Culturing copepods

paulyd1978

Member
I am currently in the process, and so far successful, of culturing live phytoplankton. Next, I would like to culture some copepods as well. Would the best thing to be to buy some copepods and introduce them to one of my bottles of phytoplankton? Is there a specific salinity or density of phyto that is best for this process? Anyone with any experience here?
 

cranberry

Active Member
Well, my second job is with phyto and copepods.
What phyto are you culturing? What pods are you looking to culture? Do you have a setup already made? If not, what room/equipment do you have?
 

paulyd1978

Member
It's Nanochloropsis, Japanese chlorella from Florida Aqua Farms. I was going to order the copepods from livecopeods.com, the bottle that comes with three different species would give me a little diversity. When they arrive, can I pitch them into the phyto? Will they reproduce? Can I culture them together in the same bottles? I would imagine it to be a great culturing medium.%% Otherwise I do have a ten gallon aquarium I could use.
Just split yesterday, after nine days.
 

cranberry

Active Member
Hmmm... Nanno isn't going to cut it with copepods. The outer skin is too tough for them to penetrate and consume and they usually pass it whole. BUT it works great in a copepod culture to "clean up" the water. Great ammonia consumers.
Chlorella is a freshwater species and I actually don't have any experience with it. The phytos I dealt with were
  • Nannocloropsis oculata
  • Isochrysis galbana
    Tetraselmis chuii
    Rhodomonas lens
I would personally grow single species copepod cultures. I don't have any experience with multi-species cultures so I don't know the ins and outs of one. Never really heard of someone doing it that way, but I can not say it can't be done.... I just never heard of it.
I'm going to go look at the site you referenced to see what species they included.
Go with the 10 gallon tank to culture your copepods.
 

cranberry

Active Member
Okay wait.... were you just thinking you were growing a phyto culture and that was a total separate entity from the copepod culture? Phyto is THEE best food for copepods. They can't be cultured together because th ecopepods will crash your culture. Think of it as food. You throw your pods in a tank with a lovely and cheap sponge filters. Feed the nice phyto to the 10g and your pod population should do very well. When you want some pods, grab out the sponge filter and squeeze it into another container of saltwater, and there ya go, food for .... whatever.
 

paulyd1978

Member
What I'm saying is: I want to feed them the phytoplankton, so when I split my phyto cultures next time, couldn't I just pour the bottle of pods that I receive into one of the (now) four bottles bubblin? Why would it crash the culture? Because they would eat it? That's what I want! I want them to eat it vigorously, and reproduce vigorously. Could the phyto be too thick for them to live? And are you telling me this type of phyto can't be eaten by copepods?
 

cranberry

Active Member
Can't think of a reason why you couldn't do it to your split bottles, except volume. You're not going to be able to culture very many pods in that volume. Lemme through out out to the Bossman and I'll see what they say. But phyto cultures can crash on their own, especially when thick. You'd be losing a pod culture with it.
The Nanno won't be good as a food item, but I think Chlorella is pretty nutritious, but where it is a freshwater species I don't have any experience with it. It is very tolerant, as I'm sure you have discovered, of saltwater conditions, but it is still a freshwater species and we dealt with marine.
Where your plan is not longevity with your phyto, you could mix the 2 (Chorella and nanno) in a common container before adding the pods. Just don't mix the species while culturing them. Does that make sense? That way you provide food and a "clean up crew" of sorts.
I wouldn't go with the mixed copepods. They have single species of Tisbe pods... I would go for that.
 

paulyd1978

Member
Thank you much for your feedback, you've been very informative!
My main objective here is to culture pods to seed my refugium and culture phyto to feed my water column, as well as the pods and other microfauna within my system.The pods will act as food for my mandarin dragonet, as well as other fish.
 

paulyd1978

Member
Are you familiar with any type pf saltwater phytoplanton that the tisbe pods will enjoy? And which type of pods would you say are the most rapid reproducers? I want my refugiums as well as my displays crawling with the little buggers. Another question: Will ampipods rapidly devour my copepod population? I've got a few of those currently.
 

cranberry

Active Member
Isochrysis (medium difficult), Tetraselmis (Easy) and Rhodomonas (difficult). If you dose your Nanno (easy) with the Tetra it will cover everything in your tank. Your cultures will grow with the tetra and go nuts with the Iso and Rhodo.
 
V

vince-1961

Guest
You can also grow pods in your sump automatically with almost no effort on your part. In my sump, the water flows in on the right and out on the left. First it goes through a cotten filter laying on top of a drip plate. (I change the filter every morning to avoid creating a nitrate factory - - you would not believe the amount of brown crud that it catches in just 24 hours! I wonder whether it's more effetive than my protien skimmer- but that's a topic for another thread.)
Under the drip plate I have a large section full of D.I.Y. rock rubble, through which the water must flow down and under a partition which is painted black to keep the rock rubble in relative darkness. It is this dark section of the sump that is my copepod farm.
Of course, they "escape" on a regular basis, which then takes them to the next section of the sump where they inhabit the cheato, despite the light, and the rocks under the cheato where it's not so bright. When they "escape" this part of the sump, they are then pumped up to the display tank, they then serve as food for the two fish I have that feed exclusively on pods.
All I ever did was "seed" the pod farm by turning off the sump pump, pouring in two packets of pods and leaving the pump off for a few minutes to give the pods time to find refuge before turning the sump pump back on. That was a long time ago. "Mandy" and "Rockface", my two pods eaters, have been happily growing larger ever since, so they must be getting plenty to eat, which means the pod farm must be producing pods.
I suppose I'll have to re-start my phyto cultures, if for no other reason than to feed the pods.
 

novahobbies

Well-Known Member
Just to re-ressurect an old thread: The pods that Cranberry recommends (and I second, if my opinion counts for beans) are the tisbe sp.... These are sold as Reef Pods on this site, for a cheaper price than livecopepods.com sells them for. I've used these for pod cultures as well, with great results. Tigger pods IMO don't do well in tropical tanks.
 

cranberry

Active Member
Originally Posted by novahobbies
http:///forum/post/3236546
(and I second, if my opinion counts for beans)
Ummmm, you've actually cultured these... that makes your opinions and information worth a whole LOAD of beans..... just saying.
 

novahobbies

Well-Known Member
Aw, I'm blushing.

Now I really need to try culturing phyto and rotifers. My blueberry gorg isn't doing so hot with plain oyster eggs; I'd like to give him live rotifers and see how that works.
 
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