Do you grow/harvest COPEPODS??

[ZoWhat]

15yrs reefing experience and I'm for the first time going to try and grow various pods.

As you see above:
* I have a 1 gal plastic container with a lid

* lid has a hole for the air tubing and two other hole for container to "breath"

* an air pump with a valve on it thats produces two air bubbles per second

* I'm using tank water @ 1.023

* I used Reef Nutrition's PhytoFeast super-concentrate to get the water light green....about the color of green-tea. I did NOT really measure out exact milliliters.

* I used a bottle of pods I got at my LFS that listed 3 different type of pods and it was bottled 7/1/20....so about 45 days old. I can not remember its name but I do know it was not Reef Nutrient

QUESTIONS

- how's my setup? Any tip/tricks?

- is PhytoFeast a good choice? I have my bottle is in my fridge

- how OFTEN do I add more Phyto?

- how often do I do a water-change? What %?

- if the Pods i used dont take off in 10 days.... what is a better choice of Pods?

- Pods at AlgaeBarn a better choice? Which product?

I would love some solid advice

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[R.Weller]

Are you able to see Pods free-swimming in the culture you purchased on 01-July? If you have not fed them, I would not expect there to be much life. I started with a culture from a local hobbyists.

I feed our Pod cultures phyto exclusively & take 1/2 the colony every 14 - 21 days. I have two running. One using a 16oz bottle & the other is in about 3gal of water in a 10gal tank. I have harvested twice from both populations & they continue to grow. When I harvest, I use tank water to replace the volume from both vessels. The 16oz bottle gets 5ml of phyto every two days & the 3gal consumes 100ml phyto every 2 - 3 days. The larger culture stays at room temp & the smaller is partially submerged in our refugium keeping the temp constant. I use one air pump with splitters & a manifold for both Pod cultures & our phyto station. Live food is amazing...your system will benefit.

 

[ZoWhat]

Are you able to see Pods free-swimming in the culture you purchased on 01-July? If you have not fed them, I would not expect there to be much life. I started with a culture from a local hobbyists.

I feed our Pod cultures phyto exclusively & take 1/2 the colony every 14 - 21 days. I have two running. One using a 16oz bottle & the other is in about 3gal of water in a 10gal tank. I have harvested twice from both populations & they continue to grow. When I harvest, I use tank water to replace the volume from both vessels. The 16oz bottle gets 5ml of phyto every two days & the 3gal consumes 100ml phyto every 2 - 3 days. The larger culture stays at room temp & the smaller is partially submerged in our refugium keeping the temp constant. I use one air pump with splitters & a manifold for both Pod cultures & our phyto station. Live food is amazing...your system will benefit.

@R.Weller

What Phyto product are you using/feeding? I mean... i know you're growing your own Phyto but what did you use to get started? Everyfrom your local buddy?


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[R.Weller]

We started with Mercer of Montana ordered from Amazon, & we grew gallons by splitting the first 16oz + F2 fertilizer. We have been feeding our system 100ml daily since April.

Just today I ordered another 1 liter ($23) from Amazon because our first culture finally crashed. Everything is a learning process, & buying a live culture allows us to learn & grow in the hobby. I can't speak to long-term with Pods as we have only been doing live foods for the last 4+ months, but we have certainly grown millions of Pods & gallons of phyto based on a few 16oz bottles & we have observable growth in our SPS & Zoa corals that I can only attribute to this variable.

Pods I have no issue buying locally. For phyto w/ intent to culture your own, I would use a brand as contamination will eventually cause it to die as I have recently observed.

 

[ichthyogeek]

- how's my setup? Any tip/tricks?

- is PhytoFeast a good choice? I have my bottle is in my fridge

- how OFTEN do I add more Phyto?

- how often do I do a water-change? What %?

- if the Pods i used dont take off in 10 days.... what is a better choice of Pods?

- Pods at AlgaeBarn a better choice? Which product?

I would love some solid advice
[/QUOTE]
Set up looks great! If you can get a little bit of light in there, you can let the phyto grow a bit longer while the pods consume it.

Phytofeast is a pretty good choice, but it's dead, so make sure that you don't overdose on it, since it'll cause bacteria issues->anaerobic environment->dead pods. I see that you're buying from AlgaeBarn; consider buying their microalgae mix, as I think it's superior to Phytofeast.

