Would like to pick your brains about fuge, pod cultures and pod tanks

[HiFidelity]

Hi,

I decided to post in the advanced section in hopes to catch those who have a more advanced experience with raising copepods and amphipods.

Currently I have a 5g tank holding rock rubble, chaeto, an empty HOB filter and a light. I dumped some pods & amphipods in it and I'm going to be adding some food and if the culture grows I'll turn some of the rocks into rock rubble pod condos.

I also have a 50G DT connected to a sump with about 400gph going through it and it only houses pumps + skimmer but i have a lot of room for more rocks and/or sand.

In addition to the sump I have an upflow fuge that is being fed from the sump pre-skimmer and gravity return into the last chamber on the sump where the main return pump to the DT is housed. This fuge has 2 sections divided by a single baffle with a gap at the bottom so the water flows under it not over, in this first section is the feed from a 900gph maxijet & a valve inline to control flow, it is full of chaeto with some rocks on the bottom. Second chamber has the overflow and is full of rock rubble.

In addition I am going to be setting up a 5 gal bucket to start a tigger pod culture, also another small station to start a phyto culture. Yes I guess you can say I'm going pod crazy :bigeyes:

My aim here is to simultaneously run multiple different methods of housing/culturing pods for the purpose of feeding my tank, and I'm doing them all separately to avoid cross contamination, etc. Depending on the results I may kick one method to the curb and focus on one, or modify one & keep the other, only results will dictate that.

What I am looking for is anyone who has advanced knowledge or experience with any or all of these methods and I would love your feedback, cons/pros? ease vs. difficulty etc. so I can direct my attention in the right direction.

It might be important to note that the fuge currently gets 18hrs of light a day and chaeto is growing out of control, I've added copepods and amphipods to my fuge, DT and standalone 5g pod tank. I was hoping to seed the main system and add a small batch to the standalone tank to see if I can get them to breed (there are many questions here regarding dosing/feeding phyto directly into the system but I'll wait before I get into all that)

My first question specifically is as follows;
Would it be beneficial to put pod condos in the second chamber of the fuge? the flow is practically a trickle and pods will not flow out of this tank unless they deliberately swim into the overflow. Also are there any negative effects to having such low flow through the fuge?

(apologies in advance for the lengthy post, I've encountered too many variables & wanted some direct input to take in consideration)

 

[doctorwhoreefer]

I can't comment too much on the refugium aspects as I've only read what's available on the net and never had one.
When you get into cultures etc, there's a lot of methods out there. I myself am a bit of a Walter White in the ways that I hate contaminants and try to be very precise in my practices. But of all the cultures I've successfully run aside from specific methods, the best for stability and return was the most unscientific, yet true to nature.

Take a container, fill it with sw, add a hefty pinch of flakes. Put the container in the window or light it 10+ hours a day. No bubblers, no pumps, a container of sw sitting there getting constant "daylight".
Fast forward a month, it's overgrown in algae. Add some pods. Once a week take 1 turkey baster of water from the container, put it in the tank. Then take 1 turkey baster of tank water, put it in the container. If the algae starts to recede add a pinch of flake.

The algae will keep the water oxygenated enough for the pods. The supplemental flake will keep the algae present and provide a little extra for the pods. The daylight schedule of light and dark with drive both the algae and oxygen cycles.

I had a gallon plastic tank successfully keep pods for 3 years with this schedule. It was always thriving and provided an ample amount to spike the tank with. When it finally slowed down was when I moved and didn't have a window with even 60% daylight in. Other life events also forced me to get out of the hobby for a period of time. I tried more than several other setups, each had it's own substantial amount of work increase between them compared to this method. And the return was fairly equal. The amount of return will increase exponentially from a simple container-gallon increase and extra pinch of flake.

 

[Compliance]

Interesting.

Closed or open topped container? Wondering about salinity due to evaporation

 

[HiFidelity]

Wow, that is one of the most low-tech methods I've ever heard of and so simple there isn't a reason why I wouldn't try it haha...

