Culturing Tigger-pods

[philosophile]

So I decided to try to culture some of Reef Nutrition's Tigger Pods last weekend. My set up was a gallon plastic bottle, with a rigid airline in it, with about 1-2 bubbles a second. I had a LED light on it. SW from a water change from the tank. I temperature acclimated the pods, poured them in, and gave them 1 drop of phyto-feast, 1 drop of roti-feast, and a tiny pinch of spirulina. The water was barely green.

The next day, I added another drop of each, but the water was already slightly cloudy, and most of the copepods seemed to be staying at the bottom of the vessel.

The third day, the water is very cloudy, and most of the copepods were dead on the ground, with one or two clinging on the sides and swimming in the water column.

I don't feel like I over fed them. Was it that I used water from my display? Should I use a clean batch of water? Looking for any suggestions. Thanks!

 

[Big G]

Bump

 

[philosophile]

So my second attempt: I've got two very small containers, and mixed up a fresh batch of salt water (1 gallon). I added 3 drops of prime to the water, despite it being made with RO/DI because I'm hoping that it'll bind with ammonia, to keep the water from fouling as quickly.

I divided the tiggerpods from the bottle, into my two small containers (holds about 1 cup of water). Added my prime + salt water into the containers and then added a drop of phyto feast into each container. I covered each container with some plastic wrap to minimize evaporation, but has a couple of holes punched into to help with some gas exchange.

After 24 hours, I added two more drops of phyto feast into each container. They're still looking pretty good at this point. The water isn't cloudy, but is tinted slightly green. The pods are very active, as it's pretty warm where I am right now (low 90s CA Bay Area). I'm planning on doing a water change of each container later today (I stored the gallon of salt water and prime in a gallon jug).

To do the water change, I'm going to just use a baster to suck out water, carefully, hopefully without getting too many pods, and then just refilling the container afterwards. I also have a 53 nanometer seive, I can use if that proves to be impractical.

 

[philosophile]

So, I used the seive to do the water change. Just poured them through and used some clean SW and a baster to get them back into the containers. A few stubbornly stayed on the seive, so I just used them to feed the tank.

Then fed the two containers with phytofeast and one container with some spirulina mixed in SW and prime. It was left in the fridge to hydrate really well. Ultimately I want to raise the pods on spirulina because it’s just really cheap, compared to phyto.

Hopefully the spirulina isn’t going to foul the water, but I have a control and experimental to compare now, and am ready to do a water change if needed.

 

[philosophile]

Heh I feel like I’m reinventing the wheel because I know others have cultivated these successfully.

Anyways... my latest discovery: ocean nutrition spirulina flake food is a tiggerpod magnet. I dropped a small flake into the container and in just about half a minute, and a ton of pods covered the flake.

This might be a more preferable way of feeding.... I’ll have to try this for a day or two to tell if they consume the entire flake. Also I don’t know if long term this will feed napauli.

 

[philosophile]

Update: tigger pods totally consumed the entire flake in a matter of hours. After that first flake, the second flake lasted much longer.

I think feeding them flake food is far superior to phyto. They were hungry even though I was feeding phyto, now they seem satiated. Phyto/spirulina might be better as just an enrichment diet just before feeding them to the tank, and flake will be their grow out diet.

Still experimenting with feeds though. I’m curious if they’ll eat nori or GHA.

 

[NS Mike D]

@40B Knasty : any comments, advice? Are you still cultivating?

 

[Clownfishy]

A friend of mine used to through the odd pellet in his pod culturing tank and seems to raise loads so would interested to see how you are getting along. Have you seen any fouling of water yet?

 

[philosophile]

A friend of mine used to through the odd pellet in his pod culturing tank and seems to raise loads so would interested to see how you are getting along. Have you seen any fouling of water yet?

So I last did a water change in my 1/2 cup containers on Saturday. It’s monday now, and they’ve been fed only flake, and water quality is better than using phyto or spirulina. No smell, no cloudiness. I’m not testing the water though. I’m also feeding pretty sparingly. One flake per 1/2 cup, and only adding another when the first one is consumed. Like I said above, one flake disappeared in a few hours. Subsequent flakes have lasted longer.

 

[Scotty Buttons]

Pretty interesting stuff, thanks for sharing. Are you trying to cultivate them for a mandarin?

