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Growing copepods

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clownvan

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I want to create a healthy copepod population in my tank before introducing fish and more shrimp. Any tips on how to go about it? Previously when I had four fish and two shrimp, I ordered the pods and phyto from AlgaeBarn but the copepod population never took hold. Instead of doing the same thing again, I wanted to check with yall to see if you had success through other methods. I currently see some scads running around, so hoping that they have taken a bit of hold. Eventually down the road, I would like to get a pair of clowns, a sand-sifting goby and maybe a blenny. Kenny at HTA told me to hustle up and add some livestock soon :)

Tank: 32g Fluval Flex
Lighting: Kessil ap9x
Current livestock:
- gsp
- rbta
- peppermint shrimp
- snails, hermits
 
clownvan said:
not sure I have rubble that is not completely dried out. What are the small particles that I should be feeding? frozen food, phyto, something else?
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Have a refugium or no?
Even when I had a small amt of micro algae (ulva) in the sump -it really raised the numbers-you could see them climbing all over the leaves..

Now I am just going by “better living through chemistry” by carbon dosing and dosing artic pods by reef nutrition. Fish seem to like it.

I may go back to ulva though for that reason.
 
No refugium atm. Previously I did not have macro algae in the tank. Now I have chaeto. I believe that is where the scar hangout.

So you reckon the pods will grow within the chaeto? That would be really swell!
 
I had a ton of small swimming pods in my Xenia fuge. Really fun to watch as the bounce around the water around the rubble. I think that is due to daily phyto dosing (easy booster 25). I recently removed the Xenia and fuge light but added a bunch more rubble. Will see if the pod population rises or falls to determine if it was the fuge or the phyto that kept pods going.
 
psidriven said:
I had a ton of small swimming pods in my Xenia fuge. Really fun to watch as the bounce around the water around the rubble. I think that is due to daily phyto dosing (easy booster 25). I recently removed the Xenia and fuge light but added a bunch more rubble. Will see if the pod population rises or falls to determine if it was the fuge or the phyto that kept pods going.
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Look forward to your findings. I do not want to increase algae growth by adding too much phyto
 
clownvan said:
Look forward to your findings. I do not want to increase algae growth by adding too much phyto
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I don’t think adding phyto increases algae growth. I used to for my own phyto. I once dumped close to a gallon of high concentration phyto into my 125 gallon system and it actually caused phosphate levels to drop within 24 hours and the water and rocks looked crystal clear.
 
The most pods I have ever had in my tank was 2-3 months in when I had ulva growing in my refugium and the only fish I had were not pod eaters (ie, a pair of clownfish, tang, rabbit fish, and a hawkfish). I had os many pods I could see them crawling all over the glass, mostly by the sand bed. After I added two wrasse I the pods on the glass disappeared completely. I know they are still in the system since I recently added 2 mandarin gobies and each has tripped in size in two months.

If you are looking from online retailers that are easy to order from I recommend Dinkin’s Aquatics. If you want copepods which will reproduce in your tank I recommend getting both Apoc and Tisbe pods.

I have ordered from 5 different pod providers over the years and Dinkin’s has the highest density at a decent price (albeit none of the pod retailers are particularly cheap other than maybe ReefCleaners).
 
Slingfox said:
The most pods I have ever had in my tank was 2-3 months in when I had ulva growing in my refugium and the only fish I had were not pod eaters (ie, a pair of clownfish, tang, rabbit fish, and a hawkfish). I had os many pods I could see them crawling all over the glass, mostly by the sand bed. After I added two wrasse I the pods on the glass disappeared completely. I know they are still in the system since I recently added 2 mandarin gobies and each has tripped in size in two months.

If you are looking from online retailers that are easy to order from I recommend Dinkin’s Aquatics. If you want copepods which will reproduce in your tank I recommend getting both Apoc and Tisbe pods.