Did you just add water or was there any sand? rock rubble? anything for the algae to cling to & pods to live in?

Currently I have that 5G tank with a little bit of sand & some rocks sitting under 12 hours of light & 12 dark, I'm not doing water changes but just topping it off and waiting. There is an amonia strip thingy that you suction cup to the glass... I guess this is kind of similar except it's heated and circulated.

I too will ask, was this a sealed container or open top? was it a gallon jug of milk/juice? haha because I have a bunch of those and I can fill one & sit it next to the 5g thing I got going just to see what happens...

 

[zeebies]

I'll throw my experience out there. About 6 months ago I started 4 Tisbe pod cultures. I did a lot of reading before I set things up. I experimented a bit with heat, flow, light and, by far, my best producing culture has these traits:

2 inches of water in a plastic shoebox
Unheated water, room temp is currently 55F
No flow
Feed 1" square piece of algae sheet or some flake food/pellets every 3 days
Lids of the containers are propped open about an inch on one side
Light is a 20 watt CFL, on for 10 hours/day
Salinity has varied widely, from 1.025 to 1.031, but I try to keep it around 1.025
I harvest pods daily
Set up lives in a closet

Yes, it's very simple!

 

[DaveRaz]

I'll throw my experience out there. About 6 months ago I started 4 Tisbe pod cultures. I did a lot of reading before I set things up. I experimented a bit with heat, flow, light and, by far, my best producing culture has these traits:

2 inches of water in a plastic shoebox
Unheated water, room temp is currently 55F
No flow
Feed 1" square piece of algae sheet or some flake food/pellets every 3 days
Lids of the containers are propped open about an inch on one side
Light is a 20 watt CFL, on for 10 hours/day
Salinity has varied widely, from 1.025 to 1.031, but I try to keep it around 1.025
I harvest pods daily
Set up lives in a closet

Yes, it's very simple!

I have a few questions:

How do you "harvest"? Scoop them up with a fine net or turkey baster? Then you just transfer the pods to your refugium or DT? Please elaborate.

How ofter do you start a new culture?

Do you use some remaining from the last harvest to start anew? Of just keep this one ongoing indefinitely? If starting new, how long between cultures?

Thanks in advance.

 

[HiFidelity]

I like the way you guys work haha

 

[zeebies]

I have a few questions:

How do you "harvest"? Scoop them up with a fine net or turkey baster? Then you just transfer the pods to your refugium or DT? Please elaborate.

How ofter do you start a new culture?

Do you use some remaining from the last harvest to start anew? Of just keep this one ongoing indefinitely? If starting new, how long between cultures?

Thanks in advance.

Harvesting: I suck up pods with a turkey baster, then quirt slowly through a 53 micron sieve. I made a sieve with mesh from ebay and pvc tubing. Let sieve drain a little so only pods are left. Take another baster, suck up some DT water and squirt through the bottom of sieve (over a small container) so now you have tank water + pods. Take the baster and suck up water + pod mixture and add to DT. I have a pipefish I happen to target feed also.

New cultures: I started with 1 bottle of pods from LA, divided up the contents into 4 containers, fed them every few days, waited about 5 weeks, Voila >>>>> mega pods! As long as you keep them fed, they can go on indefinitely.

I have 4 cultures going in case of a crash. About once a week I do a 100% water change on a culture. This involves pouring all the water from one vessel through a large sieve to collect pods, cleaning out the container, adding new saltwater, adding collected pods. I do the 4 cultures in rotation so essentially each culture gets a 100% water change once a month.

I love taking care of my pods...

 

[HiFidelity]

wondering if I can do this on a larger scale with my 5g pod farm

Is it true that coffee filters make a good sieve for pods?

