Attempt to DIY Amphipod breeding

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Weekly update... Sadly I will have to claim this round as a complete failure. Every now and then at night when I look in the tank with a flashlight I can see one, maybe 2 small amphipods but other than that I'm seeing this as a total loss. I do still have some copepods on the glass here and there so the water must not be too bad. I ordered another starter culture of Amphipods tonight so next week we'll reset the whole thing and see how it goes.
 

AltitudeAquarium

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While I wait for my current batch of fish to finish treatment in my Hospital tank I'm getting bored. I was sitting here looking at the QT that I only use as an emergency/observation tank before transferring fish to another tank for treatment wondering what I can do with it since I keep it running 24/7/365 just in case. It's as basic as you can get, a 10gal tank ($1 per gal Petco tank sale) a Fluval 30 HOB filter, a small 100w preset heater and some PVC fittings.
I started looking around online to see if anyone has been successful breeding Amphipods and was disappointed in the few articles I found of people trying it without any updates on how it turned out. I will make every attempt to not let this be one of those trials.

Heres what I think I know:
Pods prefer relatively low flow areas (which is why they don't typically do well in high flow sump refugiums).
Pods tend to hide under rocks, in cracks and crevices where flow in minimal and food settles.
Pods will reproduce readily and are fairly hardy and can do well in less than ideal parameters.
Pods are quite nutritious and awesome for live fish food.

I saw some cool ideas that I'm going to try out. I like the idea of the mesh shower pouf as a sort of artificial Chaeto as well as the (possibly patented) "Pod trailer park" made out of plastic sign board that I may or may not have over designed. My plan is to get a starter culture and get them going. I'll wait about 45-60 days before harvesting any for the DT or Fuge. There are 2 reasons for this. One, I've read that pods need time to settle before readily breeding (unsure if this is fact). Two, because I QT everything that goes into my tank I want to be sure the water that the pods arrive in is free from common disease by being fallow for 6ish weeks. I also feel that if I'm culturing food for my fish that I will not cheap out on the food I feed the Pods. I bought some Cobalt Marine flakes a while back that my fish don't care for so I will use that for feeding not so finicky Amphipods every couple days.

I will get some pictures up shortly and update every couple weeks and I see any progression.
Where did you get the sign board? It looks great, and the shower pouf is a great idea.
 
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The sign board is available in big box stores where the acrylic sheets are but I picked mine up at amazon, I think I just searched for "plastic sign board"

ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

I only used one sheet 18x24 inch for the one sky scraper with some leftover scraps. You could easily make it taller or shorter with only one sheet depending on dimensions. I figure I can make a couple later and throw them in my refugium if I wanted to or make multiples for multiple tanks if this system ends up working out and I want to expand.
 

AltitudeAquarium

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The sign board is available in big box stores where the acrylic sheets are but I picked mine up at amazon, I think I just searched for "plastic sign board"

ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

I only used one sheet 18x24 inch for the one sky scraper with some leftover scraps. You could easily make it taller or shorter with only one sheet depending on dimensions. I figure I can make a couple later and throw them in my refugium if I wanted to or make multiples for multiple tanks if this system ends up working out and I want to expand.
Thanks, I hope I can be successful.
 
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New Amphipods arrived today and as always FloridaPets provided a great culture!

 
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Going to try to get a video up this weekend or early next week. Been working on taking out some digitate hydroids in the main tank.

So far there hasn’t been too much happening in the amphipod tank.
 

Brandon Wilcox

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I'm glad Jason K84 posted on this forum. I'm excited to see how the amphipods are doing on a small scale. I had a 100 gallon black rubbermaid with cheato connected to to my system. I initially introduce a bunch of copepods and amphipods to it and they reproduced like crazy. Like I said i'm excited to see how this goes. Reef Box, I love the amphipod trailer park idea!!!!
 

MidlifeCrifish

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Hey there I'm a complete noob at this hobby but I rinsed my chaeto before adding to my 5 gal bucket w/ air stone + heater and 2 weeks later its been low mortality ive only found a few dead out of 100 amphipods. I feed them blended up leftover mysis shrimp that my clowns dont eat. I am curious though if I can feed them phytoplankton from what Ive researched its mixed feedback.

20201018_192307_HDR.jpg
 

S1m0n

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Hi. Did you had som succes with this setup? Im just about to start one myself. Just planning to setup a plastic container outside my House only with airpump and airstone.
Im just not shure what iam gonna feed Them yet :)
 
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