LR & BBS

[kennyman]

I started a 10g bbs tank for live food last week. It is unheated holding at 65deg with a SG of 1.023-1.024. It has no filter since its a bbs hatchery, just an air-tube circulating the water.

I have never tried SW before and wondered if there was any point to putting some LR in this envorinment. Will stuff start to grow on it? Will it mess up my bbs collony? All I was really hoping for was the learing exp from culturing LR but if it wont work in the bbs tank then it would just be a waste of money.

[rockgarden]

By bbs do you mean baby brine shrimp? I'm assuming that you mean baby brine shrimp and I'm answering in that context. If I've missed the point of your question, please accept my apologies.

First off, I've never really tried a 10 gal. bbs project .  Thought about it but never tried it. Best of luck.

65 degrees is too low a temperature for the Indonesion, Floridian, Red Sea or Fijian type of reef and reef life that you normally see in Ottawa store live rock.  75 to 80 ish would be more the norm for these waters with tolerance to about 85 degrees.

SG of 1.023 is the low end of the normal reef tank with 1.28 being about the high end.  1.023 or so is fine for BBS though. About 1.025 the preferred for reef.

Good "live rock" should be porous and full of holes. If in good condition when you get it from the LFS, it can have all kinds of SW bacteria, SW invertebrates "hiding out" from the high ammonia, and high nitrite levels encountered during the "curing" process. Normally doesn't look too "live" when you get it. Lots of different "premium" live rock out there but jsut the basic Fijian  should do nicely for your experiment

Background note:  When live rock is harvested, it has all kinds of "good stuff" (corals, algaes. sponges, etc).  Unfortunately, that good stuff  doesn't survive the trip from Fiji to Ottawa too well and begins to die off rather quickly starting when it first gets into the boat.  The goal is to at least keep it damp enough that not everything dies before it arrives in Canada. Once the local LR wholesaler or dealer gets the rock they put it through a "curing" process which is just letting things rot off under more controlled conditions (lots of water circulation and water changes). The price differential between "cured" and "uncured" rock in the Ottawa areea is about $2 per pound. For a nice break from my long response, watch the aquaculture video at:

http://www.tbsaltwater.com/

Back to your question: Probably some things will survive at the temperature that you will be using but much won't or will only grow and multiply very slowly. The biggest needs for salt water reef is light, the more the merrier, water circulation - probably 4X or more than what you would expect in normal FW planted tank environment and relatively constant water parameters - temperature, pH, salinity, etc. If you have spare AquaClears, hanging a couple of extras of them on the back and end of the tank without filtration media will be sufficient for your experiment. Not pretty perhaps but sufficient.  Supplies circulation and a bit more water volume. Some recommend leaving in at least some of the filter medium, others suggest none.  Depends on a lot of factors. Lighting should be at least a 50/50 blend of 6500K fluorescent lighting (deluxe daylight twisted power compact bulbs can be used to supply the 6500K range) and actinic lighting.  On a ten gallon, the actinic range  is a bit more difficult to obtain but not absolutely necessary for certain end points of your experiment. Needed for good coral and coralline algae growth though if you get the SW bug real bad..

Normal recommendation for LR is one pound or more per gallon. If you just want to experiment, look around for a nice porous piece of rock of about 2 pounds or more and ideally with some coraline algae visible on it (coraline algae is the pink or purple stuff). Raise your water temperature to about 75, add the rock to your tank along with some aragonite (crushed coral or coral sand) as a substrate and sit back and wait.

In addition to the BBS which should do okay, you should see the following things occur.

Week one - not much except that your BBS will hatch  out.

Week two or three - everything will start to look brown - thats diatoms multiplying very quickly using the minute quantities of silica to give them structure.  Diatom bloom eventually runs its course. Add a SW snail or two and a hermit crab or two to help consume a bit of the diatoms and start work on any other algae that might be starting to grow.

Week three or four - get ready for a red bloom (actually a bacteria - cyanobacteria) which will put a red slime on everything and then varying degrees of a green algae bloom.  The intensity and timing of each of these bloooms varies a lot depending on various tank factors but everyone gets to them eventually. They can be frustrating but are inevitable and necessary for achieving eventual tank balance.

