Plankton and Copepods as Fish Food

[jgranata13]

Hey everyone, I just brought in a green chromis and a red firefish, currently in quarantine. The last few days i've been gut-loading them with frozen mysis but now I need to turn towards looking for a permanent feeding solution.

I had an idea about using bottled plankton (both zoo and phyto because why not), but those are usually marketed as coral food so I don't know if it's the same type of plankton that the fish would eat. Anyone know anything about that? Moreover, I'm not sure how often/how much I would need to feed, or if the plankton would eventually colonize the tank, leading to me not needing to add them in as often. Those can all be determined later though, the main thing I want to know is if others think whether or not it would actually work as a food source.

I also would like to add some starter cultures of copepods to my tank, but all my water volume is contained in my DT except for an HOB with some chemical media, so I don't know how well that would work out refuge-wise. I'm not sure if the crevices in my rocks would offer enough protection, especially since i have a fire shrimp and a handful of scarlet-legged hermit crabs that'll probably be picking at them. I also have a pair of ocellaris clowns, one of which derives nearly all of his sustenance from critters in my rock (mainly amphipods I think), since he almost never eats anything that I feed and is completely healthy. I know the easy fix to this is to just get another HOB and use it as a refugium, but my circuit is already at it's maximum load (old house) so unless I get an electrician to rework the wiring that idea's out, which is why I'm considering the plankton idea in the first place.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

[gogo7]

your firefish should eat the pods, the chromis as well... you really don't need the phyto, unless you have filter feeders. if you start culturing phyto, you'll be able to grow some nice sponges, and those odd clams/oysters/molluscs and tube worms on your live rock will grow beautifully.
what size tank have you got joe?

 

[jgranata13]

Plankton and Copepods as Fish Food

37gal. I know that they should both eat the pods, I'm just worried that the pod population won't be able to sustain itself without a fully separated refugium.

And also I'm just really into increasing biodiversity, so adding phytoplankton and zooplankton to my system is just something that appeals to me anyways.

Joseph Granata

 

[formsix]

Is there a reason you don't want to get them on pellets and/or continue to feed frozen mysis or reef blends a few times a week? All of the fish you have should happily eat anything you toss their way, and daily feedings (or even less) should be fine.

 

[jgranata13]

I just think it would be really cool to have a colony of their natural diet living in the tank that could sustain them and then be supplemented with other foods


Joseph Granata

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

I just think it would be really cool to have a colony of their natural diet living in the tank that could sustain them and then be supplemented with other foods


Joseph Granata

The firefish and chromis eat out of the water column. The type of Copepods we are able to sustain populations of in our tanks live on the rocks, neither of these fish will pick off the rocks much. It's essentially impossible to maintain a culture of planktonic Copepods (what these fish would naturally eat) in the tank because they will all get filtered out and eaten, and you would have to add a lot of phytoplankton to support them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[formsix]

I just think it would be really cool to have a colony of their natural diet living in the tank that could sustain them and then be supplemented with other foods


Joseph Granata

I agree, that would be cool. One thought would be to hatch baby brine shrimp ala PaulB, but for that you need a separate hatchery and my understanding is that it takes a bit of time each day to care for the culture.

Tigger pods in a large refugium might also work. I've thought about trying to culture some of these: http://reefnutrition.com/tigger_pods.php#tab_faq
I think if you got a culture going in some chaeto then you could shake some chaeto into the tank each day to move the pods. I'm still not sure that you could get enough in that way to sustain the fish, but they'll definitely wipe out any population in the tank in short order.

 

[ThRoewer]

Tigger pods will not survive long term in a reef system. Though they will thrive in monocultures. The key is some green water (not necessarily for food), feeding well (flakes will do just fine) and a higher salinity at roughly 40 ppt.

As for keeping fish on pods alone - I'm right now trying to maintain a mandarin female I foolishly put into a QT with tigger pods. It isn't working well despite me having 5 very productive tigger pod cultures.

 

[Paul B]

I collect these in tide pools and dump them in my tank. They survive and multiply as I have a bunch of them from last year. I find them under my rocks and all over my algae trough.
Video