 

[gogo7]

i don't recommend paper coffee filters.
i use plastic soda bottles (2 litres and smaller). i find more, smaller cultures protects you from crashes. i've got live phyto, artemia, copepods, rotifers and ciliates.
feed them daily. bakers yeast solution works good if you're low or don't have any phyto.
a sponge super glued onto the business end of a cheap turkey baster works well for smaller cultures for water changes. you can suck up a few ozs of water leaving the pods behind to be topped up with fw.
large syringes for turkey basting with rigid airline attached works good for removing detritus on the bottom. keep your cultures sides 'dirty'. don't wash your culture containers. sterile is not good. i collect my detritus from my cultures into one larger container. it has been the mother culture for new setups.
hope these tips help

 

[DaveRaz]

All very helpful. Thanks y'all

 

[HiFidelity]

i've got live phyto, artemia, copepods, rotifers and ciliates.
feed them daily. bakers yeast solution works good if you're low or don't have any phyto...
hope these tips help

Very helpful thank you

While Pod cultures sound simple enough, it's mostly phyto cultures that I've been confused about, I've been given a lot of contradicting opinions on starting one from scratch... Some folks say let the algae growth feed the pods, some have told me culturing phyto is going to be the most challenging and some have told me that they are always bound to crash.... you get the picture haha.

Would you be oh so kind to tell me a little more about how you culture your phyto?

So far the plan is to use a couple of larger juice bottles that I have (I like the thicker & more rigid plastic they're made out of) to start 2 phyto cultures at least. I'm going to be growing chaeto in my 5 gal tank and experiment with it to see if I can grow larger amphipods in it or if that fails go for copepods.
I find the shoebox pod farm to be worth trying as well. I'm starting a white worm culture in another shoebox haha so I've got a little bit of energy to invest in this till I find the "preferred method" that will suit my schedule/tank habits best.

 

[MondoBongo]

culturing phyto is one of the easiest things i've done in reefing, with culturing pods being a close second. melev's reef has a great how to on it:

http://www.melevsreef.com/node/1614

for my part, i keep everything simple. my phyto culture are in old 2 liter soda bottles that i have drilled a small hole in the lid for a piece of rigid airline tubing, connected to an air pump.

then i fill them with saltwater, freshly made i don't use old reef water as to not cross contaminate, and 5ml liquid miracle grow per bottle. i usually top off with some fresh water to account for some evaporation.

then i leave them in a window that gets good sun, and wait. usually every day or so i stir the airline tubing around, to help keep the phyto in suspension, and once or twice a week i pick them up, remove the airline tube, and shake the heck out of them.

i find that for my particular schedule, 4 bottles of phyto work best for me. if i offset them each a week, that generally means i have one bottle of phyto ready for harvest per week, which works out nicely for my pod cultures.

depending on the time of year, i wait from 3 - 6 weeks usually per bottle, for them to be dark enough to dose to my pod culture vessels. i leave just a little in the bottom of the phyto culture, refill with fresh water and fertilizer, and let it start over again.

with my pods, i like use the rigid airline, same as the phyto, but with larger containers. i've found the big plastic pretzel containers from costco are awesome for this, plus i get to eat all the pretzels!

pretty much same as above. i dose phyto to them and let them sit and aerate. when i am ready to dose more phyto, i usually do it in conjunction with a water change or a harvest.

to make sure i don't dump any pods out, or to remove them to add to my tank, i have a couple different sieves i got from brine shrimp direct.

my favorite is their rotifer sieve, since it holds a lot of water, is easy to maneuver, and conveniently fits right inside the opening on top pretzel containers. i also have a progressive sized sieve set i use sometimes. here they both are:

http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/Sieve-Combo-Set-p205.html
http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/c9/Rotifer-Sieve-p220.html

then to help wash them off the rotifer screen, i have lab wash bottles i fill with fresh saltwater:

http://www.amazon.com/Karter-Scient...id=1421174124&sr=8-2&keywords=lab+wash+bottle

i have fallen in love with these guys, they're pretty versatile.

 

[MondoBongo]

oh and you will get reduced yield in the winter on the phyto, due to less natural light and colder temperatures. i don't have the room for it now, but when we move, i plan on setting my phyto cultures up in the basement with fluorescent lights on timers so that i don't have to rely on the sunlight.

while having free light is nice, having to deal with the variability of the seasons is starting to be a pain in the butt for the amount of production i want.

