Phytoplankton and Pod Cultures

[CharlotteReefer43]

Hi all,
This doesn't quite feel worthy of a start to my tank build thread yet, but I am getting much closer to being ready for that. I still haven't settled on a size yet, 125 or 180, live fuge for either. I'm in no hurry to rush fish or corals..... I've already got my Phyto culture rolling, about to start my Pod cultures, and want to get a healthy and established Pod population before adding anything other than my clean up crew. What is best practices now for getting the wide biological diversity now if you prefer to use dry base rock only to avoid pest and hitchhiking? Phytoplankton and Pods along with the traditional tank cycle will only do so much. Different types of pods? I've been out of the hobby for 10 years and I see a lot of these "bacteria in a bottle" items but I came along in the age of a lot of "snake oil" for reef tanks that cost a lot and promised the world but often times did nothing or even hurt your tanks overall health.

EDIT: This may be old and counter to modern reefing thoughts, if so I am more than open to the fact that I could be wrong, but Phyto culture, Pod Cultures, and and BBS Hatchery always seemed to be net positive things for me especially the last two for some of my picky eaters.

 

[PotatoPig]

The bac in bottle will start your cycle just fine, there’s a ton of folks here who’ve started from dry rock and bottle bac, although not without some controversy from advocates of live ocean rock.

My 2c is add1/3 the pods to the tank and then split the rest between two cultures in case one messes up.

Bear in mind that any pods that will colonize the tank should colonize just fine without a culture to replenish their numbers, especially if you have a refugium in the sump, you might just not see them for a while. Once they colonize there’s often no need to keep adding them.

Pods that don’t really colonize these tanks won’t colonize no matter how many times you add them - eg tigger pods are more a “direct feed” than something that will self sustain.

You’ll also probably get random pods from the inverts, especially if from an LFS, that will then populate your tank after adding the inverts.

You could periodically dose the tank with phyto to keep them fed.

Main thing with culturing pods is to not over feed them. It’s virtually impossible to catastrophically underfeed them, but easy to overfeed and have them swimming in high ammonia water that’ll start to crash a culture.

 

[CharlotteReefer43]

The bac in bottle will start your cycle just fine, there’s a ton of folks here who’ve started from dry rock and bottle bac, although not without some controversy from advocates of live ocean rock.

My 2c is add1/3 the pods to the tank and then split the rest between two cultures in case one messes up.

Bear in mind that any pods that will colonize the tank should colonize just fine without a culture to replenish their numbers, especially if you have a refugium in the sump, you might just not see them for a while. Once they colonize there’s often no need to keep adding them.

Pods that don’t really colonize these tanks won’t colonize no matter how many times you add them - eg tigger pods are more a “direct feed” than something that will self sustain.

You’ll also probably get random pods from the inverts, especially if from an LFS, that will then populate your tank after adding the inverts.

You could periodically dose the tank with phyto to keep them fed.

Main thing with culturing pods is to not over feed them. It’s virtually impossible to catastrophically underfeed them, but easy to overfeed and have them swimming in high ammonia water that’ll start to crash a culture.

Thank you. I kept Pod cultures going to feed my 2 mandarin dragonets and my red tail flasher wrasse. I found they seemed happiest with regular Pod additions to the tank. Thank you for the input though, you've given me something to ponder in terms of how much effort I want to spend on Pod cultures vs BBS Hatchery and while I've not done it but growing the BBS out to adult size for live feeding.