Speaker 1: Pet Life Radio, Let's Talk Pets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to aquarium Media. I'm your host, doctor Royanon, speaking
to you from the University of Florida IFIs Tropical Acaculture Laboratory.
Thanks for joining us. Jellyfish exhibits in public aquaria have
held a certain to speak and fascination for decades. Early
jellyfish aquarium systems and hardy species became available to hobbyists,
with some success. As systems evolved further and more difficult
species better understood, the interest in jellyfish keeps continuing to expand.
My guest today, Travis Brandwood, the president and founder of
the Jellyfish Warehouse, has helped push jellyfish science and culture
forward and many different fronts. Join us as Travis shares
his journey from jellyfish novice to expert and teaches us
the basics of jellyfish biology and aquarian keeping. We'll be
right back after these messages.
Speaker 3: Take a bite out of your competition, advertise your business
with an ad in Pet Life Radio podcasts and radio shows.
There is no other pet related media that is as
large and reaches more pet parents and pet lovers than
Pet Life Radio, with over seven million monthly listeners. Pet
Life Radio podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms,
and our live radio stream goes out to over two
hundred and fifty million subscribers on iHeartRadio, Odyssey, tune In,
and other streaming apps. For more information on how you
can advertise on the number one pet podcast and radio network,
visit Petlife Radio dot com slash advertised Today.
Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to your aquarium mania on pet Life Radio.
Thanks for joining us. My guest today is Travis Brandwood,
President and founder of the Jellyfish Warehouse. So, Travis, are
you ready to talk jellies?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 5: I'm super excited.
Speaker 2: Well as you you may know. I kind of like
to get some personal information from my guests first, so
let's start with maybe some earlier year questions. How did
you first become interested in aquarium keeping? And do you
remember your very first tank?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So my dad actually was a cooyfish farmer, so
I grew up on a coyfish farm. So I've been
keeping fish and I've been, you know, surrounded by aquaculture
since I was pretty much born. So I think as
far as how jellyfish ties into that. You know, I
was always surrounded by raising any thing I could. You know,
I was scooping fish out of the creeks, I was
keeping coy Yeah, and I think even like my first aquarium,
I probably was like five or six, you know, so
I was kind of always acclimated to, you know, keeping
all sorts of things. So jellyfish was kind of a
next step for me.
Speaker 2: That's cool. Did your father have you help out on
the farm at all?
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, pretty much as soon as I could walk,
we were there, especially during the summer, you know, when
we didn't have school. We were helping out for sure.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool. Yeah, so another kind of maybe good,
maybe bad early memory. I was actually doing a search
for you, and I came across a pressI talk that
you put together, I guess ten eleven years ago. I
think it said you were sixteen or so.
Speaker 5: Sounds about right.
Speaker 2: You had a picture of a jellyfish with some clownfish.
You gotta tell me about that system.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, first, I'm like super fascinated that you were
able to find that. I don't really even remember making that,
you know, of course, I don't remember what I ate
for breakfast in the morning. Half the time. But yeah,
so that was my first ever jellyfish tank. I built that.
I converted a by orb aquarium like the tube version
into a jellyfish tank. And I had kept reading online
that you could potentially keep moon jellyfish with clownfish, so
that was something I had to try out. And I
I mean, it worked out like the clownfish are immune
to moon jelly's just like they are to an anemony,
so the sting doesn't bother them. But I did quickly
find out that clownfish, you know, the environment that you
keep a jellyfish in is like totally different than a
reef tank. It's very sparse. There's nowhere for the clownfish
to hide. So while they weren't being bothered by the sting,
I could tell that that wasn't really their favorite environment.
So that's actually how I got into like reef keeping.
I hadn't kept any kind of other saltwater aquarium other
than jellyfish at that point, so I took those clownfish
and set up a you know, like a ten gallon
reef tank or whatever.
Speaker 2: I was wondering. I kind of in the picture, they
looked like, I mean, they looked fine. But they were
kind of sort of in a in that kind of
sparse tank. So yeah, I was wondering it's it looked
like an interesting it looked like an interesting system.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they did sort of associate with the jellyfish. They
didn't quite get to like the anemone hosting kind of territory,
but they they sort of associated with it.
Speaker 2: Pretty cool. Now, obviously we're going to get much more
into depth and detail with species and some of the
more kind of intricacies of jellyfish, But do you remember
what were some of the very first species you kept,
maybe not bread yet, but just kept and what the
main I guess kind of early early on differences you
noted between keeping jellies and fish were.
Speaker 5: Right, right, Yeah, the first species I ever kept was
the moon jellyfish, And that's kind of like your most
common commonly kept species. You know, they've been breading the
cranams for years and years, and back then when I
first started keeping jellyfish in like twenty eleven or twelve,
you really couldn't buy captive bread jellyfish on a regular basis.
