• Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.

breeding your own copepods

ryanpal

ryanpal

NJRC Member
does anyone in the group do this? or maybe have some information on how i could breed my own? buying a bottle of reef nutrition to stock the tank won't cut it. i need a more constant supply until they can breed quicker than my mandarin is eating them.

any info would be great.

thanks,
ryan
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
You can pour some snail shells in the back of your tank behind the rock. This should allow for a breeding ground that the mandarin can't get into to deplete. A piece of filter floss at the bottom of your fuge would also help create breeding ground.

If you wanted to setup another tank for their specific breeding, I suppose you could, but you should be able to setup in-tank shelters that would foster their breeding and feed at the same time.
 
Hawkeye

Hawkeye

A clump of LR would typically help promote copepods....a clump that is undisturbed by fish pecking them that is. Even better if you had a big ball of chaeto.

how big is your tank and how old?

edit - phyl always beats me to the reply...
 
ryanpal

ryanpal

NJRC Member
i have a bunch of live rock clumped together with gutter guard in my sump. i got this from another forum (RC?). i believe it's not enough because my mandarin has not been hunting for food, instead he stays in one spot (weak from no food?). i put a bunch of live brine shrimp right by him which he ate but i want to get it jacked up with some copepods for better nutrition

the tank is 1.5 years old... 150 gal. i had a mandarin in there for a year but lost him when i had to QT all the fish. this guy has been in for about 3 months and doing well. just now i see signs of him not swimming as much. it tells me there probably isn't much copepods.
 
C

calaxa

I went lazy and have tiggerpods going in a 1 gallon. I have about 8 gallons of N. occulata going. These tiggers are not reproducing as fast as I would've liked. I had planned to pour in half the bottle every week but that depleted them too fast. I split the culture in half just yesterday just in case it crashes. I think it's cause I have in the basement and the temp isn't high enough. I can't get my store bought brine to breed either though they have been swimming in there for about 3 weeks. I don't think I see any naupulii (sp?).

Just curious how you guys are coming along with this.
 
MadReefer

MadReefer

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
You could put some cheato in mesh with a piece of LR to hold it down. Hide behind some larger rocks in your DT. This will allow pods to grow an reproduce with out the mandarin depleting them.
 
C

chessmanmark

I used to have a culture tank. I bought my first culture from Oceanpods.com. I used a 10 gallon tank but inserted two Poland Spring bottles in the tank. The rationale behind this is if one culture crashed the other one wouldn't be affected. I partially filled the 10 gallon so only one heater was needed for both cultures.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top