Live Food in Austin

[nemirn]

Where can you buy live food in Austin.... such as blood worms, mysis shrimp, etc.

I know Aqua Dome has brine shrimp.

Thanks

[bige]

Aqua tek some times has sw feeder shrimp. River city usually has them as well. That about all I ever see. Brine and feeder shrimp.

[+Lamont]

I called around today. Aquatek has a few things. River City is out of live foods.

[subsea]

One untraditional source is sailfin mollies. They are live bearers in salt water. The variety which I had was from Purto Rico. C-Quest is the oldest, longest operating hatchery for Marine Ornamental fish.

http://c-questfarms.com/availability_list/avilability_list.htm

At this time, C-Quest is in process of operating their hatchery from Wyoming and a distrtibutin network in Los Angelos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfin_molly

Most foods nutritional value depends on the quality of their food. Marine fish require much more nutrition then fresh water fish. Without the Omega 3 complex, marine predators will starve to death eathing fresh water goldfish or mollies. The wild sailfin mollies at C-Quest were selectively breed with multiple varities of domestic mollies over 40 years ago. These are breautiful fish in their own right, micro-algae eaters and prolific live bearers. I cull my stock by feeding inferior prodct to the lion.

[diabeetus]

i dont think any local fish store around here carries salt water feeder shrimp anymore due to high mortality rate while being shipped. but ghost shrimp (fresh water) ARE carried at most lfs'

[subsea]

Ghost Shrimp are capable of living in full strength salt water. When I went to the Texas Maritime Acadmy in Galveston, I caught many a Ghost Shrimp in the marshes of Galveston Bay. Make a day trip to Corpus and catch you some ghost shrimp.

[+mcallahan]

Aquatek gets live brine weekly. I usually see feeder shrimp in there too. I'm not sure if they are ghost shrimps or not.

[Timfish]

To be honest I never bother with live food for my reefs but Indo Pacific Sea Farms, www.ipsf.com has live plankton and if you want to try raising your own, amhipod breeding kits. I know you can find rotifers online for raising clown fish and I can't think of a reason not to use them for feeding everybody in a reef tank.

[+mcallahan]

To be honest I never bother with live food for my reefs but Indo Pacific Sea Farms, www.ipsf.com has live plankton and if you want to try raising your own, amhipod breeding kits.

have you tried the pod breeding kits? They look nice but I haven't heard of anyone actually trying them

[Timfish]

To be honest I never bother with live food for my reefs but Indo Pacific Sea Farms, www.ipsf.com has live plankton and if you want to try raising your own, amhipod breeding kits.

have you tried the pod breeding kits? They look nice but I haven't heard of anyone actually trying them

No and to be honest the only reason I think I would is if I was keeping an animal that was shown to need live food to be maintained in captivity. For the most part I've been able to maintain reef systems for years with just pellet food (I've tried several and as long as grain products are not one of the top ingrediants haven't seen a difference). I do like to add powdered krill and plankton to the pellet food but haven't seen any difference in any of the corals I keep with or without the krill/plankton.

P.S. The reason I use pellet over flake is ease of use; it sinks quicker so less goes into overflows and this may be a moot argument but I think picking pellets off the bottom is a more natural feeding behavior for reef fish than feeding at the surface, it works better in auto feeders and is easier to measure.

[Timfish]

To be honest I never bother with live food for my reefs but Indo Pacific Sea Farms, www.ipsf.com has live plankton and if you want to try raising your own, amhipod breeding kits.

have you tried the pod breeding kits? They look nice but I haven't heard of anyone actually trying them

No and to be honest the only reason I think I would is if I was keeping an animal that was shown to need live food to be maintained in captivity. For the most part I've been able to maintain reef systems for years with just pellet food (I've tried several and as long as grain products are not one of the top ingrediants haven't seen a difference). I do like to add powdered krill and plankton to the pellet food but haven't seen any difference in any of the corals I keep with or without the krill/plankton.

P.S. The reason I use pellet over flake is ease of use; it sinks quicker so less goes into overflows and this may be a moot argument but I think picking pellets off the bottom is a more natural feeding behavior for reef fish than feeding at the surface, it works better in auto feeders and is easier to measure.

To expound on this in the past the times I've tried foods marketed for corals I haven't seen a difference between tanks that recieved it and tanks that didn't. If I had the time and space I would like to take colonies of half a dozen species or more that I know will do well without additional or supplemental feeding and set up tanks with different feeding regimes and monitor their growth rate for a year or more. I am particularly intrigued after hearing at Next Wave last week Gerald Heslinga's comments about DIN (dissolved inorganic nitrogen) used to accelerate clam growth. It didn't connect with me at first and I would have like to asked for clarification but the ammonium based fertilizers farmers use fall under this heading. While I am curious if the animals I know will do well without feeding in a reef system would grow faster with selective feeding I'm not anxious to add unnecessary food to a display system and I already have problems getting rid of some species and don't need to accelerate growth of those species.

[subsea]

The concept of producing live food in our reef aquariums is not a new one. With mud systems, turf algae scrubbers, Jaubert plenumns, DSB, and live rock we process nutriants and produce live food. Mature sand beds and refugiums become phyto and zooplankton generators. While I do not recommend it, I have gone months without feeding my systems.

Tinfish, I was at Next Wave in Ft Worth also. Sorry I did not meet you. I was not surprised with Gerald's statement about using DIN to fertilize and stimulate growth in clams. Gerald is applying agriculture management of maraculture products. He is trying to feed the world. These same techniques work for growing coral as well. While I do not fertilize my display tanks to maximize growth, I do fertilize my growout tanks by feeding the bioload. Looking forward to meeting you at the March meeting. I will be hosting the April meeting and hope to discuss skimmerless operation and heavy feeding of our captive reef systems.

Patrick

[Timfish]

Tinfish, I was at Next Wave in Ft Worth also. Sorry I did not meet you. . .

. . . Gerald is applying agriculture management of maraculture products. He is trying to feed the world. These same techniques work for growing coral as well. . .

Patrick, sorry, I actually only made it for Gerald Heslinga and Charles Delbeck's presentations and hadn't been to the botanical gardens before and was walking around the grounds during the free time I had. Kudo's to Gerald! He and Delbeck gave interesting and thought provoking talks. Sprung and Delbecks first volume of "The Reef Aquarium" is I think the earliest reference I can remember to corals using ammonia but I had never made, what seems to me now as obvious, the jump from corals using ammonia excreted by fish to removing fish from the equation and literally dumping ammonium directly in the water. Looking forward to meeting you in a few weeks!

[subsea]

A few years back, Anthony Calfo did a series of articles on reef keeping in Portugal. It was an intereasting blend of European and Americaqn techniques. The coral farmers there have been usig NH4 for years. American seaweed farmers also use NH4. There have been recent developement in using seaweed ponds to clean up discharge water from intensive fish farms. Initially the seaweed was harvested and ployed into the groud as a soil additive/low grade fertilizer. Now that seaweed eating is being introduced to the Western World, harvesting a second food crop from a fish farm makes a lot of cents.

Patrick