I had at least a week to prepare for the hatch. I had been working on a plan for a larval rearing system, modeled after ideas from a textbook on breeding marine ornamentals. It worked out very nice and was very satisfied with results. It made keeping water quality easier. It’s hard to keep ammonia and nitrates down in a larval tank. Water quality is the most important. It can affect the long term health of the fish as well.
Its really a very simple system. I bought a feed tub from a Tack&Feed store, plumbed with 1”pvc and bulkhead. This all runs into a HOB feet/dry filter I picked up for 10$ at a LFS. in the first chamber I have A couple types of macroalgae I had around to clean up ammonia/nitrates. In the second chamber it flows thru a reuseable filter pad, then through some plastic bioballs, and at the very bottom, totally submerged, is some porous ceramic balls for biological filtration. I started loading up the tank with Apex pods. I planned on adding rotifers on hatching day.
I also added STABILIZE and PRIME from seachem to help with the cycling. Once it was done I was able to start with hatching. Below are pics of the larval tank. It needs refinement, I’m working up some ideas.but it’s got all the fundamental parts and is kind of a hybrid between a wet/dry filter and traditional sump/refugium. It works very well.
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