Sometimes they were being imported and whatnot. So I think
the first noon jelly I ever kept was like from Hawaii,
But yeah, so I kept that. I kept a couple
other moon jellies from different locations. Another common one is
the upside down jelly. Sometimes people keep those in you know,
semi reef tank environments, so I kept those as well.
And then I think the third species I moved on
to was the bayntal. So yeah, those are kind of
my first, Uh, I guess, first big three species that
I kept before I really dove into like breeding them
and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I guess, kind of what did you
see as maybe the major obvious or not so obvious
differences between keeping those and keeping fish.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's similar relatively speaking, Like when you
have a concept of how to maintain an aquarium, you know,
there's a lot that's parallel there, but the biggest thing
is just that, you know, jellyfish are delicate and they're
free swimming, and so you kind of have to go
head first with the aquarium. Like with a regular fish tank,
you can go to pet Co or pets Murder or
wherever and buy a ten gallon aquarium or you know,
whatever size you want and just get started with a jellyfish.
You know, they do have special requirements for the aquarium,
So I think, yeah, the biggest thing is, you know,
all of your work kind of goes in on the
front end getting the right aquarium, you know, and getting
that all set up. That's all kind of on the
front end.
Speaker 2: Okay, And yeah, we'll definitely get into more more jelly
keeping tips in a bit, but let's kind of switch
gears a little bit and get in the biology a
little bit more and talk taxonomy. Now, can you maybe
give the our listeners a little bit of sort of
science in terms of how jellyfish are related to other
animals they may be familiar with, and also I guess
maybe some insights into the major groups of jellyfish. And yeah,
maybe if you can kind of even describe some of
the kind of differences that would be, that would be cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah. So, like as far as jellyfish goes,
so they are animals and sometimes that you know, surprises
people that they are classified as animals. But when you
kind of look at the you know, total as far
as taxonomy goes with animals, jellyfish are pretty low on
the on the list. Like you have sponges, which are
kind of considered the simplest type of animal. Well, jellyfisherre
like one step up, so they're related to corals and anemonies.
They're in something called Nigeria, and they actually when you
really take a look, like a deeper dive into their
life cycles and stuff, you can see how they're related
to corals and anemonies a little bit more. Jellyfisher just basically,
you know, they have a free swimming stage, whereas like
a coral, you know, picks a spot and stays there
for its whole life. And then yeah, as far as
some of the different groups go, I mean you can
kind of it really depends on how you look at it,
you know, because like scientifically and taxonomically speaking, you can
really dive in and there's all of these different groups.
But if you're looking at it from the angle of
like either a hobbyist or you know, a public aquaus
or someone just keeping jellyfish, I like to split it
up into four groups. So you've got your true jellyfish.
Those are again like your moon jelly's or your sea
at almost kind of the thing you look at and
you go, hey, that it's a jellyfish. You've got your hydrozoans,
which are the best way I can describe them is
the weird cousin of jellyfish. They're kind of a lot
of the freaky looking, you know, smaller jellyfish look like
they're from deep down in the ocean. That's usually hydrozoans.
Got your box jellies, those I think a lot of
people have heard about, you know, the Australian box jellyfish.
It's lethal, but they're actually found all over the world,
including here in America. There's about fifty or sixty species
of box jellyfish. And then lastly, you've got your comb jellies.
Those are the clear, kind of walnut shaped jellyfish that
produce all sorts of iridescent light. And they're actually not
a jellyfish. They get grouped in a whole lot, but
they's something called the tinophoor and they're kind of just
in their own little compartment. I think every paper I
read recently that comes out about comb jellies shows that
they're just like further and further definantly related. So they're
they're kind of in their own category, but we often
roke them into the jellyfish dome.
Speaker 2: They kind of like move around like jellyfish, but they're not.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they're made out of that same kind of
you know, jelly type consistency. You look at that and
you go, that looks like something made out of jelly.
Speaker 2: So right, yeah, exactly, Now that makes sense.
Speaker 5: Yea.
Speaker 2: So now kind of going a little bit more into
anatomy and biology. You know, I've got a little of
a bit of understanding. You know, they're a little bit
on kind of the hell side. Obviously, I don't know
jellyfish nearly as well as you can. You maybe give
us an idiots guide summary of jellyfish biology, anatomy, and
maybe starting a little bit about reproduction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they are super simple creatures. You know, they don't
have any real organs, so everything they have is just
cells and tissues. They don't have any true organs, so
no heart, no brain, no spine, anything like that. But
when you do, like again, take a deeper dive into
their biology, you can see how everything they have is
you know, nothing's a one off thing. Everything has multiple purposes.
