Culture Mystery Pods?

[PotatoPig]

Hi all!

Im currently culturing pods in prep for a mandarin. Have four cultures running to both give a generous supply and so if one crashes I have backups and can just restart from another culture.

Currently just have Tigger and Tisbe, though they never seem to last in the tank. Add them multiple times a day but never see them after a few hours.

Anyway - to try ensure a varied population of types I was thinking of trying to introduce wild pods.

I understand live rock from the LFS (or anywhere) will almost certainly have wild pods on it and this is how many folks get pods in their tank to start. I started my tank from dry rock so don’t have this.

Is there any downside to setting up a fresh culture and just dumping some live rock rubble in there and seeing what brews?

 

[taricha]

the downside is that you'll get the pods, but maybe also predatory "pods" like amphipods and mysids that might eat more desirable smaller copepods.

But in theory you could filter by size every few days and eliminate the larger predatory types.
Maybe.
I'd like to see what you get.