as I really don't have a use for them at the moment, so I shut down the system yesterday.  I think it worked, it was just not what I need to be spending time on right now.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

I'm in the same boat. Now that I don't have a ton of baby cuttlefish relying on live food, I ask myself "should I bother with this culture?"

I don't know much about live mysis shrimp, I've heard that they are chock full of fats and calories.  But can I ask a dumb question?  If brine shrimp are so easy to grow out and to gutload with fat, why should we bother with mysis given their rather slow reproduction rate and requirement of relatively high quality food?  When I say high quality food, I just mean high quality in relation to brine shrimp, which can grow on many inert foods like flour or the dust emptied from your vacuum cleaner.  Just kidding about vacuum dust, but I hope you get my drift.  
 
I'm not sure of the size of mysids, but it seems that they don't fill any niche that artemia don't already fill.  Please educate me a little so I can decide if I should try to culture these.  I really like your culture method.

Well, there is certianly a lot more meat on them than brine shrimp.  They are signifcantly larger. I haven't studied on this, but I think they have a better nutritional profile than brine, even not loading their guts.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

I think you're right, they normally store more fat reserves than brine shrimp, just as copepods are more nutritious than even the best loaded rotifers.   And if you had only a pair of picky seahorses for example, I could see raising mysis for them. 
 
I'm all for variety and raising every type of zooplankton possible, it just seems that mysis are much harder to grow than brine shrimp without filling a unique niche.  Raising five or ten gut loaded artemia seems like a lot less work than culturing one mysis.