Copepod Cultures

[vetteguy53081]

 

[Ruben's Reef]

!!! Welcome to R2R !!!

 

[DanB84]

My mandarin chows down on the decapsulated brine shrimp eggs (brine shrimp eggs with the hard shell removed). You may want to get some of those as an alternative food source. You don’t hatch them, you feed directly to the tank.

For your tank, you’ll want a mix of pods. The 5280 pods are pretty good for that. You’ll also want to dose your display with phyto at least every other day. That will allow the pods to eat and build up a good population. Remove your filter sock if you have one.

For cultures, you typically want a single species. Tisbe are best for mandarins since the adults scurry around on rocks and sand where the mandarin will be able to eat them. The apocylops pods are similar, but adults do swim a little more. Tigriopus pods are the largest pods, but the adults swim quite a bit and other fish tend to eat them before the mandarin can get to them.

I dose with phyto already, attempting to feed any remaining pods. I also did a refugium in chamber 2 with egg crate. Added a wall of sponge to attempt to keep adult pods in there for breeding, cheato on a rack above some rubble and a rack for filter pads with ceramic bio media below. It’s cool! Tisbe pods, got it! I’ll try to sustain the population. So I have a sponge out of the first chamber which has my skimmer and I am running a bit of floss, then nitrate/nitrite pad and a phosphate pad (current issues with those items). Are you saying I should remove my pad? Or just remove a sock if I had one? The water can flow around the pad(floss) if/when it gets clogged.

 

[DanB84]

Welcome to the REEF!! Nice setup for the pods and plankton culture. I would also recommend culturing Tisbe pods for your Mandarin and Tigriopus californicus for the horses. I would also recommend feeding your horses other feeds as they don't have stomachs and will need to be fed more frequently than anything else in your system or they will not do well.There are some places that culture Misid shrimp and seahorses really enjoy them. So its possible to look into how to culture them also if that interest you.

Clowns make it so difficult to feed the horses, lol. Thanks for the advice.

 

[bluprntguy]

I dose with phyto already, attempting to feed any remaining pods. I also did a refugium in chamber 2 with egg crate. Added a wall of sponge to attempt to keep adult pods in there for breeding, cheato on a rack above some rubble and a rack for filter pads with ceramic bio media below. It’s cool! Tisbe pods, got it! I’ll try to sustain the population. So I have a sponge out of the first chamber which has my skimmer and I am running a bit of floss, then nitrate/nitrite pad and a phosphate pad (current issues with those items). Are you saying I should remove my pad? Or just remove a sock if I had one? The water can flow around the pad(floss) if/when it gets clogged.

A sponge should be fine, especially if the holes are large enough for pods to crawl through. The reason to remove the filter sock is that it captures pods and then they get "thrown out" when you wash the filter sock. It also removes the phyto from the water column.

 

[Peace River]

A sponge should be fine, especially if the holes are large enough for pods to crawl through. The reason to remove the filter sock is that it captures pods and then they get "thrown out" when you wash the filter sock. It also removes the phyto from the water column.

+1

@Mdoc - think about the micron size of the media that the water is flowing through. Anything that is intended for polishing water will also remove the copepods and other microorganisms out of your water stream. You may trade super clear water for happy fish until your tank matures which, at least to me, isn't a bad thing.

 

[Salty Lemon]

I'm glad you joined us! Welcome aboard.

 

[Hitman]

Welcome to R2R!!!

 

[kireek]

Hello! New to R2R officially and wanted to start off with a question about copepods culturing in jars. So just to fill you in on myself, I waited until I bought my first home before I dove in to saltwater, previously I was a freshwater guy. I currently have a mixed reef biocube 29 and use the middle sump area as a refugium for copepods and cheato. 2 clowns, mandarin, and 5 seahorse along with a peppermint shrimp and red sea star and the normal clean up crew. Keeping nitrates down is a full time job and keeping stabil parameters is needed with the horses and mixed reef.

My question is regarding copepod culturing. I currently have 2 phyto cultures and 2 copepod cultures (this was done to prevent total loss if there is a crash, I will have more phyto than I can use when this culture is ready for harvest). I am only in to this about 2 weeks now. I was thinking about doing “water changes” on the copepods every 2 days and just adding the “dirty water” (with tons of pods) to my DT and adding fresh 1.019 salinity salt water to the culture. I feel like this would drastically lower the need to strain the pods to clean out the container (maybe eliminate this task completely?). So looking for experience or thoughts on this. Other thought was to since up my top off requirements on DT with the amount of “dirty copepod water” to make this more streamlined as well. Plus the mandarin and horses will be happy with the steady supply of food and I would assume the mini refugium in the back of the tank will start producing its own culture or pods.

Thanks in advance for any and all advice! So happy to be part of R2R!

*Your set up looks wonderful! Welcome to Reef2Reef!*

Welcome to R2R!!! Other than just putting copepods in a refugium and letting them make their way into the main tank, I haven't worked with a specific culture of copepods in a while but I used a different approach that aligned more with this article on Raising Rotifers, Raising Copepods. Also know that you can get replacement starter cultures from @Reef Nutrition, @AlgaGen Direct, or others quickly. You seem to have a specific system that you are following - I am curious to know what it is based on (YouTube video, website article, etc.)? I am not sure how well that clear, glass containers will work for the copepods and I would be a little concerned about pulling eggs off the bottom based on where the container spigot is located (thereby limiting production). Please keep us informed on the process, whether or not it is successful, and what you learn along the way! Good luck!

Awesome link and shortcuts @Peace River !