Hi guys,
first let me tell you about myself!
I come from Hamilton, New Zealand. I think this forum is the best the internet has to offer! I have been in the hobby for around a year now after discovering and absolutely loving it at a local pet expo and havent looked back since! I am a process engineer and my partner has a Bsc in Biology so her enthusiasm only adds fuel to the fire!!
Our fish stock:
1 x bonded pair of maroon clowns
1 x bonded pair of Ocellaris clowns
1 x pair of orange spotted gobies
1 x arabian angelfish
1 x bi-colour blenny
1 x powder blue tang
1 x hermit crab
1 x sea urchin (pencil)
600L tank with a 200L sump ( 3rd upgrade since starting with a 90L tank!!)
various corals mostly started from frags with two bubble tip anemones, one green and the other a fiery red both bought as splits from others.
My partner and I love animals and we are obsessed with Marine life so we are wanting to make it even more rewarding and breed our pairs and make the hobby bigger and better here in New Zealand! Our clowns and gobies have laid eggs numerous times but we are not able to raise the fry as we do not have rotifers and phytoplankton, we can get artemia readily from our LFS however. I have tried to find a starter culture here in New Zealand or someone that has a culture going that might be able to give us a sample but people either dont know or are not willing to share their secrets!! I have contacted Florida Aqua farms and a couple of other organizations and they were not much help as to be able to export live organisms into the country the organization has to be able to verify that the culture is axenic and free of other organisms and be able to prove its purity (according to our biosecurity deparment) and i think this is possibly too much work for the reward which i can understand completely from their point of view.
So, I bought a high-powered microscope and since I live 40mins away from the ocean I am planning to try and culture some from seawater / artifial salt and some miracle grow, well at least experiment and see what kind of results I obtain! Then if i am at least reasonably succesful at growing something I will buy some Guillard f/2 solution from FAF and move forward!!
Any tips or resources would be much appreciated! Im sure somebody out there has tried what im about to do or there wouldnt be starter cultures in the first place!!
thanks in advance
George