cheers dan...rotifers double their population in a day or so. given good food. without food for 24 hrs, they starve and the culture can crash. they're delicate, but easy to culture if you're into daily routines. a mature culture can be harvested daily. easily 50% copepod culture is more forgiving. and sea monkeys are sea monkeys. they'll live in most any dirty water. an exellent resource is the plankton culture manual by florida aqua farms.
i don't think you can keep them all in one tank like you're wanting to do....you could, but the amount you're thinking of would not be substantial enough to maintain more than a couple of fish.
definitely smart to add live phyto to your tank to encourage the microfauna. i think if you started with a phyto culture, you would start to see an increase in your local pod population. dead phyto (bottled stuff) doesn't seem to have the same affect.
i used to cultivate my nanno in freshwater, and use it with my automated top off to maintain the sg. this could be an idea for you.
the trouble with zooplankton is maintaining it all in the water column. rotifers have a tendency to group at the light, brine shrimp too. copepods are all over the place. getting them all to group at the overflow with lights and timers depletes the population.
i've tried it with peristaltic pumps. didn't work that great.
i like your idea, and have tried it in other ways, i think it really comes down to available time and resources.
here's a pic of my setup.
the poly culture is the two vases on the left, next to my 2.6 gallon vase. the rotifer cultures are on the shelf above. i do daily water changes on the dt above, into the 2.6, and into the poly cultures. i top off with live phyto.
here's an old picture that might put some ideas in your head.
here i kept rotis and phyto on the same shelf. 13 w cfls.
harpeticoid copepods, rotifers and dunaliella
i hope i helped out with your questions.
