New Pictures Update!

Well,
I have some pic updates!
And my ephyrae aren't growing much. I probably gotta be feeding them twice a day to make them grow...
Also, I left the DBS (decapsulated brine shrimp) eggs out overnight. They're supposed to be refrigerated. So, I hope the eggs survived.
Now for some pictures!
Ephyrae



Some fat polyps.

Here's a shot of the tank from the side.

Jellyfish Foods

There are many things you can feed your jellyfish. Frozen foods, live plankton, liquefied plankton, etc. However, there are two you should stick with. Frozen Plankton meant for Jellies and Live Baby Brine Shrimp. In this post, I'll be discussing the pros and cons to each type of food.

Frozen Plankton meant for Jellies
You can buy it from JellyFishArt.com and many other stores online. The reason it has been accepted is because it is so easy. Unfortunately, frozen food can be a bit expensive. You just cut a piece of food, thaw it, and drop it in. Although it must be squirted directly into the jelly's mouths. This is because it's dead so it won't stay suspended for long. The jellies need as much food as possible before all the little plankton fall down to the bottom. Also, you will need to do more constant water changes with using dead food. As they sit in the water, they foul it and release bad stuff into your water. In open-bottom tanks, it is easy to clean up the mess. However, in tanks with substrates (glass marbles, rock, sand, etc.) it is much harder to remove the organisms and you may need something to clean up your leftovers. I'll talk about Jellyfish Tank Mates on another post. Anothe problem with frozen foods is that they will fog up your aquarium water. They have dead parts to the plankton floating around and all the stuff that was frozen in with them.

Here are some sites that sell frozen food:
http://www.jellyfishart.com/Frozen-Jellyfish-Food-p/food6oz.htm
http://sunsetmarinelabs.com/jellyfish-food/

Live Baby Brine Shrimp
The other most common food is Live Baby Brine Shrimp or artemia nauplii. They are easily hatched in a brine shrimp hatchery. The eggs are also, for the most part, inexpensive. That basically consists of a 2 liter bottle with the bottom cut off. Its turned upside down and has airline tubing comming up from the hole where the cap would be (something keeps water from coming out from the bottom, yet allows the airline to put air in the water. It's filled up with saltwater and eggs are added. The airline is attached to an air pump (obviously before it's filled up with water). The bubbles keep the water circulated. Then it must be allowed to sit for about 24 hours with the bubbler on. The egg shells fill up with water and hatch. The brine shrimp are then removed and soaked in an enrichment (I use Selcon). Then they can be fed to the jellies.
There is one thing I hate about raising brine shrimp though. That is separating the egg shells and unhatched eggs from the live shrimp. The egg shells and unhatched eggs can get caught in the jelly's digestive track and hurt them. There is almost no way to completely seperate the egg shells from the live shrimp. However, there is a solution. It's called decapsulated brine shrimp eggs. Most decapsulated brine shrimp eggs you find will be non hatchable (or they are dead). They must be fed directly as eggs. They are 100% digestable. However, I have found some decapsulated eggs from BrineShrimpDirect.com. Here's a link:
http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/c1/c2/Shell-Free-E-Z-Egg-c202.html
I ordered some and I'll let you know how they work out as soon as I get them and try them out.


ARTEMIA NAUPLII

Now, the benefits to live food,
Live baby brine shrimp have a yolk sac for the first 24 hours of their life. This is the most nutritious part. The yolk sac will help grow your baby jellyfish and keep your adult jellies healthy. Live food will also stay suspended in the water all by itself. No more falling to the bottom and rotting. They don't make your water cloudy because they aren't falling into pieces and getting torn up.


Frozen food is easy and saves time. Live food, though, keeps your jellies healthier and keeps your water cleaner. Live food also takes up more time. And, frozen food is a bit more expensive then brine shrimp eggs. You may end up spending more time doing water changes and conditioning the water with frozen food.
It's really your choice. I do live food because it seems more practical.

If you've ever heard of LAFISHGUY (a web show one youtube), he evaluates live and frozen food as well.

So good luck finding a food that suits you!

Ephyra

I have 5 ephyra and more on the way. Most of them were rescued from that death trap I used to call a tank. I have them now in a little dish floating in the tank. They were getting sucked right through the screen. I guess that will be a grow out tank for them when they get bigger. I also got you some pictures!

Brine Shrimp

I fed my little polyps some brine shrimp. (I gave them a lot). They are really happy and have stacks of dead brine shrimp around them. I soaked the brines in Selcon. The nutritional part of the brine shrimp is their yolk sac which is eaten in the first 24 hours of their life. Selcon just adds more nutrition. It's really cool watching them eat! Here's some pictures.

Hatchey

A few polyps from underneath.

Here they are making little stacks of food.

Here's the corner of the tank

Update

I guess you guys deserve an update.
So, the polyps have strobilated some and I got a few ephyra. Unfortunately, there is a problem with the screen. Everything is sticking to it. It seems like the spray bar isn't strong enough. I hope I can fix it before I lose some more jellies =(.

I tested the water and here are the results:
Ammonia : 0
Nitrate : 2.5
Nitrite : .5
pH : 8.5

Nitrates and Nitrites are dangerously high...
I'm cycling the tank to fix it.

Also, I've switched to live brine shrimp. I have my first culture starting now. Hopefully that feeds my polyps more.

And I've decided to move the polyps onto acrylic slides. I'm gonna scrape them off and lay down slides on the bottom. They will reattach to the slides and then I can hang them up.

Add a post if you have any ideas why my screen is sucking all the ephyra away. Or if you see a problem with the way I am going to reattach my polyps to slides.

Okay, Thanks!

And here's a cool video; you can learn something.

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

Polyps

I'm looking at a polyp through the microscope to see if he's alive.
Apparently he is because you can see his tentacles twitching. Sorry about the bad video quality. I might get a new microscope soon.

Polyps Came In

The polyps finally came in! I'm so excited. I've acclimated them. Here are some pictures.

The box!

Inside: A styrafoam box and a hand warmer.



Acclimating.

Still Acclimating...

They are buried in brine shrimp.

Put them in the tank. Most of that, I'm guessing, is brine shrimp.

Floating all around.

The big pink things are the polyps.

Pretty cool huh?