Pods

[Surfzone]

Look what came in today

going to be culturing these guys on algae paste that also came in with rotifers.

The rotifers are on the other side of the room and covered. I hope this helps limit the contamination of pods I have started.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Covering should help. If they're more than 8' away (yay social distancing!), it should be much more minimized.

ThRoewer can probably tell you all about how to not contaminate your pod cultures. I'm a big fan of bleach to sterilize everything.

What do he culture vessels look like?

 

[Surfzone]

Covering should help. If they're more than 8' away (yay social distancing!), it should be much more minimized.

ThRoewer can probably tell you all about how to not contaminate your pod cultures. I'm a big fan of bleach to sterilize everything.

What do he culture vessels look like?

I'm using 5 gallon buckets

 

[ThRoewer]

I never had much luck culturing Tigriopus indoors but my backyard cultures are doing pretty good. Having many cultures is the key to a more or less steady supply. The good thing with Tigriopus is that they are not to much bothered by contaminations (rotifers, bacteria,...), in most cases they just eat them. Also, outside the conditions are too harsh for anything you might contaminate them from your tank. They are also not picky with water quality so I only use old tank water for them - they actually like their buckets mucky with a layer of mud on the bottom. I usually culture them with green water (mystery blend that came from spores in the air here) and feed occasionally pulverized rat food.
They grow and reproduce relatively slow but are extremely hardy and resilient.

Apocyclops, on the other hand, seem to be very prone to attract rotifer contaminations. At least that is my experience with them. And because they grow and reproduce rather slowly (compared to Parvocalanus) they are easily outcompeted by rotifers. I tried both, feeding algae concentrate manually (ideal would be an automated dosing pump) and live algae (in a more or less self-sustaining algae bloom). Both ways the cultures ultimately crashed after a month or so. I think water changes could help and only add as much algae as they can eat in a few hours. I'm gonna try that next.

Parvocalanus is my copepod of choice now as they grow fast and reproduce quickly A bucket may only have a live expectancy of 2 to 3 weeks but you can get a lot out of it. Like with Tigriopus, but for different reasons, having many cultures is key. I plan on starting a new 5 gallon culture every day as soon as I have a shelve set up for them.
The drawback for many is that Parvocalanus only eats live, motile algae but not algae paste or non-motile algae like Nannochloropsis. But culturing Isochrysis isn't that hard, just space consuming. You will need at a minimum 200ml algae each day per 5 gallon of culture.

 

[Surfzone]

I never had much luck culturing Tigriopus indoors but my backyard cultures are doing pretty good. Having many cultures is the key to a more or less steady supply. The good thing with Tigriopus is that they are not to much bothered by contaminations (rotifers, bacteria,...), in most cases they just eat them. Also, outside the conditions are too harsh for anything you might contaminate them from your tank. They are also not picky with water quality so I only use old tank water for them - they actually like their buckets mucky with a layer of mud on the bottom. I usually culture them with green water (mystery blend that came from spores in the air here) and feed occasionally pulverized rat food.
They grow and reproduce relatively slow but are extremely hardy and resilient.

Apocyclops, on the other hand, seem to be very prone to attract rotifer contaminations. At least that is my experience with them. And because they grow and reproduce rather slowly (compared to Parvocalanus) they are easily outcompeted by rotifers. I tried both, feeding algae concentrate manually (ideal would be an automated dosing pump) and live algae (in a more or less self-sustaining algae bloom). Both ways the cultures ultimately crashed after a month or so. I think water changes could help and only add as much algae as they can eat in a few hours. I'm gonna try that next.

Parvocalanus is my copepod of choice now as they grow fast and reproduce quickly A bucket may only have a live expectancy of 2 to 3 weeks but you can get a lot out of it. Like with Tigriopus, but for different reasons, having many cultures is key. I plan on starting a new 5 gallon culture every day as soon as I have a shelve set up for them.
The drawback for many is that Parvocalanus only eats live, motile algae but not algae paste or non-motile algae like Nannochloropsis. But culturing Isochrysis isn't that hard, just space consuming. You will need at a minimum 200ml algae each day per 5 gallon of culture.

Well right now I have to culture Tigriopus inside because it gets far to cold outside for them I think. This week dipping down into the upper 30s. I have never had a hard time with them inside nor have I had a hard time with Apocyclops.

Apocyclops seem the be an easy copepod to culture for me. Just some RG complete or Isochrysis paste in the culture and they where good to go. I raised many mandarins on just Apocyclops.

As far as Parvocalanus goes it was always hit or miss. I could never get a good culture of Isochrysis going so they would starve and I would just use their culture bucket for Apocyclops or Tigriopus. Hopefully this go around I will get a handle on the Isochrysis so that I can culture some Parvocalanus. I think my problem was that I used Prime to Dechlorinate the culture water after bleaching my phyto cultures. It didn't seem the effect the Nannochloropsis or the Tetraselmus, but Isochrysis just didn't seem to like it. That is why I started the Phyto thread about Isochrysis. This go around I have Chrlor-Am-X to try. maybe that will give me better results with Isochrysis.

 

[Eldredge]

Well right now I have to culture Tigriopus inside because it gets far to cold outside for them I think. This week dipping down into the upper 30s. I have never had a hard time with them inside nor have I had a hard time with Apocyclops.

Apocyclops seem the be an easy copepod to culture for me. Just some RG complete or Isochrysis paste in the culture and they where good to go. I raised many mandarins on just Apocyclops.

As far as Parvocalanus goes it was always hit or miss. I could never get a good culture of Isochrysis going so they would starve and I would just use their culture bucket for Apocyclops or Tigriopus. Hopefully this go around I will get a handle on the Isochrysis so that I can culture some Parvocalanus. I think my problem was that I used Prime to Dechlorinate the culture water after bleaching my phyto cultures. It didn't seem the effect the Nannochloropsis or the Tetraselmus, but Isochrysis just didn't seem to like it. That is why I started the Phyto thread about Isochrysis. This go around I have Chrlor-Am-X to try. maybe that will give me better results with Isochrysis.

You might want to try sodium ascorbate (vitamin C) to neutralize your chlorine. I have had good luck with it for various phytoplanktons including iso crisis.

 

[Surfzone]

So I spilt the cultures today and I have plenty of tiger pods and apocyclops to go around. I just need larvae to feed them to. I also had plenty to feed to my tank perhaps I should think about getting a pair of Mandarins. I've bread them before but I think that it's fun to watch the spawn and then collect eggs and raise the young up. They are a good species to start with if you want a pelagic spawner. Also my anthias are spawning but I haven't collected eggs yet because the lack of parvo. I can try Apo cyclops but i'm not too keen on trying that as of yet.

 

[Surfzone]

I'm splitting these cultures today.