Copepod Species advice

[pledosophy]

I am looking to culture some pods in my garage. I will feed them out to my reef, but mainly I want to do it as a way to work in the hobby with my son.

I have a little 2g container I plan on using, I might go up to a 5 or 10g in the future.

I am most concerned with temperature fluctuations. Our garage can be as cold as 45F and as warm as 90F depending on the time of year. Heater is not a problem if needed, and a cooling fan is fine but I am not gonna run a chiller on it. Is there a species that can live and breed in that range? I was considering Tigriopus (tigger pods) but wanted to check first.

Appreciate the feedback.

Thanks.

 

[Acskippy]

Check Algaebarn for detailed descriptions on pods... great info! Not too sure if they give any details on farming your own tho...Good luck!

 

[pledosophy]

I have, I am looking for advice from hobbyists doing it, not just what the guy selling it says it an do :D

 

[Surfzone]

Tiger pods are very hardy. I've cultured them for a wile in a 5 gallon bucket for months with minimal effort. Also Apocyclops is a good species to culture, but they are much smaller and require a little more work. I fed them to larval mandarins. If you're looking for one to just feed to the reef I would go with Apocyclops, or Tisbe. Even though, Tiger pods are a good food for cardinals and anthias they will not survive in your reef. Tisbe is a benthic species and adults stay on surfaces. Tisbe was a good food for my settled mandarins and will survive in a reef type of environment as well as Apocyclops. all three of these copepods will live off of algae past so no need for culturing live phyto. You can find Tiger pods and Apocyclops from Reed Mariculture and you can find tisbe at Algae Barn. I hope this helped.

 

[Skydvr]

Tigriopus californicus (branded Tigger pods or Tiger pods) ranges from Alaska to southern California and are typically found in tidal or splash pools. They are found in quite a wide range of temperatures and salinities. They should be able to handle those temperature changes as long as the temperature is fairly stable from day to day so they can adapt over generations. Large daily changes can slow or stop production.

There are tons of research papers and information out there on culturing them.

I am just starting to work with them myself for the past month or so. They have been pretty easy so far.
I started with a mostly dead bottle. I removed the dead ones with a pipette before transferring the remainder to a 1L Erlenmeyer flask, I increased the volume as their numbers increased, eventually filtering and cleaning before transferring to a 3 gallon bucket and repeating the process of increasing volume. I have a decent culture going now and will be able to start harvesting nauplii. I will probably start a second culture or eventually switch to a larger container and start feeding with an algae concentrate as the space and effort required to maintain algae cultures will outweigh the cost of the concentrate or paste.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Keeping culture bottles clean is a pain. To fully sustain pods, having cultures of phytoplankton going is very helpful.

I was going to say Apocyclops would be a good start. They are more warm temperature pods.

I tried culturing pods, just couldn't keep enough cultures going to sustain them long term. Gave up.

 

[boacvh]

I have the Poseidon reef systems one and it's super easy. Takes me 20 minutes every week to harvest. I keep them in my outside patio here in socal so have big temp fluctuations.

 

[ThRoewer]

Tigger pods (Tigriopus californicus) are what you are looking for. Simple to culture, wide temperature range, wide salinity range, no light needed, can be fed with rat food.
I culture them year-round in a couple of tubs and buckets in the backyard.

 

[Copingwithpods]

Not sure how much help this will be but check this out

Copepods are alot tougher than I thought

I had a 14g as a quarantine I forgot about and kinda left to its own vices. As I went to clean it out I found it to be packed with copepods and other organisms. Curious I measured the Salinity. SG 1.051 or 68ppt I can see thousands of them moving around. This tank gets no light so I don't...

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