The super efficient in their design, which is how they've
been around for millions of years. Being so simple, you
would think that wouldn't work, but what they've done is
kind of figured out how to be simple and how
to make that work. But yeah, most jellyfish kind of
have a pretty simple design. There really only have one
cell layer the middle stuff there, that thing we think
of as jelly is called mesaglia, and then they've just
got kind of a layer of skin on top of that.
They have stomachs, so they are able to you know,
catch food and bring it in and digest it. And
then they've got these little sensory organs on the outside
of their body and again not a real organ, but
they're sort of used to tell the jellyfish is it
daytime or night time. They can sort of detect food
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and then yeah, I guess maybe a little
bit on reproduction.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, so most jellyfish species are male or female.
I get that question a lot, you know, like they
do they have a sex? Are they male female or
they both? Most jellyfish species are going to be male
or female. And then you basically have two types of reproduction.
You have internal or external. So with external reproduction, they
basically take their gam meats and just throw them out
in the ocean and hope for the best, you know,
which is kind of a wild thing to think about.
That that works, but they you know, nature finds a way.
And then the internal fertilization is where they actually bring
in the game meats and fertilize eggs with it, and
then they actually allow the little larval jellyfish to develop
inside of the female for a period of time before
they're then sent back out into the ocean. And then
as far as like they're you know, kind of whole
life cycle, they have a multi step process very similar
to like a frog or a butterfly. You know, They've
got these different distinct stages that all form a you know,
a circular life cycle.
Speaker 2: It's funny as you kind of go through this. They
definitely have a lot of similarities with some of the
other nigeria, you know, like I'm thinking a little bit
about corals. Yeah, so they can also I guess you
can kind of like cut them into pieces and they'll
all so potentially grow that way. Is that is that
another possibility as well for reproduction?
Speaker 5: Well potentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So jellyfish have crazy abilities to heal and regrow. They
can grow back most of their body and in fact,
those comb jellies I was talking about one species can
actually grow pretty much anything back in a matter of days,
and so they've been you know, a huge topic of
research for how that can apply to people in healthcare.
But yeah, since they're so simple, and again they don't
have any organs, they're totally symmetrical. Pieces of them can
be cut off. They usually don't reproduce that way. Some
of them seem like they can essentially grow back maybe
into you know, more jellies, but if they can't feed,
then they kind of struggle to fully grow back. So
if you cut one like straight in half, it would
be kind of hard for that to turn into two species,
but they certainly try.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense. So now what were the very
first jelly species you bred? And can you maybe tell
us a little bit about how that went. Obviously it
must have been pretty exciting for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yeah, those very first moon jellies I kept
actually bread in captivity. And so for me, you know,
keeping jellyfish was an experiment. Back then, there were not
a whole lot of resources for it. There weren't many
companies doing it. I had to build my own tank
to get started, and so for me, like the logical
next step was that after I figured out how to
you know, keep them happy and healthy, I wanted to
try growing them, and luckily enough, I bought three moon
jellies and I happened to get a male and a female,
and so they actually reproduced in that aquarium, and I
kind of got started with that, you know, growing them.
So I started with moon jellies, got kind of good
with that, moved on to some other species, and you know,
then it kind of snowballed from there.
Speaker 2: Speaking of other species, So and I think we'll have
to take a break in a couple of minutes or two,
But before then, can you maybe tell us what would
be some of your favorite species? And why? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I get asked this a lot, such a hard question
because I you know, I'm so deeply passionate about jellyfish
that I swear it changes every week what my favorite
species is, and it's usually whatever challenging species I'm working on,
you know, unraveling at the time. But if I had
to pick a single one, I would say the mushroom
jellyfish would be my like all time favorite. And they're
they're actually a local species to North Carolina here, So.
Speaker 2: What, yeah, can you describe them a little bit? What
do they? Yeah? Yeah, there are.
Speaker 5: Really neat species you don't see them too often. Sometimes
you'll see them in like late fall or spring. But yeah,
so they're found from like Florida all the way up
to New York. They're sort of a clearish jellyfish, but
they also kind of have like the undersides red or pink.
But they're really neat because a lot of the times,
you know, you'll hear about maybe one or two showing
up every season, and then every couple of years, like
maybe every five to ten years. Uh, there's just like
a ton of them that wash up and they get massive,
which which is uncommon for the East coast of the
United States. Most of our jellyfish are pretty small, so
it really freaks people out when a three or a
four foot diameter jellyfish washes up on the beach, you know.
So I think they're just super cool, and they're super
understudied too. There's not much known about them. I've started
raising them, but you know, their their life cycle was
described in the seventies and they really haven't been touched since.
So I think there's a lot more to be done
with that species.
Speaker 2: So that's going to be one of your next conquests.
