WTB: Live Copepod Culture

[Junwei]

Does anyone know where I can get live copepod culture? The white kind that occurs naturally in marine aquariums. Started with dry rock and have no population to start with, plus I have a scooter blenny to feed.

Iwarna has Reef Nutrition Tigger Pods, bit those pods are huge and get eaten up by fishes really fast as they dont have a tendency to hide, hence unsustainable.

LCK201 sells the locally cultured normal kind white copepods, which is good but i realize most are dead before they are even bagged. Many copepod bodies in the bag but less than 1% are actually moving.

Looking for other sources. Any recommendations?

[Mike Stone]

LCK201 is actually good, I used that to start my tank for copepod culture. But I can't give you any because that tank is in fallow.


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[Junwei]

IC... i also thought it was good as the bag had like thousands of copepods inside. However looking carefully i realise none were moving. Reaching hoem and transferring to a glass jar, 99.5% settled at the bottom like ocean snow. I used a high power torch and looked carefully and all that settled on the bottom were not moving at all, but were definitely copepod bodies. Only very few were swimming around. I wonder if that is normal. 

[Mike Stone]

Throw the whole portion into your refugium or chaeto, about 2-3 weeks later you will see a lot of it cultivated.


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[Mike Stone]

They eat daetom, so make sure you can scrape some from your tank wall and feed that chamber.


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[Junwei]

Unfortunately i have no refugium. Have a sump but the water flows pretty fast in there. I was thinking to put it directly into the biomedia, that should be a good place for them to hide right? As for food there, I was thinking to dose bottled phytoplankton (dead) directly into the water for the corals as well as the copepods. (am using eheim substrat pro in the sump)

[pcw]

If I'm not mistaken, LCK sells copepods that are pelagic. This won't be of much use to populate tanks/ refugiums. I think you would want to look for benthic varieties instead. Just get a live rock or two from some lfs, put it into an empty tank with just water and light, wait a few weeks and there should be pods crawling around the glass. Transfer them over to your tank then.

Alternatively, get some chaeto from reefers. These usually have benthic copepods and amphipods living inside.

[Junwei]

1 minute ago, pcw said:

If I'm not mistaken, LCK sells copepods that are pelagic. This won't be of much use to populate tanks/ refugiums. I think you would want to look for benthic varieties instead. Just get a live rock or two from some lfs, put it into an empty tank with just water and light, wait a few weeks and there should be pods crawling around the glass. Transfer them over to your tank then.

Thats a good idea.... i shall do that!

[Mike Stone]

Just my experience, when I put the copepod into the Chaeto chamber, first 2 weeks there is no sight of any copepod growth, than after 3 weeks I starts seeing loads of them crawling at my tank wall.


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[Junwei]

Just now, Mike Stone said:

Just my experience, when I put the copepod into the Chaeto chamber, first 2 weeks there is no sight of any copepod growth, than after 3 weeks I starts seeing loads of them crawling at my tank wall.


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My guess is you didnt have any copepod eating fish as well?

[Mike Stone]

My angels used to eat them, when fish load is high, no chance for the copepod to stay inside the tank for too long.


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