The Misunderstood Jellyfish

Jellyfish have always been considered as mysterious as they are fascinating animals thanks to their graceful and sinuous shapes. And it is precisely this fascination that has introduced a trend in recent years that is becoming increasingly popular, namely that of breeding these animals in a home aquarium. 

Jellyfish are planktonic animals, mainly marine, belonging to the phylum of the Cnidarians, which together with the Ctenophores once formed what was the Coelenterates. Generally, they represent a stage of the life cycle that ends after sexual reproduction, with the formation of a polyp.

Anatomically, the generic shape of a jellyfish is that of an inverted polyp. It can be imagined as a slightly flattened sac, where one recognizes an upper convex area, the exombrella, and a lower concave region, called subombrella, at the center of which is the mouth which connects to the gastrovascular cavity by means of a tubular structure called the manubrium. Stinging tentacles propagate from the sub-umbrella margin for defense and predation purposes. Jellyfish are composed of approximately 98 percent water.

Best Jellyfish Tanks for Your Home

Raising jellyfish in an aquarium is a wonderful experience. However, breeding these animals in tanks is a bit tricky, and you must do your homework first!

Jellyfish require a tank with characteristics that allow them to rotate, thus avoiding hitting the walls of the tank or anything else inside. Therefore the standard tanks on the market are not suitable for the breeding of these animals, due to their shape and technical equipment.

Traditional aquariums for breeding jellyfish are special tanks whose key point lies in their shape; the tanks are mostly oval in such a way as to create and maintain the water current inside them. This keeps the jellyfish “suspended” without letting them touch the walls.

This special tank is called Kreisel and, among other things, it also has the advantage of protecting the jellyfish from the tank’s drains. Noteworthy are those with a cylindrical shape because they allow a greater implementation of all those precautions necessary for the effective breeding of jellyfish.