Does my (sort of) new tank need copepods?

[vanguard]

My 150g tank is 12 days old, kind of. Some of the rock came from my well established 25 gallon reef tank. The rest came from a tub with good circulation, a couple of fish, a heater, and even a refugium for 5+ months. It was basically a plastic fish tank with room lighting. The tub of rocks was seeded from the 25g established tank.

The rocks have a great brittle star population, bristle worms, etc. but the sand bed is mostly bare outside of mild diatoms.

Question: Is it worth it to buy a bug population from algaebarn or should I just wait for my population to grow from the old rocks I'm using? If I need to buy something, what should I get? (Links are appreciated)

 

[brclark82]

One of the best things I did when starting my tank was seeding it very early on and feeding it before I got too many predators in the tank.

I knew I wanted a mandarin and possibly a wrasse that ate pods and was prepared to have to culture my own but to start I added a jar of 5280 pods from AlgaeBarn and ordered their Ocean Magic phyto.

As soon as my cycle was complete I added the jar of pods and fed Phyto daily for the first month.

2 months later I added another jar of pods from Jays Reef Bugs and fed it for a month with his phyto.

That all I have done. my tank is 10 months old and I got a mandarin about 7 months ago.

He is super fat and happy and my glass is absolutely covered with pods every evening still so I haven’t gotten into culuturing yet. I’m guessing at this point the population is large enough to sustain my system without any intervention from me.

You might be ok with your old rock but I would just add some to be safe and feed them for the first month at least.

 

[Doctorgori]

honestly about the only reason I had for actually buying pods was to mass culture them…
IMHO buying pods to seed/ feed a reef tank is a waste of money …totally unnecessary