Glad you have taken an interest in what has been said. I did get a message from a person from Algagen on one of my YouTube videos. He definitely said the tisbe pod tank had grown the phytoplankton that came in the bottle. Keep in mind that was also what half crashed the tank after 3 weeks. Since you are doing phytoplankton. Be cautious as to how long you wait to do a water change during your startup. I would rather have you avoid my mistake.
I'm starting to think the phytoplankton cultures are not worth the hassle and that I should just use something else. My main goal is to culture pods, and the species of phyto that I'm currently culturing won't be enough for that. I should have done more reading first.
I honestly had no clue if the spirulina would work. From what chad said seeing the clutches of eggs being green. That the pods must being eating it.
I like the ammonia badge idea a lot. Good add to the thread.
I am not a pro at this by no means, but I can honestly say with the amount of money I spent to have my dream fish at the cost to set it all up of around $70 to feed it. Well worth it! Not only is it great for me, but I can feel great about honestly saying I am give a great quality life and home for him. If the colony crashes. I have a back up and can always reseed a crashed tank with my backup tank. It is an infinite food source that is easy to establish that I never have to leave the house for. I hope it all works out for you as well.
Is your back you your second tank or do you have some stored in the fridge or something? I know when you get the @Reef Nutrition they are in the fridge do you know how long they will remain in the fridge as a back up? I recently just started a 10g tank for them and was thinking about making a bottle for the fridge every few weeks as a back up and when a new one is made the old one goes into the tank. Any thoughts or recommendations?
I have 2x 5g tanks. None are stored in my fridge for a backup. If you choose to store some. Make sure the cap is open. Honestly there is no point now to have backup in the fridge. Just let them populate populate populate and take out 5k+ pods ever Saturday without even putting a noticeable dent in the population.
Watch one of the videos. My airlines that I use to syphon out the water from the tanks to a bucket has a piece foam/sponge at the tip. It stops the pods from being sucked into the airlines. So all the water that is syphoned out into the bucket has very little amount of pods removed from both tanks. Maybe 5 the most I have seen will make it through the foam/sponge tip keeping all the population in the 2 tanks. Then I fill the tank back up with about 2g+.
No sand or gravel. Just a softball size piece of dead rock with a lot of porosity that is 1lb. Also a softball size piece of chaeto. Those 2 things are the ONLY things in both tanks.
Honestly I do not know. That is why I threw the tigger pods in the tisbe pod tank. They looked to small to harvest with my net. You can find a smaller micron net but you would probably have to find it online, pay for shipping, and I doubt they make a net/screen to harvest them for a small use. Only for a mass quantity like what a business would use it for. Tigger pods are a better nutritional food source that has Omega 3. If you wanted to "try" a cyclopod setup which are a pod size between the tigger and tisbe pod that also has another great nutritional value(forgot what it was). Go for it. I would recommend the tigger pods over any from personal experience with the 2 types. Especially when chad had mentioned 1 tigger pod can have up to 30 larvae at a time and reproduce 10 times. So if you start off with a bottle that has 2000pods. 1000pods of those are females. Those 1000 females can produce 300,000 in their life cycle. Those numbers are a fact. The tisbe pods do not have much info aside of me finding a little article that said they can reproduce 2x and have 30-130 larvae in a life cycle. So always go with the least expected from info given at 30. 30x2=60 for a tisbe pod life cycle. That is 940 pods less a female tisbe pod can produce vs a female tigger pod. Then you factor in the nutritional value of the tigger pods, easier to harvest, cheaper to buy a bottle to get you started, and very resilient to temp and salinity swings. Tigger pods from Reef Nutrition wins hands down by a land slide.