Feed to a tint in the water (you should be able to barely see something on the other side, and let it clear. Repeat.

Do a water change whenever you harvest pods. No more than 50%, but the smaller the better, as you can shock copepods. You can siphon out the mulm and whatnot from time to time.

Depends on the pod you have. Tisbe are some of the fastest reproducing ones, while Tigriopus take a bit longer to mature.

Tisbe are fairly forgiving, then Apocyclops, then Tigriopus, but only buy a monoculture if you have intent to dose.

 

[ZoWhat]

@ichthyogeek

Buy AlgaeBarn's MicroalgaeMix.... gonna do it...i got the 6oz PhytoFeast I can just dump in the tank.

What product from them should be their best "Pod Mix"?


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[ichthyogeek]

@ichthyogeek

Buy AlgaeBarn's MicroalgaeMix.... gonna do it...i got the 6oz PhytoFeast I can just dump in the tank.

What product from them should be their best "Pod Mix"?


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What do you mean by "best Pod Mix"? You should be monoculturing pods, and I think I gave a pretty good run down of the pros/cons of each of them.

 

[ZoWhat]

@ichthyogeek

Let me take a step backwards. I'm getting into Pods bc I bought a Leopard Wrasse that's absolutely stunning.

Unless I have a plethora of pods for this Leopard to feast on.... it probably won't last but a few months.

So.... if I'm to cultivate only one-type of Pod, whats the best choice for having plenty of live food for this Leopard?



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[ichthyogeek]

Ah. Go for Tisbe, they reproduce faster than the Tigriopus or Apocyclops then. And get more than one culture set up, so you can feed as many pods as possible.

 

[topjimmy]

15yrs reefing experience and I'm for the first time going to try and grow various pods.

As you see above:
* I have a 1 gal plastic container with a lid

* lid has a hole for the air tubing and two other hole for container to "breath"

* an air pump with a valve on it thats produces two air bubbles per second

* I'm using tank water @ 1.023

* I used Reef Nutrition's PhytoFeast super-concentrate to get the water light green....about the color of green-tea. I did NOT really measure out exact milliliters.

* I used a bottle of pods I got at my LFS that listed 3 different type of pods and it was bottled 7/1/20....so about 45 days old. I can not remember its name but I do know it was not Reef Nutrient

QUESTIONS

- how's my setup? Any tip/tricks?

- is PhytoFeast a good choice? I have my bottle is in my fridge

- how OFTEN do I add more Phyto?

- how often do I do a water-change? What %?

- if the Pods i used dont take off in 10 days.... what is a better choice of Pods?

- Pods at AlgaeBarn a better choice? Which product?

I would love some solid advice

.

 

[topjimmy]

Check out the Facebook group called copeopod house

 

[ZoWhat]

Welp.... found Leopard D E A D late last night....

But I think growing pods is still smthg im pursuing bc im 90% zoas/palys and read pods can really help zoas/palys explode with growth

Man, what is it with this hobby and fish? The elite super gorgeous fish are just not compatible with even lightest of reefs. In no other hobby can I think.of is it so hard to maintain the elite gorgeous things.


.

 

[Idoc]

Welp.... found Leopard D E A D late last night....

But I think growing pods is still smthg im pursuing bc im 90% zoas/palys and read pods can really help zoas/palys explode with growth

Man, what is it with this hobby and fish? The elite super gorgeous fish are just not compatible with even lightest of reefs. In no other hobby can I think.of is it so hard to maintain the elite gorgeous things.


.

Leopards are considered an expert level fish. They are very difficult to train to eat frozen foods... but once you do this, they are easy to care for. They are also extremely susceptible to intensity parasites/worms and must be treated for this asap upon arrival. I took 3 months to quarantine my leopard, but she is doing great now. I did lose one leopard in quarantine though due to internal parasites... she quit feeding before i could get her completely trained to frozen and then medicated food and there was nothing i could do at that point to treat her. My leopard wiped out my amphipod population quickly... but, she feeds on frozen easily now.

 

[csb123]

I’ve just stared culturing tigropus and over the last month they really took off.

How often should I be harvesting them? Should I just harvest the adults, naupali, or both?

I aiming to keep them as productive as possible.