New System

Here's my new system. It's the most basic thing I could think of.

The light helps me see the polyps and ephyra better.

There is a jar with slow moving bubbles for the ephyra and a dish with a slow bubbler for the polyps

The ephyra jar with frozen rotifers in it. There are three epyhra in it.

The polyp dish has an acrylic slide that I scratched up with sandpaper so that they could attach better.

I'll be upgrading this with glass petri dishes and v-shaped beakers as soon as I order them.

Doing things right.

I've decided to keep my jellies the right way. For almost a year (or around six months) I've been failing at keeping the ephyra alive. It's because I'm trying to keep them my way. Clearly my way doesn't work. I'm going to have a chat with Jellyfishart.com so they can give me some tips (Thanks Alex!). I'm going find a method of raising jellies that works! So stay tuned. Soon, I'll have a system that works and perhaps some of you may try also.
And I'm losing my polyps for some reason.
There is a thick brown algae growing around them and they are disappearing.
I hope I can pick up this slack!

Keeping Polyp Colonies

When you are keeping a colony of Jellyfish Polyps, use a small tank. The food is more concentrated and the water changes are smaller. I recently set up a 2.5 gallon aquarium for my polyps. The water flow is too fast to allow the ephyra to not get sucked into the filter, but now I'm just trying to expand my polyp colony.

What I have is a 2.5 gallon tank, a whisper 10i (internal filter), and a large heater with my polyp colony on it.

(pictures coming very soon)

I will try to add a piece of rock to the tank and make sure it has no hydroids. I think it will be much easier for the polyps to stay attached to some rock than glass. The rock will also provide biological filtration.

Sad Update On My Tank

The tank hasn't really changed lately. The polyps are growing in numbers and forming a small colony.
I've been feeding them baby brine shrimp every other day.
I have no medusas though. I am not able to keep them alive for over a week.
The psuedokreisel that the ephyrae were supposed to go in still doesn't work (but I have some ideas of modifying it again)
So when I do get ephyrae, i feed them daily. I put about 4 or 5 in a small water bottle lid with water in it. I dissolve some frozen rotifers in the water too. I put them back in their dish i keep them in about 5 or 6 hours later. They live in a little dish about 5" in diameter with about 3" of water. I give them daily water changes.
Any ideas?

I had hoped that I could have some pictures of 4" moon jellies for you by now. Sorry

But here is a picture of my polyp culture. They are growing on the heater. odd. When I feed them, I have a light up against the glass that attracts the brine shrimp.

Warmer water = more ephyrae. So growing on the heater isn't necessarily a bad thing...

Ephyra Problem

I added a new page up there ^Jellykeeping Basics^
Check it out!

I have a little problem. I put an aerator in the ephyra dish. I thought it would circulate the water enough to keep them off the bottom along with the food. Then they would be more able to catch the food. When I came home that evening, all the ephyra were very small and barely pulsing. I gave up on them and poured them back into the tank. As the water from the dish entered the tank, I saw the fresh water mixing with the saltwater (if you own a saltwater aquarium, you should know what I'm talking about). But that seemed pretty weird because I meant for the ephyra to be in saltwater. I'm guessing that the brine shrimp I'm feeding them had some extra fresh water and that diluted the salt. So, I believe that the fast current and low salinity worked together to kill the little jellies. I turned up the temp and the next day had 5 more ephyra (works like magic doesn't it?). They were forming for a while before but I'm guessing the heat sped them up. So, that's what's going on in my tank.
Also, I'm still trying to fix the ephyra section of the tank to not suck them up in the screen. I emailed Jim Stime (Jelliquarium.com owner). I told him all the specs of my tank and he said my flow was too strong. I will turn it down with the valve I have. I will also get a smaller screen.

The screen I have now is:
Nylon Mesh 60 Micron Opening 47 Micron Thread Diameter 35 Percent Open Area
The screen I'm looking at is:
Polypropylene Mesh 1000 Micron Opening 500 Micron Thread Diameter 44.5 Percent Open Area

So, things I conclude from this are:
Ephyra need little flow.
Put as little brackish water from brine shrimp as you can in the tank.
There still may be a chance in fixing my tank!

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!