Jellyfish – otherwise known as sea jellies – count among the most astonishing sea creatures in existence day. And yes, they are beautiful as well, especially those that glow. Who wouldn’t want to have such beauties around? You must have wondered what raising a jellyfish as a pet would cost you.
There is no definitive price at which jellyfishes are bought. Factors like the breeder, quality, age, and species of the jellyfish affect the price you will procure a pet jellyfish. For example, a small Moon Jellyfish would cost you as low as $25. But a bigger-sized Moon Jellyfish could cost as much as $80.
Definitely, the price of getting a jellyfish exceeds just the cost price you pay to the breeder. You will also have to factor in secondary expenses like how much it would take to set up an aquarium, procure the fish’s food, and how much you would spend to get care supplies.
What is the Price of a Pet Jellyfish?
Depending on the species of jellyfish, you can expect to spend between $25 and $150 on buying a pet jellyfish.
The Moon Jellyfish is a homeowners’ favorite. A small Moon Jellyfish costs between $25 and $55.
But if you want a bigger Moon Jellyfish for a pet, you should budget between $60 and $80.
A lot depends on the breeder you buy from and the jellyfish’s quality.
Jellyfish Aquarium Costs
Of course, you were not expecting your jellyfish to share your bedroom with you. Being aquatic, your fish will need a devoted aquarium for it to thrive in captivity.
Here is a famous dilemma many homeowners face here: do they buy an aquarium or build their custom aquarium?
Economically, it is cheaper to build your aquarium – if only you have the experience. If you go with cheaper materials (like tank, filter, and pump), you can get an aquarium with extensive customization options for less than $80.
However, given the delicateness of jellyfishes, you have to get the aquarium conditions perfect or risk harming your jellyfish.
We recommend buying a ready-produced tank from a dedicated manufacturer if this is your first time rearing a jellyfish.
Most jellyfish aquariums sell above $100. Models with enhanced sophistication can cost north of $200.
Jellyfish Food Costs
Feeding your jellyfish is another expenditure you will have to consider raising a jellyfish. The first question that comes to mind here is what you would feed your jellyfish in its aquarium.
Jellyfishes enjoy meals of baby brine shrimps. These are procurable from your local pet store, either frozen or live. You can also get these shrimp brines from ecommerce stores.
For context, 20g of brine shrimps can cost you an average of $15. Now, considering that you will have to feed your jellyfish twice a day (preferably morning and night), you should budget around $25-$40 to feed each jellyfish.
Note that this is the base cost. There are premium jellyfish foods like Ocean Nutrition Instant Baby Brine Shrimp that cost as high as $499 for 20grams.
Jellyfish Care Supplies Costs
Your jellyfish needs to be raised in appropriate conditions to keep it healthy and cheerful. For this, it is essential certain tank conditions are maintained to keep the aquarium hospitable for your jellyfish.
As we will learn about shortly, conditions like salinity and temperature need to be maintained at a threshold. The aquarium will also need lighting.
How much should you budget for all these?
Lighting
Lighting your jellyfish aquarium does more than aesthetically transform the tank. Lights are vital for your jellyfish’s health.
Surprised?
Yes, despite having no brain or bone, jellyfishes are furnished with delicate sensory nerves stationed below their tentacles. This helps them in detecting light.
The jellyfish’s metabolic system is optimized to such cycles of day and night – as obtainable in the ocean. Without such cycles of lamination, your jellyfish’s internal functions would be dysfunctional.
More than that, lighting your aquarium improves visibility, allowing you to see your jellyfish readily and detect (and halt) the formation of algae.
LED lights work best for illuminating your jellyfish’s aquarium. Such lights cost anywhere from $10 to $70. The sophistication of the LED light inevitably varies the cost.
LED lights having up to five dynamic light effects (with colors changing) will not come cheap.
Such superior models go for around $70. They can be programmed to switch on and out at specific intervals.
If you want a simplified LED light that you can manually switch on and off yourself, you can get one for as low as $10.
Brine Shrimp Hatchery
You may need to hatch your brine shrimp when rearing a pet jellyfish. For this, you will need brine shrimp hatcheries.
The cost of these hatcheries varies, depending on factors like the volume of brine shrimps they can hatch at once, the hatching success rate, and how long it takes to hatch.
Averagely priced shrimp hatcheries take around 30-48 hours to hatch live baby shrimps. These models go for $23 or less.
More sophisticated (and of course more expensive) can hatch your live shrimp in as little as 24 hours once you add in resources like lighting, saltwater, and the eggs. These models can cost as much as $50.
These expensive hatcheries can deliver up to a 95% hatch rate and accommodate up to 40 ml of eggs.
Water Testing Kit
Your jellyfish is extremely sensitive to changing water conditions in its aquarium. When things like salinity, pH, and temperature change, your jellyfish will likely respond.
This is why it is important to have a saltwater testing kit. This is valuable in regularly testing your tank’s water condition, ensuring thresholds for pH, salinity, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are not exceeded.
Before we go right into the cost of a testing kit, you may be curious to know these thresholds.
Well, your jellyfish’s tank water’s pH should always sit between 8.0-8.3. The salinity should never exceed 35ppt nor drop below 32ppt.
Ammonia and nitrite should always be kept at 0ppm, while nitrate shouldn’t exceed 20ppm.
With these conditions established, how much will the testing kit cost?
Yet again, several factors determine that. The number of tests each kit comes with, whether your kit can test for both saltwater and freshwater (or just saltwater only), and the number of conditions (pH, salinity…) your kit can test determine how much your test kit would cost.
Take the API water test kit, for example. It can check for up to five water conditions (mentioned above).
Interestingly, this kit packs up to 800 tests. But it can’t test for saltwater conditions.This kit costs around $25.