Blog Comments

Originally Posted by snorkeler

Very cool Paul, beautiful idea, super simple and effective! I love ideas like that.

Question: where do you get the brine shrimp to start the process? Do you mail order eggs and hatch them?

I can buy them everywhere here in New York and I hatch them in my hatchery which also seperates the egg shells. I have been doing this every day for as long as I can remember.

Very cool Paul, beautiful idea, super simple and effective! I love ideas like that.

Question: where do you get the brine shrimp to start the process? Do you mail order eggs and hatch them?

I know I posted this before but I just love this thing.
I have been at this for a long time but I get all excited when I see the animals enjoying themselves, especially if it is with something that I created.
Just about all of my fish eat from this live baby brine feeder even though they have other things they could be eating. The thing was created for a skinny young female mandarin but it has been so successful that I use it every day. Many of the fish hang around it even when there is nothing in it. I have successfully used variations of this method to feed moorish Idols and seahorses. Fish easily learn where the food is and most smaller fish thrive on living new born brine shrimp. There is even a couple of large gobies in there that swim up for huge mouthfulls.
For people that have certain fish like mandarins, small pipefish or scooter bleenies and are worried they don't get enough to eat should try this. It is just a net stretched over a container with a tube going to the surface so live baby shrimp can be added. It really works great as this video shows.

I bought a little red scooter bleeny and he is doing well but he is skinny like my baby mandarin was when I got her. He is trying to eat from the baby brine feeder but there are so many fish eating there now that there is no room left. I may have to build a litle larger one. That little female mandarin is always on the thing and she is now nice and plump. My large mandarin also figured it out and also hangs out there but he is already fat so he is just a hog and the copperband monopolizes the thing even though he fills up on worms and clams every day.
So now using the feeder is the copperband, 2 cardinals, a pipefish, both mandarins a gobi and a scooter bleeny. The thing is only about 3 inches across

I don't know what happened to that yellow wrasse but now he seems fine. The swelling is way down, almost normal, the dark spot is faded and he is swimming normally. Last week all he could do was swim in spirals while crashing into things and not being able to eat very well. I have seen this many times but never seen it heal. I am not sure if he is completely healed but he is swimming and eating like a wrasse should.
Wierd but interesting.

After moving this all over the tank, getting bit to death and breaking a few pieces off this and other corals, I realize there is no room for this acropora. I temporarilly put it on this rock but it is just about out of the water and not sitting well. When I get time I need to do a major rock move. Of course I just re-aquascaped and removed a bunch of rock, but it is time again.

I had to re design slightly my algae trough. The LEDs I had over it just were not bright enough so I got a strip of LEDs that are about twice as bright. When I had MH lights the trough used to get the spill light but the LEDs are more directional so I had to add supplimental light to the trough because it was only growing red and brown algae. Now hopefully It will grow green hair algae. I also re designed the way the water enters the trough from the skimmer. I used to have unacceptable splashing that used to make salt creep all over the place. Now I have multiple layers of plastic screening around the skimmer outflow and now there is no splashing and no bubbling which burst and splash on the lights and rear wall.

This acropora has grown at least three times it's size in a year and I can't clean the glass in front of it any longer. Whenever I go near it I accidently break off pieces so I have frags of the thing all over the place. Now I am going to try to move it to a larger space and move the giant mushroom in that place to where the acropora is now. I wonder how many frags I am going to have because there is no room to move it so I have to lift it out of the tank to re locate it.

I need to get to it before the bristle worms or they will do the autopsy for me.

Let us know what you find out.

I changed my mind and will autopsy this fish as I have found out the cause of the wierd swimming. Kind of.
The fish now has a dark lump on both sides. This is a fairly common malady and I always thought it came from some type of trama like getting bitten from something large or having a rock falling on the fish. The autopsy (after it dies) will show internal bleeding and this is always fatal. I recently lost a copperband butterfly fish from it as I see it mainly on thinner types of fish.
It could also be from a tear in the digestional tract but I don't think so as the fish will not live very long if that happens.
I hope I am home when he dies so I can find out the cause. It is interesting no matter what it has.

I am happy to say that in the 5 or 6 weeks since I installed this baby brine shrimp feeding station my skinny little female mandarin fattened up nicely and is now bordering on plump.
The first picture is when I got her, you can see her sides pinched in, especially under her dorsal fin and she resembled Twiggy.
The second picture is today.

Cool, I will try that

Add some air and you could have a submersible mouse.

Newly designed trap with a water hose feeding it water to keep water in trap fresh

this is something i have been wanting to do for a LONG time...i may just have to make one of these

This morning I collected about 20 worms

No, they killed it. It was a tiny clam. Very healthy, They don't bother the large ones that I also had on the sand for years.
I can see them all over the place, there are just too many so I know they aren't getting enough food.

Do you think the bristleworms killed the clam, or do you think it may have died from other causes and the bristleworms were just polishing it off? I have a clam in the sand in my tank, and the worms seem to leave it alone...

Amazing, I remember reading you thread on RC when i started 7 years ago.

Congrats Paul