Speaker 5: I said, sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, let's take a short break and we'll continue
our discussion with Travis Branwood, president and founder of the
Jellyfish Warehouse, after these messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Molly, here's your dinner. Zeuce, that's not your food.
Speaker 6: Don't let that happen. Do your precious cat. Elevate your
cat's eating experience with the cat tree tray. The cat
tree tray keeps your cat's food off the floor and
conveniently located on the cat tree.
Speaker 2: It's the perfect way to eat. It's a beautiful braught.
Speaker 6: Iron tray that easily attaches to your cat tree and
keeps dogs and other gritters out of your cat's dish.
A must from Multi Pet Households. There's a six inch
trade for large bowls and a four inch tray for
smaller balls. Er just your cat tree trade today. Go
right now to cattreetrade dot com. That's cattreetrade dot com.
Z A T t R E E t R A
y dot com.
Speaker 2: Let's talk past.
Speaker 5: Let's done, Pet Headline.
Speaker 2: Radio Catlin Radio dot com. We're back in continuing our
conversation with my guests, jellyfish experts Travis Brentwood. So we
kind of talked a little bit about some of your
early beginnings and some basic biology of jellyfish. Travis, let's
kind of talk a little bit more now about what
you've done on the commercial side. So how did you
make the leap from jellyfish keeper to breeder to businessman?
And I think I heard her You mentioned you started
in your garage, right, yes, yes, take us through all
of the the insights and changes and decisions that you
made to become the president and founder of the Jellyfish Warehouse.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I did, in fact start in my mom's garage,
much to her and my stepdad's amusement. Slowly, you know,
took over the garage with various jellyfish tanks. But yeah,
so I got started. Once I started keeping jellyfish and
actually breeding them. I started a little blog on the
internet because you know, back in the early twenty tens,
everyone was doing blogging. But I was just sharing my
experience with keeping jellyfish because again, back then, there was
so little information on it, and you were lying on
so much trial and error that I wanted to, you know,
show everything the good and the bad, what worked, what didn't.
And you know, as I was writing about raising moon
jellies and stuff, and you know, and I ended up
with a surplus that then people started reaching out left
and right asking if they could buy the jellies, because again,
back then, you were dealing with either wild caught jellies
or it just wasn't you know, it was hard to
find them in the first place. So I kind of
got started accidentally because I that was not what I
thought I was going to do. I was in high school,
you know, I was expecting to be a marine biologist
or go work at a public aquarium. And then all
of a sudden, I was selling jellyfish on the side
out of my mom's garage, and I kind of realized,
you know, if I went to college, where was I
going to put those jellyfish in a dorm room? You know,
I started, you know, I got accepted to college, and
I started emailing professors in the marine biodepartment. I was like,
is there going to be like space for me to
put you know, all of these jellyfish? And it just
didn't seem like it. So I actually skipped college at
the time and just dove straight into raising jellyfish and
selling them. I built a website, you know, and then
started doing it from there, and I really I got
started out of my mom's garage, you know, probably twenty
twelve to twenty fourteen. But then I got my first
commercial space in twenty seventeen, and that was when I
was like, Okay, I'm going to do this, you know,
like full full scale, I'm going to go into it.
Speaker 2: So that must have been kind of scary but exciting
at the same time.
Speaker 5: I was absolutely, Yeah, it was, especially because you know,
at that time, again everyone was going off to college
and stuff, and here I was raising jellyfish, and you know,
I worked a couple of jobs here and there, like
at local quarium stores to not only build up experience,
but to save up money for that first commercial space.
So it was just a huge leap, leap of faith
and like an actual leap, you know, jumping into that.
Speaker 2: So that's pretty amazing. I'm always impressed. I'm a terrible
business person. You and other folks like you always impressed
me because yeah, I don't think I could do it,
and I would be bad at it.
