Raising Copepods/Amphipods

[Megeverhart27]

I have a 60 gallon FOWLR tank. I would like to eventually get a mandarin goby and from what I understand they are very hard to keep because they rarely have enough food to sustain them. For this reason I would like to start raising copepods & amphipods in a separate tank.

So I have 4 questions:

1. I already have a 2.5 gallon hex tank. Would it be sufficient to start with?

2. If it is sufficient what would be the best way to set the tank up?

3. Can I have it completely separate from my main tank and transport the copepods/amphidos as needed? (I don't have a lot of room and would like to keep the small tank in my basement)

4. If so, what is the best way to transfer the copepods once needed?

Thank you in advance to anyone who have help.

 

[swpassion]

I built a simple "pod farm" for my tank. I took some plastic gutter guard from any home improvment store, rolled it into a cylinder and used plastic zip ties to secure it, then I cut circles to make a top and bottom, filled it with cheato, put the top and bottom on with the plastic zip ties and put it behind my rocks out of sight. I gives me lots of pods but keeps the fish from getting to the cheato or pods directly. Once a week, I shake it up in the tank and the pods fall out of it, at least for me it works great...

 

[Megeverhart27]

Thanks so much for your advise. I think I might look into doing something similar to what you mentioned in addition to the seperate pod tank. (If the pod tank turns out to be a good idea and "doable")

 

[Michael]

hi-meg, as your tank is still cycling id suggest forgetting about this at the moment, get the tank cycled, spend 6 months getting it stable and looking good with all params right and then you may want to add a sump under your 60 where you can grow cheato and raise pods in there ready for a future mandarin. otherwise you could raise some in your 2.5 but i think a decent size sump converted to a refugium is a better option, no reason why you couldnt get a sump going now either, but id suggest learning to keep your tank stable first before considering a mandarin, welcome to the forum by the way, nice to see you here

 

[Michael]

sorry meg after reading your thread in the welcome thread i realise you have been running after the cycle for 4 months, so why not get a sump and try to start raising some pods now?

 

[Megeverhart27]

I actually cycled for a month and have been running for 5 months since the end of the cycle. (so 6 months total) Sorry that I wasn't clear about that. (I'm new) I am not planning on getting the mandarin for at least another 4-5 months so that I can get a good population of copepods/amphipods in my live rock (which I have 75-80lbs of btw).

I was hoping to be able to have a separate tank in a different room of my house to produce the pods and avoid setting up a sump. The reason for this is because I have almost no space under or around my tank for a sump. I have the canister for my filter under my stand and its a hex so its limited space to begin with.

 

[Megeverhart27]

I guess the question I was trying to pose in my last post is:

Do I have to have a sump or is it possible to run a healthy FOWLR tank with a mandarin without one?

 

[rort]

honestly, I dont believe it is possible to have a mandarin without a Refugium. They eat so many Copepods a day that you would not be able to purchase pods and feed it properly.

You could try using an AquaClear 110 and instead of using the filter pads, just putting cultured cheato in there and using that as a way to feed your mandarin.

But I think there are going to be a lot of posters that are gonna agree that it really isnt a good idea to have a mandarin without a sump especially not in a reef.

 

[captstinky]

The mandarin will clean your house. Adding the pod hotel of chaeto will certainly help, but a 60g is only going to supply so many...will there be other fish?

 

[otrlynn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14708717#post14708717 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by swpassion
I built a simple "pod farm" for my tank. I took some plastic gutter guard from any home improvment store, rolled it into a cylinder and used plastic zip ties to secure it, then I cut circles to make a top and bottom, filled it with cheato, put the top and bottom on with the plastic zip ties and put it behind my rocks out of sight. I gives me lots of pods but keeps the fish from getting to the cheato or pods directly. Once a week, I shake it up in the tank and the pods fall out of it, at least for me it works great...

I really like the simplicity of this idea, and I have some gutter guard; I think I might try it. I don't have a sump and I had considered a "hang on" type container but did not really want to look at it. Putting the gutter guard cylinder behind the rocks is a great idea!

 

[Megeverhart27]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14709025#post14709025 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rort
honestly, I don't believe it is possible to have a mandarin without a Refugium. They eat so many Copepods a day that you would not be able to purchase pods and feed it properly.

You could try using an AquaClear 110 and instead of using the filter pads, just putting cultured cheato in there and using that as a way to feed your mandarin.

But I think there are going to be a lot of posters that are gonna agree that it really isnt a good idea to have a mandarin without a sump especially not in a reef.

In response to your post, Rotr. I guess the separate tank that I want to set up would be considered a refugium. The only difference being that it will not be hooked directly to my main tank and I will have to transport the cops to feed the mandarin. I just don't have any room to have anything hooked to my display tank. Also I have a penn-plax cascade 700 canister filter is there some way that I could put the cultured cheato in there to help supply the pods?

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14710678#post14710678 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by captstinky
The mandarin will clean your house. Adding the pod hotel of chaeto will certainly help, but a 60g is only going to supply so many...will there be other fish?

In response to your post, captistinky. Do you think that it would be enough of I ran the separate tank (pods only), had the cultured cheato in my filter and did a little pod hotel inside my tank as suggested by swpassion above? Also yes I do have other fish already. I have 5 green chromis (Chromis viridis), a rusty pygmy angel (Centropyge ferrugatus), a neon cleaner goby (Gobiosoma oceanops) & a Caribbean sea cucumber. I also have 2 peppermint shrimp because I had some iaptasia I needed to get rid of.

 

[ecomdesign]

I want to culture copepods too. Take a look on you tube. There is videos of peoples setup. It doesn't look to hard. 1 thing I noticed is that to culture copepods, you need to feed them phytoplankton. You can buy phyto, or culture it yourself aswell. From watching the video I found that copepods are cultured in 5 gallon tanks and phyto is cultured in 2L pop bottles.