Copepod / Phytoplankton Question

[Hallowhead]

Howdy,

Just (2) quick questions for my cultures.

Copepods
- I have my culture currently running and it's definitely growing, I am getting ready to harvest and restart, I bought Reef bugs which includes Tisbe, Tigriopus / Arcatia / Cyclops / Pseudo / Euterpina and Parvo. What size sieve should I use to harvets? 250 micron? When I sieve them, I will take half to feed my tanks, and half will go back to restarting the culture in a sterile bottle. Just unsure what size sieve to use.

Phytoplankton
- I am ready to start my culturing and I am curious how much culture should be mixed into fresh water? Does it matter so as long as I add the correct amount of fertilizer? I have a 16oz bottle of Phyto to start so I am trying to figure out what amount of salt water to mix it with.
- How quickly roughly do you harvest / restart the culture?

 

[fryman]

I use a 120um sieve for seperating out adults for most copepods. 250um is fine for tigriopus. 53um is what I use for nauplii when I want to seperate them but I usually don't bother (just dump culture water + pods in display).

In a mixed culture I expect one type to eventually take over. My guess most likely the tig pods will win since tig adults seemingly eat any/everything (including nauplii and probably smaller copepods). But tigs don't reproduce as fast as other copepods so maybe if there's alot of food you could wind up with tisbe. I'm not sure but doubt your mixed copepod culture will remain so for long.

What I do when harvesting is feed about 25 to 50% of my culture to my tank directly (depending on how dense it looks), then sieve out adults from the remaining culture with a 120um sieve to start the next culture. Then I dump all left over nauplii + water direct into my display. This is assuming the density looks good (clears water of phyto in ~a week). If I need to increase density I just use a 120um sieve for all of the culture.

Sometimes I use a 53um sieve to capture nauplii instead of dumping culture water into my display, if it looks "dirty" or I'm concerned about nutrients. I have noticrd when I add a large amount of culture water to my display the orp drops and skimmer goes a little nuts for a day or two. Then this clears up and doesn't seem to affect anything so usually I dump cause I'm lazy.

Hope that helps and good luck.

*edit* forgot your phyto question. Safest thing is to split 50% but for nanno & tetraselmis I often just go by color and this winds up ,,,I'd guess maybe 10-25% from the old culture to start a new one. You want the culture to be significantly green.

 

[Hallowhead]

I use a 120um sieve for seperating out adults for most copepods. 250um is fine for tigriopus. 53um is what I use for nauplii when I want to seperate them but I usually don't bother (just dump culture water + pods in display).

In a mixed culture I expect one type to eventually take over. My guess most likely the tig pods will win since tig adults seemingly eat any/everything (including nauplii and probably smaller copepods). But tigs don't reproduce as fast as other copepods so maybe if there's alot of food you could wind up with tisbe. I'm not sure but doubt your mixed copepod culture will remain so for long.

What I do when harvesting is feed about 25 to 50% of my culture to my tank directly (depending on how dense it looks), then sieve out adults from the remaining culture with a 120um sieve to start the next culture. Then I dump all left over nauplii + water direct into my display. This is assuming the density looks good (clears water of phyto in ~a week). If I need to increase density I just use a 120um sieve for all of the culture.

Sometimes I use a 53um sieve to capture nauplii instead of dumping culture water into my display, if it looks "dirty" or I'm concerned about nutrients. I have noticrd when I add a large amount of culture water to my display the orp drops and skimmer goes a little nuts for a day or two. Then this clears up and doesn't seem to affect anything so usually I dump cause I'm lazy.

Hope that helps and good luck.

I am not worried about one pod becoming the majority, as any pods being fed to my tank is better than no pods! My mandarin needs to eat!

I will get the smaller 50 micron sieve. You pour the culture water right into the tank? Isn't that bad habbit?

 

[fryman]

I am not worried about one pod becoming the majority, as any pods being fed to my tank is better than no pods! My mandarin needs to eat!

I will get the smaller 50 micron sieve. You pour the culture water right into the tank? Isn't that bad habbit?

If you have high nutrients probably is a bad idea because copepods are dirty and the culture water has alot of organics. But a relatively mature reef IME will handle it just fine. My cultures are 3 gallons and my display is only 100 gallons, yet I've not seen this cause nitrate/phpsphate to spike at all. If anything it may even go down.

 

[Hallowhead]

If you have high nutrients probably is a bad idea because copepods are dirty and the culture water has alot of organics. But a relatively mature reef IME will handle it just fine. My cultures are 3 gallons and my display is only 100 gallons, yet I've not seen this cause nitrate/phpsphate to spike at all. If anything it may even go down.

I have 30 gallons so I'll use a 50 micron sieve and dump into fresh salt water to administer.

Do you culture phyto? How much saltwater do you mix 16 ounces of phyto with ?

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

Howdy,

Just (2) quick questions for my cultures.

Copepods
- I have my culture currently running and it's definitely growing, I am getting ready to harvest and restart, I bought Reef bugs which includes Tisbe, Tigriopus / Arcatia / Cyclops / Pseudo / Euterpina and Parvo. What size sieve should I use to harvets? 250 micron? When I sieve them, I will take half to feed my tanks, and half will go back to restarting the culture in a sterile bottle. Just unsure what size sieve to use.

Phytoplankton
- I am ready to start my culturing and I am curious how much culture should be mixed into fresh water? Does it matter so as long as I add the correct amount of fertilizer? I have a 16oz bottle of Phyto to start so I am trying to figure out what amount of salt water to mix it with.
- How quickly roughly do you harvest / restart the culture?

Sent you a PM on a easy cost effective way of doing what you're trying to achieve

 

[matthellstrom]

I have a 50 micron sleeve for collecting my tisbe pods, but it also catches all the detritus. I'd like to find a sieve set that I can pour the culture through to separate out the detritus first so that it just catches pods. I'm also growing tigger pods, would like to do the same thing. I want to sell some of them and don't want a bunch of detritus in the bottles, would like them to be perfectly clear like what you get from algae barn.

 

[fryman]

I have a 50 micron sleeve for collecting my tisbe pods, but it also catches all the detritus. I'd like to find a sieve set that I can pour the culture through to separate out the detritus first so that it just catches pods. I'm also growing tigger pods, would like to do the same thing. I want to sell some of them and don't want a bunch of detritus in the bottles, would like them to be perfectly clear like what you get from algae barn.

Most tisbe will go through a 250micron sieve so maybe try a 250-350 micron to catch detritus. For tigriopus it will have to be much bigger. I'm not sure, maybe 500micron. But sieves are not 100% so expect some copepods to get caught especially if there's alot of detritus on it.

I think the better bet is to just carefully pour the top media from your culture through a small sieve and stop before the bottom 10-20% where all the detritus has settled. The top should be very clean just don't shake the culture vessel.

Some people keep the detritus (sometimes call it "mulm") and even claim it has some benefits but I've not found that to be the case. I've looked at it under a microscope and this "mulm" is mostly copepod poop and exoskeletons. Keeping it around just makes for a dirtier culture, in my experience.