Wild Harvested Zooplankton

[bawater]

Zooplankton is made up of small water invertebrates feeding on phytoplankton. Even though “plankton” means passively floating or drifting, some representatives of zooplankton may be strong swimmers. The yearly plankton cycle consists of various phytoplankton species blooming in response to a particular sequence of changes in temperature, salinity, photoperiod and light intensity, nutrient availability, and a consequent bloom of zooplankton populations. Phytoplankton and zooplankton populations are therefore intimately linked in a continuous cycle of bloom and decline that has evolved and persisted throughout millions of years of evolution.

There are three obvious advantages of using wild zooplankton as a food source:

1) As it is the natural food source, it may be expected that its nutritional composition maximally covers the nutritional requirements of the predator, especially with respect to essential fatty acids and free amino acids (shown in the tables below).

2) The diversified composition of wild zooplankton in terms of species variety as well as ontogenetic stages assures that optimal sizes of prey organisms will be available and efficient uptake by the predator during feeding.

3) It is relatively low in cost as compare to cultivating or trying to cultivate your own zooplankton. And having a few cubes in the freezer makes it readily available.

This is a new product available and I have only used it for a couple of weeks but up till now I do not see any down side to feeding it(if you feed in moderation). In fact I welcome the new addition added to my feeding menu.

Unlike other products that have national secrets on what ingredients are actually in the bottle. The Wild zooplankton is harvested off the coast of Philippines; dragging a 100micron mesh net through the sea, so in the bottle you do not get 1 type of plankton but a variety of zooplankton at 100microns and above.

This is what the predatory corals feed on in the wild…. And this is what they now get in my tank.

The Wild harvested zooplankton comes in an 180ml bottle

There is no way these creatures can be kept alive to reach us in these little bottles so it is frozen with a little seawater. This is the only way of preserving it at the moment (they also use this method for scientific lab studies of wild zooplankton). No artificial preservatives or MSG

To use it you will need to thaw it and store in the fridge. Remember that these tiny animals are flesh and blood so there will be a definite shelf life before decomposition sets in. Within the first week the contents will smell a little fishy and start to clump a little but it’s all right for our home usage. My guess would be a shelf life of about 1month to 2months in the fridge (frozen will keep much longer)

There are no given instructions (only a label) so feed with care, start with a small amount and let your filtration get used to the extra nutrient load. Here I feed 5ml every other day or sometimes daily or 10ml twice or 3 times a week, this is not the only planktonic level food I feed…I also feed live rotifers, live baby brine shrimp, live phytoplankton and frozen phytoplankton (every food item has a different micron size)

Another way of doing it is to defrost the bottle & freeze it into cubes; this makes feeding much easier and storage much longer. Thawing and re-freezing of foods is not advisable but for this instance you don’t have a choice if you want to portion it into bite size pieces, try to do it only once.

Usually I only feed zooplankton foods after the main lights go off but for this demonstration I did it just before lights out.

As you can see, the fishes go crazy once it hits the water so if I feed during light hours I don’t get as much to stay in the water. The fishes still swallow mouthfuls of it when I feed during actinic hours but they can’t see as much. If your anthias are not eating, this product is worth a try. Paradise Reef’s anthias were feeding on this stuff.

Table 1. Free fatty acid composition (FFA; area% of total lipid) of wild zooplankton compared to freshly-hatched Artemia nauplii (AF grade) (modified from Naess and Bergh, 1994).

Wild zooplankton--------Artemia

(14:0) 3.4 ---0.8

(16:0) 16.9 ---12.6

(16:1n-9) 0.7 ---0.9

(16:1n-7) 1.7 ---4.0

(16:2n-4) 0.3 ---0.2

(18:0) 3.7 ---7.4

(18:1n-9) 2.9 ---22.5

(18:1n-7) 3.3 ---10.6

(18:2n-6) 2.0 ---6.8

(18:3n-3) 1.5 ---20.3

(18:4n-3) 1.5 ---2.3

(20:1n-9) 0.2 ---0.7

(20:1n-7) 0.6 ---0.1

(20:4n-6) 0.8 ---2.3

(20:4n-3) 0.5 ---0.6

(20:5n-3) 21.1 ---3.6

(22:0) 0.5 ---1.1

(22:1n-11) 0.0 ---Tr.

(22:5n-3) 0.8 ---0.1

(22:6n-3) 32.9 ---0.2

(Sum (n-3)PUFA5) 8.3 ---27.1

(Sum (n-6)PUFA) 2.8 ---9.1

(n-6/n-3 PUFA) 0.0 ---0.3

(22:6n-3/20:5n-3) 1.6 ---0.1

Total lipid (µg.mg-1 WW) 13.0 ---13.0

Table 2. Free amino acid (FAA; µmol.g-1 DW) composition of wild zooplankton compared to freshly-hatched Artemia nauplii (AF grade) (modified from Naess and Bergh, 1994).

