diy copepod culture,letting you come along for the ride.

DAY 1
well this is my first attempt at culturing copepods, i figured someone might want to try the same(all them people who want mandarins.or just want live food)im going to keep it simple, my supplies are as listed
(this is a stand alone tank not connected to display)
10 gal aquarium
dual outlet air pump(with air line and valves)
live phyto(expensive)
algagen live copepods(supposed to be harder to start but we will see)


IF anyone has tried this and has any advice please comment.
i will keep this post updated on my success;D or failure.
im getting the water going as we speak when its all put together ill post pics. and more detailed directions on what i did. and the water parims.
hope this works!!

 

I have and had all I ever needed in my refugiums and I feed plankton often I culture my own . So thats never a problem but you have to feed the a god enriched Phytoplankton is a gotta have .. Just sent a supply of Plankton food to me son in Va so he can start the cultures agin in my old plankton reactors there .

 

mine not hooked up to the tank, is your connected to your tank?tanks?

i got some phyco pure stuff from the fridge.

i got this ball of cheato i have no use for. think it would help in any way to throw that in the culture tank,? or should i leave it empty with the water tinted with the phyco pure.

 

How are your cultures going?
I am also setting up cultures of phyto and copepods.

 

lol,.. oops never followed up on this one.

i ran the culture for about a month, the pods i bought were mostly dead , so i thought it never got started(did not see any pods). unplugged it after a month later but never emptied the water, then about 2 wks after that i checked it befor i emptied the tank. to my surprize there were millions of pods. began to syphon out pods into the tank, must have emptied like 10 store bought packages worth of pods in 3 days. then added a fuge and began to seed that, the tank is still unplugged (about 2 months of nothing running in the tank) and there is still pods ,im just waiting for it to crash but dosent seem to happen.

i guess this leads me to belive that the algagen reef pods are some hardy lil suckers..

 

Thats the beauty of a fuge water goes in and pods and cleaner water comes out from the grasses , Fuge looks like a nasty swamp but the pods love it . And its all self-sustaining I add or do nothing

 

Great thread. Please keep us updated!!

 

honestly if you just want some more pods in your tank add a pile of hermit shells in the back corner of your tank(if you have a fuge you could do it also) i have a pile in my fuge now that moved from my display, it produces so much different lil pods that even with a sixline,2 dragonettes, shrimp and clown gobys i still have an amount of copepods that is amazing i find pockets of like thousands of them during the day they hudle in a swarm and then when night comes the disperse threw out the tank.

if i had my algae under control i would consider adding a mandarin to help eat some of my pods