I mean Who Really is having success raising pods?

Doctorgori

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Mar 18, 2019
Messages
4,132
Reaction score
5,389
Location
Myrtle Beach
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Not me; not consistently, and thats after buying the Plankton culture manual, YouTube, forums et. I saw that Youtube guy who works at the cincinnati zoo, and he was good but I wanted more detail on the pod culturing. Pardon the name, cant find vid.

Here’s where I’m at. Brine Shrimp: nailed, rotifers, easy. Tisbe. easy but what eats these? same for tigger pods. I can sometimes keep the parvocalanus going but whats weird is I can only sustain by co-culturing with BBs. Any of the other pods Live Aquaria sell I’m not able to culture.

Phyto, I have procedural sterility issues and culture crashes with “commercial” pure phyto. I‘ve been using home brewed “tank water” phyto; sometimes light green, sometimes gold <LOL> . No clue on species or nutritional profile. So if you are good at maintaining cultures; tips appreciated. Anyone refrigerate?

Any links, youtube vids, books or whatever to get me smarter appreciated.
 

living_tribunal

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Aug 14, 2019
Messages
4,198
Reaction score
12,164
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Tons of success. 30,000 every week.



apex
875A16C3-5876-4F19-8F3B-91E0EC79ABDE.jpeg


tisbe
8E693F8C-FF2C-4A15-99DD-25903A0DFECD.jpeg
 
Last edited:
OP
OP
Doctorgori

Doctorgori

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Mar 18, 2019
Messages
4,132
Reaction score
5,389
Location
Myrtle Beach
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
That's because Artemia eats bacteria.
amongst other things, I’m told they are indiscriminate feeders anyway. I have used yeast for FW fish, for SW fry I’ve been gut loading phyto, but it seems even the type of phyto matters

I've heard that mandarin dragonet fry will go after Tisbe nauplii.

How sterile are you keeping your cultures? And what's your setup for the calanoid/cyclopoid pods?
my sterility procedures must be lacking. I use 1qt mason jars w/plastic lids. I try really hard to time my cultures so I don’t dose unneeded fertilizer, but too often you wait too late as you can actually tell by that weird shade phyto take on before crashing..

My setup is 10G tanks. I tried a more lab type setup with mason jars but only the apocyclops sorta did OK in smaller containers. I use a 4ft LED on its side for phyto. I typically don’t light the actual culture vessels fo pods.
 

gabrieltackitt

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Mar 23, 2020
Messages
600
Reaction score
1,096
Location
Tulsa, OK
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
The thing that really helped me with phyto culture sterility is something I read I think on melevs site. Microwave the water and then let it cool while it’s covered to sterilize.

I use 1 qt mason jars as well. I fill them to the right amount then microwave on high for 7 minutes with a paper towel cover. Then pull it out and cover in foil to cool for 2 days then add the fertilizer about an hour before the actual phyto so that it can disperse, then the phyto then recover with foil and poke my air tube through to minimize ambient air contact.
 
OP
OP
Doctorgori

Doctorgori

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Mar 18, 2019
Messages
4,132
Reaction score
5,389
Location
Myrtle Beach
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
The thing that really helped me with phyto culture sterility is something I read I think on melevs site. Microwave the water and then let it cool while it’s covered to sterilize.

I use 1 qt mason jars as well. I fill them to the right amount then microwave on high for 7 minutes with a paper towel cover. Then pull it out and cover in foil to cool for 2 days then add the fertilizer about an hour before the actual phyto so that it can disperse, then the phyto then recover with foil and poke my air tube through to minimize ambient air contact.
My phyto is in the same room with other SW tanks[ I’m sure spores et get into it somehow, I was using plastic mason lids with a 1/4 hole & 1/4 rigid tube but I might go with a tighter fit at the air hole like you did with the foil

Just asking but hey do you keep your phyto culture salinity at?
I go with 1.020 7for the brown stuff and 1.010 for Nano, sometimes I use full strength SW to simplify feeding.
 

gabrieltackitt

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Mar 23, 2020
Messages
600
Reaction score
1,096
Location
Tulsa, OK
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I’m
My phyto is in the same room with other SW tanks[ I’m sure spores et get into it somehow, I was using plastic mason lids with a 1/4 hole & 1/4 rigid tube but I might go with a tighter fit at the air hole like you did with the foil


I go with 1.020 7for the brown stuff and 1.010 for Nano, sometimes I use full strength SW to simplify feeding.
the biggest thing to be cautious of is getting pods into your phyto culture, as they can destroy a culture fairly quickly.