If you watch closely, towards the end of  this four week period you should begin to see the "live" rock start to come alive. Without going into too much detail, good "live" rock should provide you with lots of things to look at or look for.  In addition to the snails and hermit crabs that you added, you should begin to see some or all of the following organisms or creatures  "appear" during the initial four week period.

1) the pods - amphepods, isopods and copepods
2) bristle worms
3) brittle stars
4) small star fish
5) perhaps a hitchhiker crab or snail
6) perhaps some coral fragments will still be alive and start to grow (an added bonus in everyone's wish list).
7) mysis shrimp
perhaps a live bivalve
9) fan worms and other numerous varieties of "worms" that live in holes they drill in the rocks or opportunistically call their home in rock or substrate.
10) mantis shrimp - not likely and not wanted but neat if you are lucky enough to get one in your experiment (sometimes arrive as a hitchhiker in the rock)

Part way through this process you will be doing a partial water change (about 20%) and trying your patience but believe me it is fun to watch if you don't get too serious about perfection.  If this experiment leads to the bigger SW tank syndrome, your little piece of LR will migrate to a larger tank without hesitating to take your wallet along for the ride.  


Ron

[Julie]

Excellent post.  

thanks.
Julie

[kennyman]

Thanks a lot for the response Ron. I now have a beginner guide to culturing Liverock

Yes It was baby brine shrimp I wanted to raise. I do have an old penguin 330 hob that should give mega current, if not some wave action in a 10g. But wont the bbs get sucked up the intake and chopped up by the impeller? I should have a heater on the 10. I'll have to breakdown and buy one I suppose. I think the bbs will enjoy the blooms. it will make them grow fat!

[Julie]

You could try a prefilter sponge on the penguin.  Any sponge from LFS will work, I use them on my Aquaclears.
Even better would be one of those hydro or hydor or elite air driven sponge filters.

Julie

[zapisto]

filtration is not good for BBS sorry

Do you really think of advantage and inconvenient of raising brineshrimp as live food ?
if not i clearly recommend you do so.
other than the "i did it" you found no real advantages

and Ron very nice post.

[mseguin]

Ron, I got the impression that red blooms were caused by an actual phyotplanktonal algae? Unless we're not talking about the same thing. I thought cyanobacteria caused the green slime-like "algae".

[Julie]

I've never raised brine shrimp, I tried once but they must have been about 12 years old so I didn't see any results.
Zap - please explain why filtration is not good for bbs?

Julie

[zapisto]

Hi Julie,

Simply because when they are young they will get stuck/sucked  by any filtration you put other than a bubble diffusor.
i know what i am saying i try
even hydro sponge will not work

[Julie]

Are they smaller than discus wrigglers just freeswimming?

Julie

[zapisto]

Julie,
What BBS ? 10 times smaller ifit is not more
and dont forget they does not swim, they movement are eratic due to their way to get propulsed.

[Julie]

Well they wouldn't be suitable for me, because I don't wear my glasses.   :lol:

Julie

[zapisto]

Well they wouldn't be suitable for me, because I don't wear my glasses. Laughing

Julie

Hehehhehee
you give me a nice laugh Julie
thanks for that

[rockgarden]

I have an AQ 150 hanging on one end of my 40 with a bit of sponge in the top portion of the box and from time to time a bit of carbon pad.  I use the impregnated carbon pads and cut them to fit when I need carbon for various reasons.  Despite the concerns about impeller chop, I have all sorts of marine invertebrate life living in the filter pads and mysis shrimp are always visible swimming around in the filter box in the space below the filter pads - they live and grow in that space with a constant supply of nutrient coming to them from the main tank. Every so often I lift the pad out and the shrimp are swept into the main tank to become food for the other creatures, etc.  Since I have only one fish in my main tank, there is always lots of invertebrate life there.

