Refugium stocking

[Brew12]

thats actually ok. Bug populations will ebb and flow with food AND time as the bugs gain dominance.

Definitely. As much of a natural self sustaining system as one can. It makes it easier to feed the tank and not worry about nutrints. THATS the prob with chasing numbers. Feed the fish healthfully, and a treat for the coral and bugs. They and the cuc and Bugs generally will do the rest, the macros too. You can see when a zoa or chato needs to be fed so ya feed more that week. Dragon's tongue is even better for that. It feels different. The ebb and flow of the thank feedings and bugs is toatally normal. If you see your pods are low you may need to feed pode food etc and vice versa, too many bugs may be too much food.

The diversity question becomes are you doing if for a cool thing to do or increased live tank food or cuc for the sump. My first vote would be a bag of micro brittle stars, because that probably IMO the coolest, more chato, and amphipods, dump the big ones in the sump to start cleaning, thelly make it to the display eventually..
I generally rotate my pod purchases by species over the year if your just concerned with the pod side.

@mcarroll knows I prefer the funk in the sump not the DT.

I will have to consider the brittle stars. I do have some amphipods in the DT also. I'm guessing they are in the fuge also but I only ever see them when I catch them in sock filter.
I just find it very confusing that I can have pods all of the front glass of my DT but I never see them on the glass of my fuge. Something about that just strikes me as a bit wrong. Fortunately, I don't have any predominant pod feeders so I don't need the fuge to be thriving with them. It is more of something I would feel better if I saw. Visible bio diversity I guess.

 

[mcarroll]

I catch them in sock filter.

Wait, what? Stop catching them in the sock and you'll probably see more in the refugium.

You definitely don't want to be running a filter sock if you are trying to increase detritus in the system and have a freely moving population of pods.

If you are running felt socks I would at least switch to an open mesh.

(I have run almost zero mechanical filtration in the entire 10 years my tank has been up, in case it is a point of worry.)

 

[Brew12]

Wait, what? Stop catching them in the sock and you'll probably see more in the refugium.

You definitely don't want to be running a filter sock if you were trying to increase to try to send the system

Everything was seeded into the fuge and made its way to the DT. I do run the system without a sock for 1 day a week so things from the DT can make their way back to the fuge. My system is too much like the real ocean to run without a sock too much. Lots of floaties in the water.

 

[mcarroll]

Try to live with the floaty's for a month and see what happens.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Diesel cuts holes in his socks.

 

[Reef Nutrition]

@Reef Nutrition This is directed specifically toward you, but I am open for all opinions.

I want to have as much biodiversity in my 120g system as possible. I seem to have established a nice Tisbe pod population in my DT. I have a fairly large refugium in my sump with red ogo algae and chaeto along with some rock rubble. Unlike my DT, I almost never see any pods in my refugium.

I consider copepods to be an essential part of my CuC and the nutritional health of my fish. I'm looking for recommendations on what I should seed my refugium with to try and improve the biodiversity in my system. Any advice on specific products and their usage would be greatly appreciated.

So far, I have seen some good recommendations in this thread. Do you happen to have a picture of your refugium? I noticed that you have red ogo in your sump. Do you see amphipods in it? One other reason you might not have copepods in the sump might be due to the presence of amphipods. Amphipods are survivalist animals that are practically ubiquitous in marine tanks that contain live rock from the ocean and/or LFS. These crustaceans have been known to prey on copepods and can be quite competitive for space and resources. It's possible that the amphipods are simply outcompeting the copepods in the sump because it is a smaller volume and less habitat than the DT. The copepods might be doing better in the DT because of the larger volume, more habitat, etc. In the end, like saltyfilmfolks said, they ebb and flow.

You can always try to add more copepod species to increase biodiversity. Harpactacoids and some cyclopoids are good copepods to add; Tigriopus californicus and Apocyclops panamensis respectively. With respect to competition, resources and space, keep in mind that there is no guarantee that any copepod species will flourish in any given tank.

I'm always happy to see people paying close attention to the zooplankton in their tank and looking for ways to improve their success. Good stuff!

Chad