I have ordered from 5 different pod providers over the years and Dinkin’s has the highest density at a decent price (albeit none of the pod retailers are particularly cheap other than maybe ReefCleaners).
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I’m always curious when people bring up Dinkins, I’ve ordered multiple times from them and haven’t gotten more than like 20 visible pods with not many more you can see with a scope. If you do another order from them I’d be curious with a up-close pic of the bottle.
 
Coral Hub (Nathan) said:
I’m always curious when people bring up Dinkins, I’ve ordered multiple times from them and haven’t gotten more than like 20 visible pods with not many more you can see with a scope. If you do another order from them I’d be curious with a up-close pic of the bottle.
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I have ordered copepods from Algae Barn, Reef Nutrition, Reef Cleaners, Reef by Steele, and Dinkin’s Aquarics. The only vendor where I didn’t like the quality was Reef by Steele, but when I sent in a compliant I got a refund immediately. I may have just got a bad batch.

I generally believe it is not necessary to purchase copepods but I do so every once in a while after some major disruptive event like a prolonged dino outbreak. Last time I bought copepods was I experimented with figuring out the laziest way to culture pods in the garage (failure so far but am in round 2 of testing). Before that it was was after I switched out my entire rockscape as part of a tank reset two months ago. Next time I will likely buy copepods is when I run a 4-6 week round of Interceptor after I get my SPS collection in a stable state. The pod population will survive but will be severely diminished so adding copepods should help re-stabilize.
 
Slingfox said:
I have ordered copepods from Algae Barn, Reef Nutrition, Reef Cleaners, Reef by Steele, and Dinkin’s Aquarics. The only vendor where I didn’t like the quality was Reef by Steele, but when I sent in a compliant I got a refund immediately. I may have just got a bad batch.

I generally believe it is not necessary to purchase copepods but I do so every once in a while after some major disruptive event like a prolonged dino outbreak. Last time I bought copepods was I experimented with figuring out the laziest way to culture pods in the garage (failure so far but am in round 2 of testing). Before that it was was after I switched out my entire rockscape as part of a tank reset two months ago. Next time I will likely buy copepods is when I run a 4-6 week round of Interceptor after I get my SPS collection in a stable state. The pod population will survive but will be severely diminished so adding copepods should help re-stabilize.
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Every way of culturing pods is lazy man. Just set and forget. I do a reset every few months but besides that just little water changes every couple of weeks. You just need to be doing live phyto. I dose 1-2 liters a day depending on size of culture. My 150 gallon culture was doing 3 gallons every other day
 
Coral Hub (Nathan) said:
Every way of culturing pods is lazy man. Just set and forget. I do a reset every few months but besides that just little water changes every couple of weeks. You just need to be doing live phyto. I dose 1-2 liters a day depending on size of culture. My 150 gallon culture was doing 3 gallons every other day
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I do the RN Live Phyto or was-and just not seeing any real benefit- or maybe I missed the benefits
 
Coral Hub (Nathan) said:
Every way of culturing pods is lazy man. Just set and forget. I do a reset every few months but besides that just little water changes every couple of weeks. You just need to be doing live phyto. I dose 1-2 liters a day depending on size of culture. My 150 gallon culture was doing 3 gallons every other day
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I used to grow phyto but the room the basic setup was in gotten taken to be an office over unfortunately. I want to see if I can grow copepods without an air line and without feeding live phyto. I believe it should be possible but will see! I know this is not optimal setup but I only need enough to grow for personal use.
 
Slingfox said:
I used to grow phyto but the room the basic setup was in gotten taken to be an office over unfortunately. I want to see if I can grow copepods without an air line and without feeding live phyto. I believe it should be possible but will see! I know this is not optimal setup but I only need enough to grow for personal use.
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You can but won’t get far. Think of someone cutting off your food. You can survive for a little bit you won’t thrive and eventually you’ll die haha. You can create a new environment with cycling a system for a while and dosing bacteria like my purple non sulfur bacteria as they would eventually be a food source but you can’t do it in a sterile environment
 
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