Wild zooplankton------ Artemia

(FAA)

(Aspartic) 2.1--- 1.2

(Glutamic) 2.0--- 3.6

(Asparagine)1.5--- 1.3

(Serine) 3.8--- 2.3

(Histidine) 1.3--- 0.7

(Glutamine)2.8--- 2.8

(Glycine) 23.0--- 2.0

(Threonine)2.1--- 1.3

(Arginine) 9.9--- 3.6

(Alanine) 9.1--- 4.4

(Taurine) 32.7--- 7.6

(Tyrosine) 1.5--- 1.1

(Valine) 3.8--- 2.1

(Methionine)4.7--- 2.2

(Tryptophan )0.6--- 0.3

(Phenylalanine) 2.1--- 1.5

(Isoleucine) 2.4---1.5

(Leucine) 4.5--- 2.5

(Lysine) 6.6--- 3.9

(Total FAA)116.6--- 45.9

As for the corals, well, favias, favites,open brains and lobophyllia species will extend during the night anyway and acropora polyps are always out. So I can’t really say they ate it because it’s too small to watch a single zooplankton being caught by a small polyp of an acro (and remember the lights are off) but I do get good growth on LPS.

My method in feeding corals is to bomb them with a range of foods and let them choose what they want to catch and eat (& my filtration evolves around that). I don’t target feed and keep a relatively low fish load.

Wild harvested Zooplankton is available for $10 a bottle at a Paradise Reef near you.

*CAUTION*

*CAUTION* this product is an inert food (dead) and as all other inert foodstuffs can cause water quality problems if overfed. Do not overfeed.

[spade]

[Achilles Tang]

Cool contribution, Bawater!

[bwilly]

oh yes.. bawater my idol n first master..!

haha.. n half as handsome as me..!

[wedgee]

Where do we get this zooplankton leh? At Waterc***e issit? How much issit for dat bottle?

[dfstan]

you can get it at PR for $10 per bottle...

[Tigger]

Hi BW,

Understand that u Cultivate yr own zooplanton. Do u sell them too???

[bwilly]

Hi BW,

Understand that u Cultivate yr own zooplanton. Do u sell them too???

he does sell them previously.. lah.

not sure still got now.

[Terryz_]

wow... even cheaper than DT phytoplankton...

[bawater]

tigger, the zooplankton that i and a few others culture are actually rotifers...they are pretty expensive to maintain(although easy) because they eat huge amounts of phyto i only keep small amounts of rotifers for personal usage.(they can eat more phyto than i can grow so i feed them frozen phyto)

You can get a bag of rotifers from watercircle for $5, and maybe buy a few bottles of their phyto to feed them.

terry, u mixed up already. Zooplankton & phytoplankton(DT) are totally different lifeforms / products. Zooplankton are higher up in the food chain and eat phytoplankton.

[okieguy]

i never heard of live rotifers b4? whats that? issit a must for coral tanks?

currently feedin my corals with phytoplankton but did some surfing and interested to try on rotifers.. may i know where to get them? and where is watercircle?

thanks

[flubberina13]

W*terc*rcl* is diagonally across Jalan Besar Stadium along Futsing Building around Lavender Food Court.

[junyong84]

is zooplankton still available at paradiz reef??? if yes, how do i go abt buyin it?? ask the young man in the shop???

[Dispar_Anthias]

tigger, the zooplankton that i and a few others culture are actually rotifers...they are pretty expensive to maintain(although easy) because they eat huge amounts of phyto i only keep small amounts of rotifers for personal usage.(they can eat more phyto than i can grow so i feed them frozen phyto)

You can get a bag of rotifers from watercircle for $5, and maybe buy a few bottles of their phyto to feed them.

terry, u mixed up already. Zooplankton & phytoplankton(DT) are totally different lifeforms / products. Zooplankton are higher up in the food chain and eat phytoplankton.

yah yah always wanted to use zooplankton to tempt my anthias to eat, but the zooplankton are placed in a seal up glass bottle and left on the helf of a certain lfs for quite a certain time already.... Now got this, mm can go get them manz

[tigershark]

hi bawater, how many litre(s) is there in a $10 bottle?

[bawater]

its 180ml

[tigershark]

its 180ml

thanks bawater, i think 180ml is not too ex for a 180ml bottle compare to the price of DT... thanks