I figure that should be around enough room for four or five cannonball jellyfish. I have a 55 gallon tank I plan to put the cannonball jellies in. I also want to obtain some polyp cultures from them. I really like cannonball jellyfish, and I want to study their behavior. Some time after christmas I'm going to be ordering several cannonball jellyfish and a comb jellyfish or two. I have a few projects in mind for the future. I will also be sure to post my results here, they could be very helpful for many people. Perhaps I can achieve some better results this way. So to mimic these great results I'm going to buy some real ocean water from the pet store and inoculate it with the beneficial bacteria and organisms from the beach water. the tentacles don't have a solid surface to stick to, therefore the issue of tentacles sticking and rotting is eliminated. They probably end up on sand a lot in nature. Perhaps the ephyra didn't mind growing up on sand. The bacteria, algae and micro crustaceans must be supplying them with a good source of food. it must be a mixture of algae, bacteria, micro crustaceans, and fish waste. I noticed the jellyfish were constantly feeding on this brown substrate at the bottom. I thought for a while, as to find an explanation for this. They showed fantastic results, and grew much faster that any ephyra I have worked with. The ephyra would have no circulation and would be lying in a sand bed. This bottle had been sitting, capped with no air or sunlight for around a month. In my mind I thought this was a terrible idea. He brought back a two liter bottle of ocean water and sand from myrtle beach, and requested to grow some ephyra in it. I let him use 5-10 ephyra for an experiment. The stir plate was set at 65 rpm and kept the ephyra up and moving in a good motion.Īn experiment my friend did caught my eye. The shaker table was on its lowest setting and still ended up beating the ephyra around and deforming them. Over a course of two weeks me and my team felt the magnetic stirrer was showing much more positive results.
My first experiment was finding out whether the stirrer or the shaker table worked better. Some particular things that caught my eye were, the magnetic stirrers, water baths, incubators shaker tables, etc. I have access to a huge amount of equipment and tools to help raise these ephyra. Since I've been such a failure with growing the ephyra, I've begun to try some new methods. Im working specifically with polyp cultures and ephyra.
I'm taking the class "Biotech I", and we have a semester project due in january. Right now I'm working on a major project through my school on growing moon jellyfish. So I feel I haven't touched much on what I'm currently doing or what projects I'm planning for the future. But I will call and see what the stock is looking like in late December. Both jellyfish will be readily available in the spring and summer. I need to make sure that Gulf Specimens has Comb jellies and Cannonball jellies in stock. I'm not going to buy any new jellyfish until after christmas.
Unlike Schyphozoan Jellyfish, Ctenophores don't have a polyp or ephyra stage. These eggs may develop and eventually become comb jellies. Comb jellies are also Hermaphroditic, so they should fertilize their own eggs. They aren't very big according to the website. I'm thinking I may get two comb jellies. These comb jellies are Mnemiopsis macrydi (sea walnut). They sell all sorts of aquatic organisms from the Gulf of Mexico. If I haven't mentioned this before, I'm buying my comb jellies from Gulf Specimens Marine Lab. The pump will send water back to the large chamber via the stir bar. Water will seep under the bio-balls into the pump chamber. The water will flow through some holes and into the bio balls chamber. This is just to keep some water volume behind the screen. The water will flow through the screen Into the one inch chamber. I'm thinking the screen is going to be 1000 microns. The area marked in red is where the screen will go. this is where the Comb jellyfish will be housed. As you can see in the picture, there is a Large chamber on the right. I modeled the design after Jim Stime's Polyp and Ephyra system, but without the polyp chamber.