I have no pairs in my tank, only single sexes.
No pairs of what? And how does this query relate to mysid shrimp?
the other thing is, i have never seen an Adult Mysid shrimp.. only copepods and anthropods. i have spent hours at diff times of night, and never seen anything, exept copepods and anthropods.
A lot of hobbyists don't know what they are looking at in their tanks and don't know the real difference one from another. Most copepods are so small you will have a great deal of trouble seeing them.
Probably the most common "bug" in all of my tanks are gammarus and mysids with a couple types of arthropods (not anthropods) that can be found in smaller numbers.
if i have such a dense population, wouldn't i need a lot of adults?
Indeed, if you have mysids then there are adults there. You won't see the small ones usually but the adults are large enough to be seen.
The mysids eat their own young but enough survive to keep the populations up to whatever the food level is in the tank.
They are difficult to culture in any meaningful numbers because of this cannibalism.
Mysids exist in quite a few different species and I think some of the larger ones get up to 3/4" long or slightly more. The species we normally find in our tanks are much smaller. The adult ones in my tanks generally run about 1/4" in length.
I've seen 3 distinctly difference species of mysids in my tanks, but none of them are the large sized species.
Frozen mysis shrimp fish food are larger than the mysids in my tank.(other than the mini mysis that is)