I go 1.020 with all of my phyto cultures, where are you getting starter cultures from? Is it bottled or on a disc?
 

living_tribunal

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Aug 14, 2019
Messages
4,198
Reaction score
12,164
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
amongst other things, I’m told they are indiscriminate feeders anyway. I have used yeast for FW fish, for SW fry I’ve been gut loading phyto, but it seems even the type of phyto matters


my sterility procedures must be lacking. I use 1qt mason jars w/plastic lids. I try really hard to time my cultures so I don’t dose unneeded fertilizer, but too often you wait too late as you can actually tell by that weird shade phyto take on before crashing..

My setup is 10G tanks. I tried a more lab type setup with mason jars but only the apocyclops sorta did OK in smaller containers. I use a 4ft LED on its side for phyto. I typically don’t light the actual culture vessels fo pods.
You don't need to be too worried about sterility for your pod cultures. It's important for sure but not nearly as important as it is for phyto.

I got tired of culturing phyto. Especially when covid first struck and getting alcohol was impossible.

I was able to boost my cultures after coming across some article by a company that has to culture astronomical amounts of pods. I forgot who it was but they went into great detail of how they manage everything. What struck me was that they didn't feed any of their apocyclops species phyto. They broke down one of the biggest misconceptions newbies have which is that apocyclops primarily eat detritus, not phyto. This doesn't mean apocyclops (tisbes/apex) don't eat phyto but it just doesn't grow the cultures to nearly the same degree as detritus/rotifers does.

After reading this, I tried a variety of diets: flakes, frozen rotifers, live rotifers, pellets, etc. The hands down winner was reef roids which is basically just a rotifer blend. This increased my weekly harvests 10x.

You need to be careful about what pods you are culturing however as tigres only consume phyto, and massive amounts of it. An easy way to remember this is, generally, if the pods are surface dwellers (stay on the glass, rocks, bottom) they want detritus. If they are free swimmers, tigres for example, they want phyto.
 
OP
OP
Doctorgori

Doctorgori

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Mar 18, 2019
Messages
4,132
Reaction score
5,389
Location
Myrtle Beach
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I’m

the biggest thing to be cautious of is getting pods into your phyto culture, as they can destroy a culture fairly quickly.

I go 1.020 with all of my phyto cultures, where are you getting starter cultures from? Is it bottled or on a disc?
yeah I know all it takes is one rotifer <LOL>

I usually get mine from Live Aquaria or my LFS. I use the Nano and that Tahitian Blend or whatever, it usually goes brown dominate so I think its Iso, but I dunno.
I have also cop’d from Sachs, Brineshrimp direct (I think)
I also roll my own phyto using tank water and F/2, sometimes I can get it to go green if I can avoid getting in pods. 50u filters sorta work

And appreciate the pod knowledge. I wanna say it was tisbe pods I co-cultured with BBS, whatever they were I got them from Live Aquaria and they lived in zillions on the bottom. Nothing I had ate them
 

ThRoewer

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jul 16, 2016
Messages
1,251
Reaction score
1,944
Location
Fremont, CA
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
The thing that really helped me with phyto culture sterility is something I read I think on melevs site. Microwave the water and then let it cool while it’s covered to sterilize.

I use 1 qt mason jars as well. I fill them to the right amount then microwave on high for 7 minutes with a paper towel cover. Then pull it out and cover in foil to cool for 2 days then add the fertilizer about an hour before the actual phyto so that it can disperse, then the phyto then recover with foil and poke my air tube through to minimize ambient air contact.
That works well for small batches up to 5 liters but anything above that would require a different sterilization process like chlorine (bleach).
 
OP
OP
Doctorgori

Doctorgori

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Mar 18, 2019
Messages
4,132
Reaction score
5,389
Location
Myrtle Beach
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
After I do my weekly harvests, I remove the old bag and toss it. I then add a new bag, fill it with clean salt water, then dump in the remaining pods and restart the culture.
sorry if this is bugging you but this is interesting: on those 50u or 100u bags.? what type of pod and feeding details... again sorry but curiosity is peakednn b
 

living_tribunal

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Aug 14, 2019
Messages
4,198
Reaction score
12,164
Rating - 0%
0   0   0

KrisReef

10K Club member
View Badges
Joined
May 15, 2018
Messages
11,541
Reaction score
27,318
Location
ADX Florence
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Back
Top