Speaker 5: So well that you know, I meet a lot of
people in the hobby that were just like me, where
it was like you had a skill or you know,
something you're extremely passionate about and you're like, Okay, I
want to do this as a career. And you start
doing it, you're like, oh, I've got to do like
business and stuff like I gotta I gotta learn that
part of it. So that was probably the most challenging
part and the most you know, trial and error. It
was like I had learned how to raise jellyfish, but
running a business is a whole different experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So tell us now about the jellyfish warehouse,
you know, if you were kind of describing it and
maybe explaining the space as well as kind of what
you're doing and what your you know, sort of business is,
if you could do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. It's evolved wildly over the years. Again, started
in my mom's garage, but the name actually came from
my goal starting out was that I realized that there
was such a lack of resources and jellyfish and tanks
and everything for sale, and there was really nowhere where
you could kind of get all of that. So I
wanted to create this kind of jellyfish warehouse where you
could find everything you needed. Things were affordable because you know,
early on, jellyfish tanks were thousands of dollars. So I
wanted everything to be affordable and readily available and kind
of all under the same roof. And so that's how
I came up with that name. And then yeah, getting started,
you know, early on, I got that first warehouse space
which was only a little bit bigger than a garage,
and just started accumulating you know, tanks and hardware as
I could. And I focused originally on breeding jellyfish because
I knew that that was what I could do, that
was what I was good at, and I just wanted
to do as many different species as possible because there
really hadn't been any opportunity for that before either. It
was like, if you wanted to buy a jellyfish, you've
got moon jellies or whatever random thing that maybe you know,
a wholesaler got in at the time. So I wanted
there to be a wide variety of captive, bread sustainably
aquaculture jellyfish available.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us what are what are some of
the most popular jellies that you're selling to public aquaria,
to researchers and to hobbyists. You know, I'm assuming they're
probably different. Yes, maybe going to that a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So like as far as the hobbyist level goes,
moon jellies are still the most popular. There's the most
information about them, They're relatively easy to breed and care for,
so they're in good supply. They're very readily available and
pretty affordable for someone looking to get into jellyfish. So
those are definitely still the most common. But I think
sea needles would be the next most common species that
we sell, and we sell quite a few different species
of them. I think I'm up to like maybe ten
different species of sea needles. But they're that jellyfish species
that's got the long, really frilly tentacles, kind of the
classic looking jellyfish. They're really gorgeous, so naturally a fan favorite.
So that's for hobbyists. For public aquariums, I think sea
netals are also huge. They're you know, usually a big
jellyfish and again really beautiful display animals. But yeah, I
mean public aquariums are always looking for something you know,
new or interesting to show people. And then as far
as researchers and universities go, that's always a fascinating topic
because you know, there's I almost feel like there's fads
that come in and out people get interested in, you know,
a particular species again, like those comb jellies that can
regenerate you know, every part of their body. That's been
a huge thing in the past for research. I'm working
on a project now with something called the Immortal jellyfish.
That's a jellyfish that can actually go backwards in its
life cycle. So I just started breeding those. Actually caught
several of them on my honeymoon, you know, when I
wasn't trying to have an actual vacation. I was sitting
there collecting jellyfish and bringing them back in.
Speaker 2: Between trying to breathe. Right, So these are like Benjamin
button jellyfish, I guess, yes, that's something they're called frequently. Yes,
because they can actually go backwards in their life cycle.
So super cool project there. But yeah, with research, there's
always some new hot species that is, you know, of interest.
So yeah, so I have to ask about them because
I've seen sea needtals and yeah, mention, they've got those
really long, kind of frilly tentacles. So so hobbyists that
have those must have like really big tanks. I take
it then, I mean don't they they would need like
a pretty large system.
Speaker 5: Yeah, typically because they're so long. Now, like I said,
I have around ten different species, and the size differences
between some of them is pretty large. So like the
smaller species we offer, like the bay nettles or the
japanesea netals, those are more suitable for home aquariums, not
only in size, but also like in the parameters that
they're kept at. They do well at room temperature. They
eat kind of easy jellyfish foods. But yeah, some sea
needles get like two or three feet in diameter and
are better suited for either giant tanks or public aquariums.
And then another little tidbit about jellyfish is that since
they don't have any major organs, they can actually you
can kind of keep them at a certain size. They
have something called growth and de growth, which has been
another topic of research, but jellyfish can actually you know,
they'll grow if they have the space and the food,
but in times where there's not enough food or where
there's not enough resources, they can actually shrink in size
to help conserve resources. And it's been found that they
can kind of do this back and forth without any
negative effects to them.
Speaker 2: Oh that is interesting. Yeah, yeah, so I guess kind
of going back to maybe a lot of our listeners,
maybe hobbyists, what would be kind of your recommended aquarium
type setups in species. I think you kind of hit
on that a little bit, but maybe kind of reinforce that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if I had to pick three jellyfish species for
like a hobbyist or someone looking to get into jellyfish keeping,
I would pick moon jellies because those are a classic.
I would pick marbled jellies, So those are kind of
a different shaped jellyfish. They've got more of a kind
of a gumball shape, you know, you think of a
jellyfish as being like a disc. These are more rounded
and they don't have long tentacles, but they're much more active,
you know, quick swimming species. And then the bay nettle,
which is that other species I recommended that you know,
stays relatively small and does well at room temp. So
all three of those species are relatively easy to keep,
the foods they eat are relatively easy to get a
hold of, and they're just pretty hardy, you know, all around.
Speaker 2: Would they use similar type of tanks and like what
kind of foods would they be feeding?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, so they all would do well in similar
types of tanks. The cool part about you know, the
time period we're in now is that jellyfish tanks are
getting simpler and cheaper, and there's a greater variety of
them on the market to choose from. And people are
also considering, you know, multiple species when they design these aquariums.
