Culturing Tigger pods

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Tomoko Schum

Tomoko Schum

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My setup is simple and inexpensive. There is no need to invest in a fancy setup. They are sturdy little buggers.

I have them in a round wide-mouth plastic container (less than one gallon) in which dog biscuits came in. I am bubbling air into it slowly using a 1/4 inch tubing and a Tetra 10 air pump from Walmart.

I feed inexpensive spirulina powder that I bought from a health food store in bulk (now even cheaper one from Amazon.) I dissolve it in dechlorinated water and add it to the container - just a small amount (barely enough to give the water in the container a slight haze.) Feeding pods too little food does not kill them, but overfeeding them will for sure. If you are using live phytoplankton, overfeeding is not a concern, but if you are feeding them anything non live, you need to feed them very sparingly. They don't need to be fed everyday, either.

Hope this helps.
 
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Tomoko Schum

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I don't have a lot right now. After I dumped a lot in the fuge, I forgot to feed the culture for a while. I may be able to provide a lot more in a little while.
 

Zydan777

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I just wanted to follow up with you. I did pretty much what you said but I put them in a 5 gallon bucket I had. I bought a small bottle from the fish store and poured most into my tank but left a little for the culture. I got a cheap pump and some tubing and I put the bucket in my garage. All I am feeding them is live phytoplankton I got from my LFS. It took a while but I have a ton swimming around now. I attached a picture of my setup and a picture of the pods. All the little dots in the pod picture are pods.What is your method to catch them for your tank? Do you change out the water? Its been a couple months and I have not changed the water. They seem fine.

20200602_134157.jpg 20200602_134228.jpg
 
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They seems okay without water changes although I occasionally end up doing it when I capture them with a small plankton sieve. Some of them tend to hang on the sieve a bit. I sometimes catch them with a turkey baster and put them into my fuge.
 

Zydan777

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They seems okay without water changes although I occasionally end up doing it when I capture them with a small plankton sieve. Some of them tend to hang on the sieve a bit. I sometimes catch them with a turkey baster and put them into my fuge.
Where can I find the sieve?
 
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Tomoko Schum

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Coffee filter should work, too. The plankton sieves are sold on Etsy, Ebay, Brine Shrimp Direct, etc. Florida Aqua Farm is a great source of live planktons and plankton collectors. Their shipping and handling is typically $6.00 on up, which makes things a little more expensive. However, they have good quality products. I have been using my rotifer collectors for over 15 years now. It still looks pretty new.
 

reed.himes

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coffee filters work great. I saw a youtuber put one between 4" PVC collar and pipe. I just drilled a bunch wholes in a 1 pt pudding container and it worked great. I've crashed a few culture; thought water quality was the issue. But after reading this, i wonder if im just overfeeding. I've tried spirulina powder, seachem reef phyto and live plankton (that I culture). I don't have that much plankton, still trying to grow it (from a small culture), so been mostly using seachem and spirulina... seems like a couple days after starting the seachem or spirulina i get a crash....

How do you keep the food suspended in the water? after a few hours most of it settles to the bottom.

i use 1 qt mason jars with light aeration. my first attempt was with algea barn's 5280, but my last couple attempts was using Reef Nutrition tigger. salinity 1.025 (same as my tank).... i use freshly mixed water using ROI.

any advice would be appreciated... I've read thread after thread, but haven't seen something detailed.... like 'I add one 1t of spirulina to 1C of water, then feed 10ml to my culture that is 1 gallon'...
 
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Tomoko Schum

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You don't need to keep food suspended since Tiggerpods are not free swimming copepods. They are benthic and feed off the bottom of the container.

I am afraid that you are overfeeding them if they crash so soon. As I mentioned earlier, feed sparingly. You can feed just 2 to 3 drops of your concoction for a quart jar. That would be more like 0.1ml. If you are using a gallon jar, then four times that amount.
 

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