Copepods get skimmed?

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Randy Holmes-Farley

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Have you ever seen evidence of whether the types of copepods you sell get significantly removed if they pass through a skimmer?

That question has bearing on equipment setup, and whether a refugium that tries to host copepod growth is best placed before or after a skimmer.

It's not as easy of an answer as just place the refugium after the skimmer since there are reasons to want to skim right before returning the water to the main tank (such as removing organics the refugium creates and aeration of water that may be low in O2 and pH during the refugium dark cycle).

A less likely to succeed alternative is to grow them in the return section, which would include plenty of live rock for shelter but will have a return pump constantly sucking them away, and most likely is kept unlit.

Thanks for any thoughts.
 

sixty_reefer

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I do look at my protein skimmer under the microscope every now and then, so far I haven’t seen no copepod in there and mines are really small.

I would say that Refugium before skimmer has more chances of growing more pods, any debris of organics that would escape mechanical filtration would have more chances to settle in the first section of the sump aiding feeding.
If it is after skimmer most of the organics escaping mechanical filtration would be exported via skimmer allowing less food to be available.
 

Jmp998

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I can't comment on "pods" specifically, but the protein skimmer in my Aiptasia tank does skim out brine shrimp nauplii. I have it on a timer so I can turn it off for an hour after feeding, but I still end up with a lot of baby brine shrimp stuck to the walls of the skimmer cup.

I would think this would be an easy eperiment-add pods, check the skimmer cup periodically? Or have the skimmer output feed into a second tank. test how many of the pods make it through the skimmer to the downstream tank?

Regardless I think it probably makes sense to run refugium lighting or algae scrubber on a reversed lighting schedule to assist with pH/oxygen saturation, but I am sure RHF already knows this and is probably planning that.
 

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