I hope this helps:
Ok, the Tigger pods and Tisbe are a Harpacticoid copepod. By this I believe that they will feed off the substrate as well as in the water column. The following links are for further information on the feeding, culturing and general behaviour as well as the food benefits to these two copepods. From this information you can take that copepods do have specific foods which they will eat but they also can and will consume other types of food items. The Reef Nutrition link as well as the other referents state that the Tigger Pods prefer the Brown algaes but will consume the green algaes as well but will not achieve any value from it as a food item. However it should also be noted that in one of the papers I linked that copepods will "taste" several types of food items and either eat or reject them. I have experienced that given a greater choice in feeds copepods will consume more types of phyto, algae and other food particles then what is generally accepted as the species specific food type.
basic general info on Tigger pods - where they can be found
http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/eco/taxalab/2005/harpacticoid/harpacticoid.htm
Reef nutrition culture tips on tigger pods
http://reefnutrition.com/tigger_pods_care.html
Paper on feeding preferences of Tisbe
http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/7/m007p303.pdf
Good general paper on pods value as food
http://idosi.org/abr/4(2)/4.pdf
As for the Reef Pods Tisbe: This past Saturday I attended the Frights and Frags show here in Orlando. I was able to obtain a 8oz bag of the Tisbe copepods from the company rep. It was packed full of them. Every sample of the water I put under the scope had some copepods in evey stage of developement. With this sample of an identified copepod I was able to determine that the copepods I have in my tank are Tisbe. These things are hyper active. They are swimming and jumping all over the sides and water column of the culture vessel ( 1 gallon glass former pickle jar) I've added water with a salinity of 26 in small amounts to the original water over the past 4 days to bring the volumn up and will continue to do so over the next several days - no aeration yet as the water volumn is still limited. The size and development in just a few short days is as stated in the company lit. They will develope rapidly from nauplii to breeding adults quickly.
In addition to the Tisbe I also picked up a small bottle of the Phyco Pure Reef Blend. I doubled the volumn of a 2 ml sample with sterile water (26 salanity) and with the smallest drop I still couldn't count the number of algae cells present.
. I would have to say that they provide a good quality product(s)
With this experience I'm now interested in aquiring their Tangerine and Parvocalanus pods to culture as food. Both are a Calaniod copepod which I understand can be challanging to culture.
A note on culturing Tigger pods and other large copepods: Larger size shallow water vessels are what are needed for the larger copepods. A 30 gallon plastic tub filled initially with only 6-8" of water would be ideal. Include some forms of macro algae and other sterile items for additional surface area and to assist with water purity. Also use a slow aeration in the culture. You don't want to churn the water but provide a slow steady flow. You will get far better results in my opinion.