So you know, back in the day, it was like
if you picked a jellyfish a cuream, it was usually
designed around like a moon jellyfish and you couldn't really
keep you know, other speci that type of habitat. But
now most of the tanks on the market are pretty universal.
And then food wise, there are pellet foods now for jellyfish,
which has been a huge innovation. It used to be
that you had to hatch brin shrimp to feed your jellyfish,
and that is still a really good option. You know,
it's a live food, so it's super clean and super
healthy for your jellies, but it's not necessary anymore for
a lot of those more common beginner species.
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know. And now for maybe more advanced hobbyists,
what would be kind of a challenging but not impossible.
Speaker 5: Species, right right, Yeah, The first one that comes to
mind is the blue can involve jellyfish. It's one of
my other favorite species. They're relatively new to the hobby,
and the biggest challenge with them is that they're super
active and they love to eat, so you just got
to keep them fed, like all the time. They're really
gorgeous species. They're bright blue. They look unnatural, they're look
like a soda or something like the color that they are.
But yeah, so they're totally gorgeous and have a lot
of fun personality and they're not terribly difficult to keep.
But again, it's just like you got to keep them
really well fed. So feeding them a couple times a
day is ideal if possible.
Speaker 2: I had two kind of questions I just thought about
when you talked about mixed species. Now, are there jellyfish
that really you don't put together or are they kind
of able to get along with each other for the
most part.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So typically with jellyfish, you want to keep them
with other members of like the same species. So like
if you keep moon jellies, you can keep a couple
moon jellies, but you don't want to mix them with
other species. Now, there are some exceptions to that. A
lot of your tropical species. So like your blubber jellies,
your spotted lagoon jellies, those guys tend to do well together,
whereas like your sea netals, your lion's manes, those are
the more like stingy species that will try to eat
other species that they can. So my typical advice is,
if you're like a beginning hobbyist or looking to get
into jellyfish, stick to ones species, even the species that
you can keep together. There are some challenges associated with that.
You know, if you're looking to get into jellyfish keeping,
I would kind of find a species you like and
stick with that one to begin with.
Speaker 2: Okay, good advice. I actually had another question, but of
course I lost it. So oh I now remember so
you know with kind of reef tanks, you know, versus
kind of fish only you know, we know there are
sort of some water quality parameters that maybe are going
to be much more important or you know that they're
much more fragile. How would you say kind of water
quality parameters for like a reef tank versus like a
jellyfish tank would compare like, are there things that are
going to be more critical or you know, less critical?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's actually a great question, And I typically compare
jellyfish to keeping soft corals in terms of water quality.
They're not super picky about like nitrates or phosphates. You
don't want them to be crazy high, but it's not
like you know, keeping LPs or sps where you got
to really keep an eye on those water parameters. And
then as far as like you know, I know reef
keepers keep close tabs on alkalinity or calcium or magnesium.
Those parameters are important for jellyfish, but they don't use
up those elements, so you don't have to worry about
like dosing a jellyfish tank because they don't have a skeleton,
they're not going to use those elements, but they still
want them to kind of be you know, similar to
natural seawater.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, Yeah, I was curious about that. Let's kind
of move on, and you've been really really active with
trying to kind of enhance and get the jellyfish community
sort of united. Can you tell us a little bit
about the Jellyfish Owners Association that you began and what
its purpose is and some of maybe the cool important
things that have come out of it so far.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, you know, as a person raising jellyfish, you know,
and I've been doing it for you know, over a
decade now I realized that, you know, if you go
to Google right now and look up information on keeping jellyfish,
I would estimate that eighty to ninety percent of what
you read is going to be wrong or misguided, which
I realized. You know, when you're doing any hobby, any
niche hobby, there's going to be a certain percentage of
wrong information. But like with jellyfish, it's just astronomical, and
so there's so many people trying to get into the
hobby and they just end up misguided or have the
wrong ideas because it's like so much of that information
that's right up in front and you know, in your face,
is just wrong or misleading. So the purpose of the
Jellyfish Owners Association was to create like a place, like
a centralized location where jellyfish keepers could exchange information. So
I wanted it to be jellyfish specific, because you know,
there are forums out there for aquariums and sometimes jellyfish
come up, but a lot of the times those people,
you know, haven't kept jellyfish, or they're just sort of
regurgitating information that they read on the internet. At some point.
But then I also wanted to create a space where
jellyfish keepers of all backgrounds could come together. So we've
got people who have never kept a jellyfish and they're
just doing research, you know, they're in that early phase.