I don't know what the overall impact on BBS would be but as Julie suggests wrapping the pump intake in pre-filter media might spread the inflow over a wider surface area and prevent the BBS from meeting the impeller head on.  I have seen a similar approach work for a fry tank where some filtration and flow was desired while fry were still just slivers. I think that the main impact on the BBS will be the higher salinity which might reduce the hatch and reduce the survival rate for the shrimp.  Since you will not be concerned about growing coral at this stage of your experiment, you may satisfy both bbs and LR needs with the 1.023 level of salinity but it will be a non-perfect compromise situation in any case if your hope to use the one tank for both purposes.

In terms of the rock, I have suggested about 2 pounds or so as a starting piece since a piece that size should be big enough to have some internal caverns where all sorts of "creatures" might lurk.

Also when picking your first piece, think ahead and pick a piece that might later serve a useful structural or "feature" rock function in your future reef. You will then spy the perfect rock; find out that it weighs about 5 or 6 pounds; shudder at the price; buy it anyways; take it home; and then try to figure out how to fit it in your tank.  That is why cave men invented hammers and chisels before steak knives and forks . They were planning ahead :razz:. Early theory has it that women developed the idea of knives and forks to slow the original indoor reef building process  :cry: .(An aside: I have to add these little zingers every so often in these long posts jsut to keep the FW folk on board and reading - don't worry I have FW too)

A rock with a big hole through the centre may be chosen to provide an interesting window on a back portion of a later reef or may be large enough to span a space between two other rocks.  When constructing your eventual "reef" (don't worry the "Raid" the bug will get you  :lol: you will not escape  :roll:), your aim will be to have an open structure allowing for lots of water movement as well as many nooks and crannies and flat surfaces for eventual coral placement.

If you know someone else in the Frankville area (others actually live in Frankville :? who has a reef, ask them for a bit of their substrate to kick start the whole process for you.  Not necessary but helpful.

Ron

[BigDaddy]

Zap knows this but probably can't best explain it in English  

Brine shimp are filter feeders, meaning they feed on free floating particulate in the water.  To raise adult brine shrimp, you want some water movement, but not too strong.  Even the simplest filter is too much for them.  Most hatcheries I have heard of have a simple air line causing just enough current to get the water moving in a single direction (a 10 gallon with a partition in it so it looks like a race track from above)

Additionally, the way brine shrimp feed is by moving food particles from their small "legs" until they get it to their mouths.  Any kind of air driven filter will produce small enough air bubbles that they would get trapped in the shrimp's appendages... and the shrimp starves to death.

[zapisto]

Zap knows this but probably can't best explain it in English  

Brine shimp are filter feeders, meaning they feed on free floating particulate in the water.  To raise adult brine shrimp, you want some water movement, but not too strong.  Even the simplest filter is too much for them.  Most hatcheries I have heard of have a simple air line causing just enough current to get the water moving in a single direction (a 10 gallon with a partition in it so it looks like a race track from above)

Additionally, the way brine shrimp feed is by moving food particles from their small "legs" until they get it to their mouths.  Any kind of air driven filter will produce small enough air bubbles that they would get trapped in the shrimp's appendages... and the shrimp starves to death.

Thanks bigdaddy

[Julie]

This is an interesting theory because some corals are filter feeders; but yet skimmers are used quite often.

Julie

[rockgarden]

Matt:  Off the top of my head.  duh!

I'll go back to references later today or this weekend and check.  Yesterday's post was top-of-the-head stuff to make sure that Kennyman had something to do for the weekend :wink: .

Ron

[gator]

This is an interesting theory because some corals are filter feeders; but yet skimmers are used quite often.

Julie

Yep, it seems contradictory, don't it?  Some people turn off their skimmers and filters for a few hours when they feed phytoplankton to the tank.

[rockgarden]

I agree with Zap.  Anytime I have tried to hatch brine shrimp to feed fry, I have ended up wondering why I would want to do this more than once. That reminds me though. I have an unopened container of brine shrimp eggs in my fridge. Why? Because my son wanted to try hatching brine shrimp las Spring. Another experiment still on the to-do list.

Ron