Spirulina powder as food for apocyclops?

I'm not sure, but I do know that microalgae works very well. Just enough to tint the water a light cloudy green. Reed Mariculture is your friend.
 
Let's see...I know they can do well on algaepaste (Nannochloropsis if I remember right). You could try it, but I'd be careful about overfeeding. I always seem to overfeed with Spirulina, or something....
 
You’re right, it’s really easy to overfeed. They were doing great on spirulina powder, but then I realized I had Tigriopus and not Apocyclops!
 
Yup...I should be getting a replacement apocyclops culture in a few days. I'll probably just use Phyto Feast, though I might experiment with Spirulina.
 
So what's the deal with Nannochloropsis? I have a culture of that going strong. I've heard it's not a good food for pods, but I never really heard why.
 
I have no idea. Maybe it's not nutritionally complete. Maybe pods just don't like it (like I don't like brussel sprouts). Maybe it multiplies too rapidly and chokes out the pods.
 
So what's the deal with Nannochloropsis? I have a culture of that going strong. I've heard it's not a good food for pods, but I never really heard why.
Mostly because it is not a motile microalgae. Many pods prefer motile algae and some like Parvocalanus only eat motile algae. For those pods that are omnivores or detrivores it doesn't matter and Nannocloropsis is a suitable food.
Another downside with Nannocloropsis is that it reproduces extremely fast and if the pods can't keep up eating it faster than it reproduces you may have a problem as well.
From a nutritional standpoint it may not be the best possible algae but it isn't bad either. After all, it is a decent component of algae pastes for feeding rotifers and pods that don't mind dead feeds.
 
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