And then we have some of the greatest jellyfish keepers
in the world in that group everybody in between. So
I just wanted this space where we could all talk
about jellyfish and come up with ideas, and we could
all kind of fact check each other. You know, it's
not one person and it's not one company controlling all
the information. It's everybody in the jellyfish community, so that
we can all come up with great ideas and kind
of exchange, you know, how we're doing jellyfish keeping from
you know, all parts of the world. So and then yeah,
as far as some of the cool stuff that's happened,
I mean, really the coolest thing has just been like
the connections that have been made not only between me
and other people, but members of the community. Because again
there's people from you know, all continents keeping jellyfish and
talking about it. And again it's helping hobbyists talk with
public aquarists and with scientists and we're all kind of
exchanging information so that we're not you know, getting trapped
in our own bubble, you know, where we're kind of
checking our the way we do things with other other
types of jelly keepers. So they the communication and the
connections that have been made have been really cool to
kind of watch unfold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's excellent and definitely, you know, there's obviously so
much to be learned, either from public aquerius or from
the hobbyists who have really you know, done a lot
of in this area. So yeah, it sounds like a
really great group. I just as you know, I just joined,
so I'll try to learn a little bit more about
it as well. And I know you mentioned this as well,
and you know a really really big project you're the
Jellyfish Compendium. Can you tell us a little bit about
that and obviously goals and you know where you are
with it so far.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I started that I think either late twenty twenty
one or early twenty two, but I was suffering from
some major burnout. You know, I've been raising jellyfish for
years and running a jellyfish company and all that, and
one of the things I was feeling was that I
didn't feel like I was, you know, contributing to something permanent.
Like the science of jelly fish fascinates me, and I
had gotten really interested in the taxonomy as well, like
diving into identifying jellyfish and understanding all the different species.
And again I noticed that with like the information you
know in the world of jellyfish, even in the scientific community,
the information is so sparse and spread out and difficult
to access. You know, even if you're a scientist or
public aquarus, it's like impossible to find consistent information. If
you're raising a species of jellyfish and you want to
find a picture of what the babies look like or
what the larvae look like. Most of the time, if
you google it, you'll find nothing, or you'll find a
you know, hand drawn photo from its original description in
eighteen fifty something, you know or whatever. So I kind
of got this idea to set out to photograph every
species of jellyfish I could get my hands on, and
to photograph each stage of their life cycle, so everything
I could get my hands on. And then I kind
of wanted to put this all in one place and
make it freely accessible to anybody. You can just go there,
you know, scroll down and find the jellyfish you're looking for,
and then you can find pictures of its life cycle,
you can find information on how to keep them, you know,
and everything in between. And so it's kind of an
amalgamation of my own personal experience and anecdote and then
also me digging through the literature and trying to summarize
it and put it in one place so that we
have an easy kind of way to access it. So yeah,
I'm just kind of hoping to make it sort of
a legacy project. So I would love to document every
species of jellyfish. That's a really bold goal, especially because
we're describing new species pretty much all the time. But
it's just something to work on as I can. So
I started accumulating species. You know, I had a handful
of species that were useful for you know, raising to sell,
but a lot of species are just not really commercially
of interest but are still super fascinating. So I am
up to fifty seven species in my collection at the moment,
which I leave is the largest collection of jellyfish in
the US, not the world, but I believe that, Yeah,
it's the largest collection in the US right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty impressive. So have you taken on a
man of war yet? Portuguese man of war?
Speaker 5: That is like one species I have zero experience with. Yeah,
they're just they're not common here in North Carolina. I
know in Florida you get like a good wind, especially
like in the winter months, it seems like you'll see
them wash up. But I've only seen one and it
was in Florida and it was dead when I found it,
So I haven't had the chance to work with them,
but that's something I would be very interested to try out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that the same experience. I was on the East
coast and just walking the beach and they were like,
like you said, a couple mostly gotten blown over there.
They're beautiful but dead. So yeah, pretty interesting.
Speaker 5: Now I do work with box jellyfish. I have I
think six or seven species of box jellies right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you decided whether you want to put up
a little webcam for your jelly fit.
Speaker 5: I've thought about that. Yeah, Like I know that some
public aquames do those, like live jellycams super popular, And
I'm actually moving my facility right now and I'm kind
of building my dream jellyfish lab. So when that's all done.
When the dust is settled from that, I might actually
consider setting something like that up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be really cool. Yeah, a lot of really
interesting species there. So I think in one of our
corresponds is you had mentioned something about hitchhikers. Can you
maybe talk a little bit about hitchhiker jellyfish?
Speaker 5: Yeah, this has become kind of a you know, a
little niche interest of mine recently is jellyfish ending up
in spots where they're not supposed to. So people who've
kept reef tanks may have come across like upside down
jellies are very common hitchhikers and reef tanks. They come
in on live rock or corals or whatever, and then
other little hydrozoe and jellyfish are common hitchhikers and reef
aquraremes and they usually show up and then you know,
go away on their own and people get curious about them.
