Adding Amphipods

[ilott]

Hello,

i’ve been wondering if people have added live amphipods to their tanks, did they have any benefit? How did you add them, where did you add them and should you add them?

I used live sand to start the tank but I can’t seem to find much information online as to what is in live sand. Also I have dosed copepods and I will continue to dose them over the coming weeks to establish a healthy population in preparation for a Mandarin.
Any tips would be much appreciated

 

[Sharebear]

I added 2 mandarin gobys to my tank but didnt add any amphipods. I just ordered from algaebarn the 5280 and green magik combo.

I use a flashlight during nighttime to see that there’s enough of the little creature swimming around and add the copepods to my sump so they can “breed happily” with some macro algae and marinepure blocks

reason why I didn’t add amphipods is

“Additionally, amphipods appear to prey on copepods that they find crawling over the rock/sand/glass surfaces. What this means is that the amphipods not only remove adult, benthic copepods, but by consuming egg-carrying females they also deprive the system of young, planktonic copepods. But, their tendency to reduce or eliminate populations of copepods can prove to be disadvantageous for the system as a whole.”

good luck!!!

 

[\m/reefsnmetal\m/]

My amphipods hitch hiked in on my chaeto. I think there's a benefit to my tank as I have fish that eat them. I'm not sure of the effect they have on my copepod population, but my mandarin is still nice and happy so he's eating something. I like having them in my tank overall.

 

[living_tribunal]

Hello,

i’ve been wondering if people have added live amphipods to their tanks, did they have any benefit? How did you add them, where did you add them and should you add them?

I used live sand to start the tank but I can’t seem to find much information online as to what is in live sand. Also I have dosed copepods and I will continue to dose them over the coming weeks to establish a healthy population in preparation for a Mandarin.
Any tips would be much appreciated

Firstly, mandarins won’t consume too many amphipods. Maybe the nauplii but that’s it. Amphipods are far too large for them to fit in their mouth.

Amphipods are the easiest, hardiest, fastest growing crustaceans you can add to a tank. I’ve had tanks where I added just 25 of them and absent a wrasse they grew to biblical swarm status 7,000-10,000 (eating many fleshy lps) with no special care at all.

Just add these guys and they’ll survive and thrive with no care. I have too many in my frag qt and I haven’t fed that tank in months.

I don’t want to discourage you from getting amphipods because they do have many benefits but for me personally, they’ve been a net negative. They consume too many of the 30,000 copepods I culture every week, they ate all of the nudibranchs eggs when I had aptasia, they have consumed huge chunks of flesh off lps before I added a wrasse. These guys consume everything, good or bad, if their population isn’t kept in check.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

If you are getting a mandarin then you should not actively add amphipods to your tank. As mentioned above they will compete for pods with your mandarin.

 

[ilott]

I added 2 mandarin gobys to my tank but didnt add any amphipods. I just ordered from algaebarn the 5280 and green magik combo.

I use a flashlight during nighttime to see that there’s enough of the little creature swimming around and add the copepods to my sump so they can “breed happily” with some macro algae and marinepure blocks

reason why I didn’t add amphipods is

“Additionally, amphipods appear to prey on copepods that they find crawling over the rock/sand/glass surfaces. What this means is that the amphipods not only remove adult, benthic copepods, but by consuming egg-carrying females they also deprive the system of young, planktonic copepods. But, their tendency to reduce or eliminate populations of copepods can prove to be disadvantageous for the system as a whole.”

good luck!!!

I’ve dosed quite alot of copepods and came back in the nighttime to see if any were crawling around and I couldn’t see any at all, I have recently added about 500ml to my sump in hope that they grow from there.

 

[ilott]

If you are getting a mandarin then you should not actively add amphipods to your tank. As mentioned above they will compete for pods with your mandarin.

Thank you, I will not add them if the compete for food.

 

[living_tribunal]

I’ve dosed quite alot of copepods and came back in the nighttime to see if any were crawling around and I couldn’t see any at all, I have recently added about 500ml to my sump in hope that they grow from there.

Do you have any pod consuming fish currently? What pods as well?

 

[ilott]

Firstly, mandarins won’t consume too many amphipods. Maybe the nauplii but that’s it. Amphipods are far too large for them to fit in their mouth.

Amphipods are the easiest, hardiest, fastest growing crustaceans you can add to a tank. I’ve had tanks where I added just 25 of them and absent a wrasse they grew to biblical swarm status 7,000-10,000 (eating many fleshy lps) with no special care at all.

Just add these guys and they’ll survive and thrive with no care. I have too many in my frag qt and I haven’t fed that tank in months.

I don’t want to discourage you from getting amphipods because they do have many benefits but for me personally, they’ve been a net negative. They consume too many of the 30,000 copepods I culture every week, they ate all of the nudibranchs eggs when I had aptasia, they have consumed huge chunks of flesh off lps before I added a wrasse. These guys consume everything, good or bad, if their population isn’t kept in check.

