[vlangel]

Originally Posted by Michael Hoaster

Ahh! I see. I love the self-sustaining aquarium ideal. I do hope to have some natural, hunting and eating behavior, but I want more fish, so I'll need to feed. It would be nice right now, with all the algae I have growing, to not need to feed, but I think I should let Nature take its course. Not feeding at this point would likely throw off the development of the ecosystem.

That would be awesome to reach the point where the system is self-sustaining. If there were only mollies in there, I definitely wouldn't need to feed the tank. I did add pods a few weeks ago, but they need to multiply to have more of an impact. Once their population gets big enough, they will also consume a descent amount of algae. The pods I got are more benthic, so the blennies likely don't even know they are there. They are more pelagic plankton pickers. I've yet to see them hunt and eat any pods. I suppose I could add some pelagic pods.

What I'd really like to do is add some mysids! In an ideal world, they would help out with algae and detritus, reproduce prolifically, and sustain a population that could feed all the carnivorous fish in the tank indefinitely. Unfortunately, I'll likely end up with too many carnivores. In fact, I doubt I could maintain enough, in this size tank, to feed the five blennies I have now.

Mysids are actual, natural residents of seagrass beds. I'd love to have them! If I can figure out a way to keep a sustainable population going, that would be awesome. I wonder if my overflow refugium would be big enough to make it work. Or, after I have added all the fish I want, I could convert one of two QTs into a mysids grow out tank. Hmm…

Your explaination is exactly what I thought. I figured that you couldn't possibly have enough pods yet so I figured that you must be feeding. In fact I also did not think your size tank could sustain the blennies but I couldn't remember how many you had. (I read a thread years ago where a seeded 40 gallon breeder tank was tried out to keep dwarf seahorses. It could almost keep 2 but had to be reseeded from time to time. The dwarf seahorses were eating pods, and mysid larvae shrimp. It would work until the seahorses ate the adult mysid.) Anyway then I began to wonder what foods would be best to start the food webs or even if that mattered. Maybe detritus and fish wastes in any form work. I am trying to understand the workings of your tank for future reference.