 

[philosophile]

Pretty interesting stuff, thanks for sharing. Are you trying to cultivate them for a mandarin?

I am aiming to get a mandarin in the near future, but I'm not culturing tigger pods for the mandarin because adult tigger pods tend to stay in the water column, and naupali tend to stay on the rockwork where mandarins could eat them. Tisbe pods, are the reverse, napauli stay in the water column and adults on the rockwork. This tends to be better for feeding mandarins. That said, if I can find an effective way of target feeding mandarins with tigger pods, I'll definitely do so. I'm just cultivating them for the experience of it, and feeding them to the other tank inhabitants at the moment.

 

[philosophile]

Nori and GHA both seem to be a complete bust. No interest from the pods at all. So I'll be returning to the Ocean Nutrition spirulina flake diet.

 

[BeejReef]

Very interesting. Do you have a picture of your setup? Are you just keeping them alive, or have you seen any evidence that they're reproducing and that the younglings are eating the flake?

 

[Clownfishy]

Very interesting. Do you have a picture of your setup? Are you just keeping them alive, or have you seen any evidence that they're reproducing and that the younglings are eating the flake?

Yes, I would also be interested to see the pictures. When you said 1/2 cup in a previous post, I assume you mean IS cup size?

 

[philosophile]

Very interesting. Do you have a picture of your setup? Are you just keeping them alive, or have you seen any evidence that they're reproducing and that the younglings are eating the flake?

Their life cycle is something like 30 days, and I’ve had them for about a week, so I haven’t noticed any Napauli yet. Usually that happens after a couple of weeks though.

 

[philosophile]

So here is a pic of my set up. It is minimal at the moment. Two containers with about 1/2 a cup of SW in it.

When they start to populate a bit more, I’ll change containers, and give them more room. I’ll probably keep them in two cultures, in case one crashes.

 

[Clownfishy]

Are you using any air to bubble the water in the glass cups?

 

[philosophile]

Are you using any air to bubble the water in the glass cups?

Nope. They seem to be doing fine without it. The pods in the wild are found mostly in tide pools, so they're used to going quite a while without "water changes" and relatively low oxygen levels. They're also tolerant of big salinity swings, temperature swings, etc. Now that I'm going mostly with flake food, water quality isn't much of an issue. I haven't changed the water in the cups since Saturday (so going on 4 days now). Water is still very clear, and there is detritus accumulating at the bottom.

 

[40B Knasty]

Hey good to see the thread still going strong and new ideas coming into the equation. I ended up tearing my tigger pod tank down. It's really of no use anymore with my dragonet eating frozen foods like mini blood worms, mysis, and brine w/ spirulina. He is healthy and a chunker with plenty of pods all over the walls.
I did end up turning the tank into a mix freshwater neocaridina shrimp tank. Had great success starting with about 20 till the tank ended up getting muscular necrosis which killed all 150+ 3 months later. Yes they breed fast! After this happened. I end up taking the 20g and setting it up for my 5 1/2 year old Figure 8 Puffer that he now resides in happily.
There is some really beautiful shrimp out there to be had. Just not really the best ones are in the US. Some of them are in the $1000+ range! Think the Orange Eye Galaxy Fishbone is in $1500 range.
This is what it turned into.

 

[Hermie]

Hey all, saw this thread is active, I just set up a "culture" for Reef Nutrition Tigger pods about a week ago.

It's a 4 dollar white bucket (5 gal) from home depot + lid.
There's a diy air-driven sponge filter hanging from the lid and for lighting,
the lid has a small "standard" bulb that hangs from the top. (its a low wattage LED and diy fixture)

The culture was started with brand new ASW, nothing from my tanks except a small batch of chaeto that I put through a dipping procedure (bayer + iodine dip), so there is a small chance of cross contamination from the chaeto, otherwise it's all new materials.

I also dose daily with Seachem Stability to get the sponge filter up and running.
I feed the pods Seachem Reef Phytoplankton each day (about 0.5ml) and I threw in a bit of toasted seaweed from the grocery store.

They all seem to be doing fine so far, but I may take up the food flakes idea, because flakes make it a lot easier for the pods to eat than having to swim around and find phytoplankton suspended in the water. I'll try to get some pics.