Having trouble cultivating copepods

[madducks42]

Our tank has been up and running for almost a year and we'd like to add a mandarin in early 2018. It's a 90 gallon tank with lots of live rock and currently only two clownfish and a watchman goby. I'm sure we'll add more fish in the future but we'll avoid fish that will compete with the mandarin for food. Planning on getting a captive bred mandarin and I know a lot of the places that sell them state they'll eat frozen food like bloodworms. But just in case I've been trying to bump the copepod population in the tank and also start a copepods culture in a separate spare 5 gallon tank. It's not going well from what I can tell...

About 2 months ago I ordered a bunch of copepods from Algae Barn. I started out with their mix pack of three different types of copepods and put one bag directly into the display tank and the other bag into the tank downstairs. I dose the display tank daily with Algae Barn's Ocean Magik, just their recommended dosage. And I've been using phytopaste that I got from Brine Shrimp Direct in the tank downstairs. I keep the water in the tank downstairs green, not sure if I'm doing too much or not enough. Didn't see any growth in copepods population in the first month in either tank, did another copepods order and only got tisbe pods this time. Put a bag in the DT and a bag in the tank downstairs after doing a water change. It's been a month and still no increase in copepods in either tank although the corals in the display tank seem to really love their daily dose of phytoplankton because they look great and have been growing like crazy, lol.

So what am I doing wrong? From everything I've read online this is supposed to be pretty simple. The tank downstairs is kept at room temperature (usually low 70's for that room), salinity is 1.025, always has a slight green tint to the water. If I look closely I can see a few specks darting around in the water so there are definitely some in there but I'm doubting it's enough to sustain a mandarin.

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[Pslreefer]

Have you checked the population at night? I have a 5 month old tank that I started with bleached old rock and dried up sand and have a ton of them. I only see them at night but they are everywhere on my rock


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[gogo7]

plus 1 for your effort...you're growing harpactoid copepods... i find they prefer bacters over phyto, ime....i feel they dont need to be fed phyto as much as everybody thinks.
my copepods live in a polyculture with my baby brine shrimp. i leave the cyst husks in there and innoculate the 2 litre bottle with pods as well as bs cysts. i have light aeration on the bottle and let the cyst accumulate on the bottom, with the bubbles about 2 per second about half way up the bottle.. dont worry about the 'eggy' smell....the pods will feed on the bacters that produce that smell...
ive often tried to figure how many of these bottle setups could sustain a mandy..let alone the live bs that it produces...
hope this info helps
martyn

 

[shred5]

Have you checked the population at night? I have a 5 month old tank that I started with bleached old rock and dried up sand and have a ton of them. I only see them at night but they are everywhere on my rock


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you are seeing amphipods not copepods most likely.. Copepods are very hard to see.

 

[shred5]

They should not be bad, I have grown them in soda bottles. I use just a very slow bubble rate with it slightly tinted green. i throw cheato for them to hide in and help clean up and oxygen.

Do you see anything? they are so hard to see especially the young ones?

Be careful they are not contaminated with something that might eat them.

Only issue I have had was in a cold basement.

They do not multiply really fast like rotifers.

 

[madducks42]

I've looked at night with a flashlight and I can't spot anything. I tried looking under a microscope but I don't think ours is good enough to see anything or I'm not using it right. Are tisbe pods ever big enough to see? It's my understanding that they made a food source for mandarins but that tigger pods might be easier to cultivate and are big enough to see.