But I think it was last year I had just
a little thirty gallon tank set up for some baslets
kind of a side interest of mine, or deep water baslets.
But I had tossed some live rock in there from
my reef tank to help speed up that cycle. And
a couple of months into it being set up, I
noticed little box jellyfish growing on the sides of the tank.
So their larval stage, you know, grows on the sides
or on a rock or the glass or whatever. So
I noticed these these little box jellyfish growing there, and
I was like, that's something totally different, you know, like
upside down jellyfish are essentially harmless. They're nice, friendly, little
little species of jellyfish that I'm over here with, you know,
who knows what. I could tell it was a box jellyfish,
but I don't know the species. It could be anything.
So I started raising those and have had some success
raising them. They're really tough. But I started digging into
the literature and there have been species of box jellyfish
which have been only identified from aquariums, Like they've never
been seen in the wild. They've only been known by
showing up in people's aquariums. And I'm not the only
person either that's found them in their you know, hobby
aquarium That have been other people, even in the Jellyfish
Owners Association, people have posted videos of box shelly's that
have cropped up in their tanks. So that makes me wonder, like,
how often is this happening, and how many species are
there that are potentially undescribed or unknown to science, that
are just living in people's aquariums in their homes. And
you know, a jellyfish won't live very long in a
standard reef tank. It'll get sucked right into the power
heads or down the overflow. So I think, you know,
you could have jellyfish growing in your reef tank and
you wouldn't even know it. If you didn't catch it
at the right time when those babies were just born,
then they may you know, disappear. So in the future,
I would like to start buying up a whole bunch
of live rock and stuff from all over the world
and just see what, you know, what starts growing out
of it, because I'm very by what's growing in people's
aquariums around the world.
Speaker 2: Like a box of chocolates exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you really have no idea what you're going to
end up with, and there's whole new types of chocolate
growing in there.
Speaker 2: So have you had a chance to get any of
the box jellies that you saw, like identified or they're
still kind of unknown?
Speaker 5: They are currently unknown. I just sent I have three
unidentified species right now, and I sent them off to
be DNA bar coded, so that means the lab is
going to take them and extract their DNA and compare
it to other ones in the database, so they can
either tell me, oh, this is that species, or they
can say this isn't in the database, and that either
means that it's a new species or it just hasn't
been entered yet. So waiting patiently on that. I don't
know how long that's going to take, but very curious
to see what that ends up. Being.
Speaker 2: Very cool, very cool. Well, unfortunately I think we're out
of time, Travis, So I want to thank you a
lot and our producer, Mark Winner for making the show possible. Travis,
did you have any final words of wisdom on jellyfish
or aquaria or life in general?
Speaker 5: That is a that's a great question. Well, firstly, I
appreciate you having me on. I always love a good
excuse to talk about jellyfish and aquarium's in general with
other like minded aquarian people. But yeah, as far as
jellyfish keeping goes, I think the biggest thing is just
do the research, you know, join groups like the Jellyfish
Owners Association, or just you know, poke around the Internet
and try and filter out information because that that's like
your biggest tool with keeping jellyfish is just do the
research ahead of time so you don't have to do
all that trial and error so that you know, hopefully
you're doing you know, great job right from the get go.
Speaker 2: So yeah, very cool. And you know what, I actually
thought of one quick, one more quick question, which which
was I forgot to ask you about lifespan, So like,
what's kind of your average lifespan for like your beginner
jellies that you were talking about and maybe some maybe
some of the other ones.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because this is one
of my favorite questions and it's another one of those
myths that I see like all the time because people,
you know, are upset that jellyfish have short lifespans. I
always hear that they only live a couple of months
or less than a year. But yeah, like if we
take a look at the moon jellyfish, for example, it's
pretty common for them to live two to four years
in captivity, and that all has to do with, you know,
how well they're taken care of and all of that.
But yeah, moon jelly's have been kept all the way
up to I think fourteen years in captivity at some
public aquariums. Again, they don't have organs to fail, you know,
they're really simple, so if they're in really good conditions,
they'll keep going for a long time. That myth that
they only live a couple of months is totally untrue.
And you know, every new species we're keeping that we're
learning more about. It seems like we push that lifespan,
you know, longer and longer.
Speaker 2: Good to know. Yeah, I was wondering about that, so
appreciate that. Yeah, I should have asked that sooner, but
that's fine anyway. Please be sure to check out Travis's
social media, which we'll have on his Quaranmania episode page.
If you have any questions, comments, or i'd use for
a show, email me at doctor Roy at petlife Radio
dot com. That's d R R O y at petlife
Radio dot com. Until next time, please visit your local
cram stores he youre tanks clean and definitely consider jelly
pitch to your next day.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on Petlife
Radios dot com