I received an ad offer from a website for a jellyfish aquarium, which looks pretty cool. They even give you 3 live jellyfish, and the light show is quite captivating (on their video). Any opinions from the Doper community? Just want to make sure my desperation for Christmas gift ideas isn’t clouding my judgment.
Maintaining a saltwater tank is not easy. Are these live jellyfish?
I love watching jellyfish. I’ve always assumed it would be too hard to maintain them, alive and healthy. But now I’m intrigued. Following thread.
Î once spoke to the guy responsible for cleaning and maintenance in the Berlin Aquarium and they had not only a tank with jellyfish, but they had managed to get them to breed. He was very proud of that, seems to be very difficult and very few aquaria had managed at the time (I’m talking mid 80s). He explained how difficult it was to set the filtering rate right, as jellyfish do not swim very fast, so too strong a current and they get sucked in (the eggs and larvae even more so), but too feeble a current and the water gets dirty, underoxigenated and they die. And he said they were a bit tricky to feed.
If a professional finds it hard it might be quite difficult to get it right as a private person. And as kajaker wrote, saltwater tanks are hard, specially if you live inland. And even by the seaside: you can’t just take any ol’ water from the beach and hope it’s OK for your jellyfish.
Or maybe there is an app for that today and everything has got easy. I will admit that the jellyfish in Berlin looked gorgeous.
Saltwater aquaria are more difficult to maintain than freshwater, but not at all beyond the capabilities of the average person.
Yes, these are purported to be “live jellyfish” that are “easy to maintain”. Not sure if many of you will be able to see the link, but here it is: Touch of Modern | Modern Products & Styles
Absent any further information or knowledge of the subject, I’d be inclined to take that with a grain of saltwater.
Here’s some info about keeping jellyfish. Here’s another one. There’s plenty more.
It’s not particularly difficult, plenty of people keep in invertebrates in salt water aquariums. One simple technological adaptation was need to make keeping jellyfish simple, and it’s just about maintaining proper movement of the water.
I’ve seen ads for similar products and I’m tempted. Maybe once I buy a house.
I’m lazy. I’d just get a Jellyfish screensaver. Accomplishes the same thing. Much less hassle.
The aquarium is only 8 by 8 inches, so having three jellyfish in it must mean they’re pretty small.
But I want one too!
I’m content with the live jelly cam from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They also have a moon jelly cam. There’s much less guilt if I ignore them for a few weeks.
If you want something really low-maintenance, Hammacher Schlemmer has “The Hypnotic Jellyfish Oceanarium”
This is the LED-lighted desktop oceanarium with four synthetic jellyfish that provide mesmerizing ambiance just like their real counterparts.
You can also add fake seahorses, or fake lionfish.
Are there any animal cruelty issues with one of these? IOW, are there groups that would protest, since jellyfish would rather be free out in the ocean, etc.?
Jellies? No, they are pretty far down on the evolutionary scale, they have no thought processes. A ant farm would be far more likely to be cruel.
Dead jellyfish aquariums are much more difficult to market.
Reading the webpage I notice they don’t much care for precision (Origin: Imported) not for orthography (Material: Arylic) and I can only glimpse though a registration form I cannot click away (against EU law). So my instinct would be to go somewhere else if I wanted jellyfishes. That does not sound serious.
Looks rather like those jellyfish are related to sea monkeys.
My understanding is that Jellyfish are fairly difficult to keep. They require a large round tank with heavy water flow or they will die quickly. Aside from that, they don’t tend to live very long anyways, so you’ll always need to be replacing them.
After some research - there are indeed a whole lot of nanotanks on the market that solve the circulation problem for tiny moon jellies.
However. You’re still dealing with a nanotank. The smaller the tank, the harder it is to maintain stable parameters. And it looks like these moon jellies are fairly sensitive to parameter changes. I wouldn’t recommend this tank unless you’re willing to constantly buy new jellies.
Also, they only live 1 to 2 years, best case. Not fantastic, compared to most fish.
To be honest, if I was going to deal with the pain of a saltwater tank I’d go bigger and make it a Reef Tank.
I went and ordered it. I’m kind of a sucker for these things. I’ll report back.