h. zostrae pico

[brandon429]

ITexan,

 

The cycle will complete itself when any body of habitable water (and bacteria accept a pretty wide range of required parameters) is exposed to air and given time. You don't have to introduce the bacteria, they are ubiquitously distributed in spore form through the air. Simply set up your desired tank, introduce water, give it two weeks and it's cycled. No need to put in a cooked shrimp or anything. The bacteria seed and bloom without ammonia, and can live for a while without it too. By the time you introduce your first livestock, that gives them enough ammonia to thrive. Be sure and add your bioload very slowly, over the course of a few weeks. This technique works for both fresh and salt water environs.

B429

 

I've been watching this thread too to hear about the feeding. I may have to re-read, but I don't see an answer to the feeding approach? I'd like to see the owner of this system test the water for nitrate before feeding and after a water change, and then test it again about three days after the feeding. Depending on if they are using brine or mysis, I'd like to see the feeding/bioload impact of feeding frozen foods in this pico tank. I too am interested in the pico h.zostrae idea!

[irishtexan]

Thanks! Yeah we need some feeding questions answered.

[johnmauser]

Hi all,

so sorry I haven't replied to this thread in a while. Just as an update, I added some more adults today and one of the males spit out a few babies during acclimation. Now I have about 16-20 horses from tiny to 1" in this one gallon tank. Believe it or not, the tank finally looks stocked correctly and no where near overstocked.

Okay so here's a rundown on the husbandry of this tank. It's very simple and even simpler since I have them at my office and I work for an aquarium. The tank has a 1/2" layer of aragonite sand. The water is RO mixed with instant ocean. I keep caulerpa in the tank as a hitching post and if any dies, I replace it with more from the "Caelurpa Farm" in my 50g. I feed them 24-48 hour old enriched artemia nauplii (baby brine shrimp) from my jellyfish food culture. The food is kept in the tank in constant supply and I add more every other day as they eat it. This species of horse doesn't chase it food so you have to put a high concentration of food in the tank so they can eat everything around their hitching post. That's why it's helpful to have a large density of horses in the tank, so that the food can get removed quicker and replaced with more small brine shrimp. I have never tried frozen, as I hear that wild caught H. zostrae will not eat anything that's not wiggling. I have a tiny power compact on a timer and no heater. The water temp stays in the 70's. I have a tiny air driven whisper filter that sits in the tank...the bottom is covered with a sponge to protect the horses. I did lose one horse to the filter before the sponge. I have a few astrea snails and tiny blue leg hermits for clean up. I do a weekly 25% water change and top it off every other day with RO fresh. I just did a water change yesterday before adding the horses and I'll be glad to run water chems for you and post them if your interested. Any questions?

I'll be glad to try and help.

John

[FishFreak77]

I also thought of getting these guys but knew I would never feel like hatching baby brine every day! They are very cool though. I never thought of putting them in a 1g pico(duh).