Brine Shrimp and Copepods

I didn't know whether to put this here or in the Food section so here it goes!

Is it possible, well moreso is it ok, raise copepods and brine int he same tank?

I have a 1g acrylic bowfront with an airstone currently housing brine for the tank. I used DT water for it and assed a couple of small rocks from the DT as well as a handful of sand.

I was wondering if I could seed copepods in here at the same time and would the two animals cohabitate?

 

You would have to do a waterchange twice a day with all of the phyto you'll need for the pods and the solid food needed for the brine.*

 

How come? I figured I would top off with tank water.

How do you do a water change without losing most of the critters?

 

If you top off with tank water, your salinity will keep rising and they'll all die.

To do a waterchange, you'll want to siphon the bottom of the grow-out tank. Brine shrimp molt often and if you don't siphon up their exoskeletons, they rot and foul the water quickly.

 

Ok, cool. Thank you

Is there anything else I should have in this tank? I have LR, a little sand and rock (which I'm sure are overkill) and an airstone creating a lot of flow.

 

Your nicer to them than I ever was. I was always only glass bottom and an airstone.

 

Actually I ran a co-culture for many months until I got tired of it. Very little water changes, but not because they were hard, but because they were not needed.

What is this "solid" food you speak of? They are filter feeders just like the copepods and can thrive on phyto as well. One food source is all you need I also found the copepods to eat the molts after they started to decompose a bit. Only build up was artemia poo, they're good at that!!!

If your going to do a co-culture, run bare bottom and use no rock or anything. Just air, water and phyto.

 

Interesting. Never even though of the pods eating the molts. Learn something new every day.

As far as solid food goes, if I ever had them past napulii stage, I used formula two flakes ground up and soaked in vitamins and HUFA's.

 

Exactly what I was going to say, my solid food is very finely crushed flake food.


So it should work with that and phyto? Awesome! The rock I placed in the 1g was covered in pods, a lot transferred with the rock. I'm hoping that population gets going. We'll see in a couple of weeks

 

So far so good I'm so happy the mandarin eats brine, makes things pretty easy!