Thank you! Very detailed and much appreciated, i’ll stick to copepods!

 

[ilott]

Do you have any pod consuming fish currently? What pods as well?

They were the tiger ones, I don’t know their scientific name or if it even is close to tiger, little red guys. I have a dwarf angel, clownfish and a small sand sifting goby, the tank is 36” x 24” and I added about 40lbs of rock and 40lbs of sand

 

[living_tribunal]

They were the tiger ones, I don’t know their scientific name or if it even is close to tiger, little red guys. I have a dwarf angel, clownfish and a small sand sifting goby, the tank is 36” x 24” and I added about 40lbs of rock and 40lbs of sand

That’s the problem. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to develop tiger populations because they are free swimmers that remain in the column and are easily consumed by all fish.

If you really want to grow a large pod pop, you need to focus on surface dwelling pods like apex and tisbe. They primarily consume detritus (compared to tons of phyto for tiger), and hide in the rocks, allowing their populations to grow quick.

Mandarjns can’t snipe tiger pods from the column and scavenge the rocks, sand, and glass for surface dwelling pods.

 

[living_tribunal]

To give you a better idea of how they eat, here’s an old video of my mandarin picking pods from substrate a while back. (Yes, they eat like that all day, everyday)

 

[ilott]

That’s the problem. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to develop tiger populations because they are free swimmers that remain in the column and are easily consumed by all fish.

If you really want to grow a large pod pop, you need to focus on surface dwelling pods like apex and tisbe. They primarily consume detritus (compared to tons of phyto for tiger), and hide in the rocks, allowing their populations to grow quick.

Mandarjns can’t snipe tiger pods from the column and scavenge the rocks, sand, and glass for surface dwelling pods.

Thank you very much! No wonder there is nothing on the sandbed at night, are these surface dwelling pods as available as the free seimming?

 

[living_tribunal]

Thank you very much! No wonder there is nothing on the sandbed at night, are these surface dwelling pods as available as the free seimming?

Haha, your question is a good one and is the exact reason you see tiger pods as being the most available.

Tiger pods are the most widely sold because they can tolerate the widest temperature ranges, and for the longest times. Hence, they are the easiest to sell and hold in inventory.

That said, there are tons of sites that sell apex and tisbe pods, including reef nutrition. I’ve had lots of success with both so if you just want to order a bottle of apex from the reef nutrition website, go for it.

 

[ilott]

That’s the problem. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to develop tiger populations because they are free swimmers that remain in the column and are easily consumed by all fish.

If you really want to grow a large pod pop, you need to focus on surface dwelling pods like apex and tisbe. They primarily consume detritus (compared to tons of phyto for tiger), and hide in the rocks, allowing their populations to grow quick.

Mandarjns can’t snipe tiger pods from the column and scavenge the rocks, sand, and glass for surface dwelling pods.

These are the pods i’ve added over the last few weeks

 

[Thespammailaccount]

They were the tiger ones, I don’t know their scientific name or if it even is close to tiger, little red guys. I have a dwarf angel, clownfish and a small sand sifting goby, the tank is 36” x 24” and I added about 40lbs of rock and 40lbs of sand

You need a pod that will stick to the glass and can somewhat hid like tisbe pods anything big and red floating in the water column is instant food

 

[living_tribunal]

These are the pods i’ve added over the last few weeks

Tigers are great, I've cultured them with great success in the past. They are definitely nutrient dense and available for all fish. But I view them as a one time snack for my fish.

If you want your glass to look like this, you’ll need tisbe or apex.

 

[Joedubyk]

They were the tiger ones, I don’t know their scientific name or if it even is close to tiger, little red guys. I have a dwarf angel, clownfish and a small sand sifting goby, the tank is 36” x 24” and I added about 40lbs of rock and 40lbs of sand

for what it's worth i been putting a lot of tigers in my sump. i do have amphipods there as well... it does seem like the amph eat the copepods at a high rate.

 

[ilott]

You need a pod that will stick to the glass and can somewhat hid like tisbe pods anything big and red floating in the water column is instant food

Hmm, I’ll have a look later, the UK is kind of scarce for anything to do with reefing, or atleast I think it is, maybe i’m just not looking hard enough, but we deffo need something like Algaebarn here in the UK, maybe that’s a space in the market

 

[ilott]

Tigers are great, I've cultured them with great success in the past. They are definitely nutrient dense and available for all fish. But I view them as a one time snack for my fish.

If you want your glass to look like this, you’ll need tisbe or apex.

My old tank looked like that after about a year without dosing any live pods? So i’m not entirely sure where they came from, I had dipped corals before putting them into the tank