Crystal Sea Bio-Assay

[Samw]

Originally Posted by Mak

Hey Sam, I just came across this thread. Regarding your Mysid shrimp population, I really doubt it was the salt mix. I had almost positively no Mysids in my 77g, so I sucked up 9 or 10 of them from my 57g system and added them to the refugium of the 77g. When I took down the fuge before moving (which was about two months after putting in the Mysids), the population has literally BOOMED in there. I think your Mysid boom was just a coincidence. Oh yeah I use IO of course.

Hi Mak.

But the point you made was that it boomed in your refugium and not in the main tank. This is perfectly reasonable. When they are safe from predators, even with a lower larvae survival rate, the refugium could allow large populations to quickly establish in a short amount of time.

Now, the problem I could have had in my main tank was that the larvae survival rate in IO was just good enough such that only a few of them could survive predation and thus I seldomly saw any in the tank. Once the larvae survival rate increased, more of them existed and predation could not keep up with them which is why I see them swimming everywhere now. I don't have a sump or refugium so larvae survival rate plays a much bigger role. With a refugium, even 1% survival could result in large populations rather quickly I'd imagine.

WRT spawning under stress. I don't doubt that it could happen. But I'm a believer that more often than not, animals require ideal conditions to spawn. But I can see how it may be hard to think that a tank can go to breeding condition after 8 hours of a water change.