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TIPS ON CULTURING COPEPODSNot everyone needs to culture copepods. If your live rock just needs a little boost or you have a thriving refugium but have seen less and less of the "little white bugs" that inhabit it, just buy some 'pods and put them into your system to boost the population - no extra culturing is required.
The following info, however, can help students and others (mandarin owners) who need to have a continuous culture for feeding, study or amusement.
These tips are provided in addition to a very comprehensive article written by Frank Marini for the Advanced Aquarist. Here are my additional bits of advice on the topic.
The trick with keeping the copepods going is to make small adjustments, and not do everything at once. For example, set up your culture with half the bottle (the copepods can continue to live in the bottle for quite a while - several months if treated right), so that if your original culture doesn't work, you have some to fall back on.
Keep
them in a tupperware container or a jar, with very little aeration
until you start to see the numbers increase, and then split the
culture, and continue to let the little guys thrive - work your way up
to the larger system in Frank's article, if you need that many pods.
Good things to feed the critters are small bits of flake food, crushed up - but just a few flakes. BOYD'S VITA DIET FISH FOOD is a good complete diet. If using inert food and the water gets cloudy, you'll need to change it.
Good things to feed the critters are small bits of flake food, crushed up - but just a few flakes. BOYD'S VITA DIET FISH FOOD is a good complete diet. If using inert food and the water gets cloudy, you'll need to change it.
Other
good things are live algaes such as isochrysis, or tetraselmis.
Add
little food, to reduce the chance that bacteria will take over.
When I say a little, I mean you can hardly see a tint in the water with
the algae, and just a few grams of flake food at a time.
The
females will be reproducing every other day for up to 20 days, so you
should see a bloom of new adults in a couple of weeks. To see the
copepods, the best way is to turn off all the lights, and shine a
flashlight on the side of the culture container or your refugium.
The copepods will be attracted to the light.
An
easy way to collect them for transfer is wiping a sponge along the side
of the container or sucking them up with a pipette after shining a
light on the side of the container to attract them.
Pouring the culture water through a filter bag, or a coffee filter, is another method of catching and moving the copepods to your main tank or a fresh culture container.
Do a 10-20% water change every week to ensure the best survival of the pods. These copepods will thrive at 28 to 34 ppt (1.020 to 1.025).
Beware of crabs in your refugium - they have a habit of eating these little guys!
Try to keep them separate from rotifers - they can coexist with rotifers, but it will drive down the population levels of your copepods. (All copepods are shipped from Essential Live Feeds without any rotifers.)
Pouring the culture water through a filter bag, or a coffee filter, is another method of catching and moving the copepods to your main tank or a fresh culture container.
Do a 10-20% water change every week to ensure the best survival of the pods. These copepods will thrive at 28 to 34 ppt (1.020 to 1.025).
Beware of crabs in your refugium - they have a habit of eating these little guys!
Try to keep them separate from rotifers - they can coexist with rotifers, but it will drive down the population levels of your copepods. (All copepods are shipped from Essential Live Feeds without any rotifers.)
Dr. Adelaide Rhodes is a world recognized expert on copepods and will be happy to answer your questions about them. She can be contacted at adelaide@essentiallivefeeds.com. More information on other projects being developed by