 

[DaveRaz]

Why culture photo to supply the pod culture when a piece of seaweed or a bit of fish food works? Please clarify. This is the only step I am confused about. Seems like a lot of work to culture something to culture something else.

 

[MondoBongo]

great question, no idea.

i'm not aware if macro algae will, or will not, make a sufficient food source for pods. it was my understanding that they mainly consume micro algae.

if that is a faulty assumption, then i would have to reevaluate.

 

[MondoBongo]

one of the things that drives me nuts is the academic pay wall.

i started googling and found a number of papers on the feeding habits of harpacticoid copepods, but most of the pdfs are pay only.

some of the abstracts suggest that they may feed on many things, including bacteria, even Vibrio spp. which is pretty neat.

this one looks promising:

[link to pdf]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...IU4q4fEI4grCrQ4mg&sig2=z9oUqNsMNqo8MxqTLC5ssw

[link to pdf]
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...KXvHueorfNZwdI4og&sig2=lWyZllpoQUpuPRAtlTKr6g

the first pdf calls out specifically the researchers feeding them:

Isochrysis sp., Nannochloropsis sp., Chaetoceros sp.

which are all marine phytoplankton. so while i'm still not clear as to whether or not they would eat macro algae, i know for sure they eat microalgae.

 

[maxpc99]

Following along. Great info. Thanks.

 

[HiFidelity]

MondoBongo, I really really appreciate the detailed description of your process and I love the avatar haha

I have a couple of questions, any advantages/disadvantages to using Miracle Grow vs Micro Algae Grow? you're the first person i've heard using plain Miracle Grow haha.
I know this one's obvious but I want to double check, you have your pod cultures in the dark? I've been told that it's not good to allow the pod cultures to be exposed to much light.

As to what pods will eat, this is where I was most confused. There are plenty of scientific instructions, explanations and articles on what how & why pods grow, what they eat and won't, this would be more along the lines of the Scientific approach as demonstrated by Mondo.

On the other hand there is the practical method similar to what Zeebies & DrWhoReefer described which involved no specific science other than put this & that in container then wait x amount of time. I don't find anything wrong with either approach neither do I have any personal knowledge to justify passing judgement on which approach is better. I've found that there are more than just a few people (more like a good amount of those who culture pods) who have gone with the basic non-scientific methods.

Personally I realized that I need to not mix these perspectives and if I go the scientific route then I must adhere strictly to the major requirements, ie; must have light, must have air, must keep water clean. or if I went the simple route then I must replicate the others' successes and avoid complicating things.

To conclude I'm going to do both

Since I already started the 5g pod farm I'm going to go with the old mantra that if you give them a place to live, food source & light, they will grow in some way or another. So I'm going to not do water changes, leave the rocks in there & only add chaeto so it's a self sufficient system and see where that goes.

In addition, I have bottles/plastic boxes etc. etc. so I'm going to give both methods a shot. I'll setup a clean environment and culture phyto in a very organized "scientific" approach, then follow suit with the pod cultures. On the other hand I already ordered some white worms which I can only keep in a shoe box so why not make it a stack of shoe boxes and go with the down right dirty approach there. If I'm lucky I'll find extra free time, find a microscope and start accurately observing which yields the biggest and healthiest population and drop whichever's more inefficient. Hopefully I'll get to write about it one day, I haven't yet found an article that experimented with both methods simultaneously.

Thanks again everyone, I must point out that I have found a good amount of info/advice from your comments to get started with, feel free to keep the feedback going

 

[MondoBongo]

no problem, always glad to share my experiences.

i don't keep the pod cultures away from light in any specific way. i just have them sitting on a file cabinet in my home office. they get ambient light from the window and the normal room lights. nothing direct though.

so i don't know that light would or would not hurt them. my gut tells me no. i was actually kicking around the idea of lighting them to help the phyto to reproduce in the pod cultures when i get more space, but that experiment will have to wait a few more months.