Apocyclops panamensis copepod culture

[Atlanta Reef]

I have a great culture going. I'm planning on doing my first big-ish harvest this weekend, second total. I want to keep the culture going, but I've heard all kinds of stories about cultures "randomly" crashing and I want to make sure I don't do anything to mess things up.

What are the primary things I need to avoid in order to keep the culture going?

I have a general idea of how I'm going to harvest things. I currently have two 1 gallon jars, and one 10 gallon aquarium that are full of pods. I have some sieves, but they're just the cheap Artemis shrimp sieves off Amazon and the smallest one is 120, so I can only get the adults. I've decided that's okay for now. I just need to keep using the water and containers with the nauplii. I plan on buying a 53, 50, 37, or 25 micron sieve in order to be able to get even the smallest pods.

Is there any reason I shouldn't buy the 25? The 500 or 120 should get the adults. Then when I want/need to drain all the water, once a month or 2, I can use the 25 then add everything caught to new water.

Does that sound like a good plan? Any ideas on a better way? And what should I keep in my while working with the pods?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I don’t keep my culture going. I completely empty the container and then clean it and then use some of the pods to start the new culture.

 

[Atlanta Reef]

I don’t keep my culture going. I completely empty the container and then clean it and then use some of the pods to start the new culture

So, the culture is considered the water, not the pods?
Do you scrape the sides of the glass? I have tons of pods just crawling on the glass.

 

[Atlanta Reef]

I don't have a microscope, nor can I currently afford to buy one right now.

Does anyone think they culture in the video looks ready to harvest?

Should I wait until I have a more fine mesh sieve? 120 micron is the smallest I have at the moment. Planning on getting a 25 micron unless someone convinces me a something like a 50 or 10 micron would be better.

 

[djf91]

I grew Apocyclops in multiple 5 gallon buckets. They were actually very resilient. Just try your best to match temperature and salinity. Sieve out all copepods and add them to new bucket with clean water. Varying their diet helped numbers too. I grew Nanno and then also added a small bit of spirulina powder.

 

[DaJMasta]

Apocyclops is a pretty easy one to maintain, and while harvesting a whole culture at once works fine, I just take maybe 5-10% of my culture out daily and replace it with live phyto plus some fresh saltwater (and for more than a year, I did only live phyto, but it does build up a layer of gunk on the bottom faster.) I've found apocyclops to be more tolerant of flow than other species, so give it some aeration (could be as much as a low boil, but not necessary.)

As for sieves, you're not going to need anything below 50 micron or so. The nauplii are small, but really don't get through at 45 micron (my previous smallest size to use), but the 45 micron mesh has low enough throughput that I've moved to 58 micron mesh just so the water drains reasonably quickly. I would not go under 45 micron as it will be even slower, even with massaging/patting the screen in the sieve, a 25 micron screen will take a long time to drain any real volume of water, and you won't be catching more copepods. About 250 micron is where you start letting through adults (the fully grown ones are still bigger), so if you want to keep out adults (from what passes through), aim for about 200 micron.

For my sieves, I buy plastic measuring cups at the grocery store and then appropriately sized mesh online, I cut a window out of the measuring cup with a dremel (leaving a little lip at the bottom), then cut the mesh to size and hold it on with aquarium silicone. I'll go back and apply some more after the first layer has set. Easy to use and pour, pretty easy to clean, and they will nest, so if you want, for example, only nauplii, you can put your fine screen to catch them with the 200 micron screen nested inside - inside the 200 micron sieve is the adults and inside the fine sieve is the nauplii.

 

[Atlanta Reef]

Apocyclops is a pretty easy one to maintain, and while harvesting a whole culture at once works fine, I just take maybe 5-10% of my culture out daily and replace it with live phyto plus some fresh saltwater (and for more than a year, I did only live phyto, but it does build up a layer of gunk on the bottom faster.) I've found apocyclops to be more tolerant of flow than other species, so give it some aeration (could be as much as a low boil, but not necessary.)

As for sieves, you're not going to need anything below 50 micron or so. The nauplii are small, but really don't get through at 45 micron (my previous smallest size to use), but the 45 micron mesh has low enough throughput that I've moved to 58 micron mesh just so the water drains reasonably quickly. I would not go under 45 micron as it will be even slower, even with massaging/patting the screen in the sieve, a 25 micron screen will take a long time to drain any real volume of water, and you won't be catching more copepods. About 250 micron is where you start letting through adults (the fully grown ones are still bigger), so if you want to keep out adults (from what passes through), aim for about 200 micron.

For my sieves, I buy plastic measuring cups at the grocery store and then appropriately sized mesh online, I cut a window out of the measuring cup with a dremel (leaving a little lip at the bottom), then cut the mesh to size and hold it on with aquarium silicone. I'll go back and apply some more after the first layer has set. Easy to use and pour, pretty easy to clean, and they will nest, so if you want, for example, only nauplii, you can put your fine screen to catch them with the 200 micron screen nested inside - inside the 200 micron sieve is the adults and inside the fine sieve is the nauplii.

Thank you! This is exactly what I was hoping for.