Great show Rob and informative as usual. It was good to hear from Adelaide as I purchased a bottle of
Oceanpods about a month ago and placed them in my tank a few weeks before putting in my clowns. I was very skeptical when first receiving the bottle. I honestly only saw a few copepods swimming around the bottle. I could not believe it a few weeks later when I inspected the tank in the middle of the night to see more than I can count on the glass. I wish I had a
refugium, but even without on I still have noticed that these little guys(Harpacticoid copepods) have multiplied big time. At night I can see a bunch of them mostly on the glass in the corners of the tank. I thought it was interesting that she mentioned keeping a bit of the glass with some algae as from experience these little guys flock to these areas of the tank. I will take her advice and stop cleaning at least a partial section of glass for them. When I look on the rocks, I rarely see them but I will pick one out from time to time. I am wondering if this has something to do with current in the tank. I have 25-30x turnover going on and I rarely see them anywhere but the glass.
Some
LFS's have been selling an alternative copepod(Tigerpods - Tigriopus californicus). Not sure about the benefits of these little guys in our aquariums. What I have noticed is that the Tigerpods are much larger than the
Oceanpods. The
Oceanpods are really tiny.
I set up a mini
refugium with sand(I guess not a good idea) to start culturing some Tigerpods. I think I will try the 1 G Rubbermaid method as it seems the current 5g
refugium idea is going to be impossible to get them out. I am really interested in culturing these little guys. It is great to see these products out there these days as like it was said in the show, the mandarins really need these little guys to survive.
At the moment I have a couple questions regarding copepods in general:
1. In noticing
Oceanpods mostly on the glass, would high water turnover(20-40x) effect the production of these little buggers in the aquarium?
2. In such a large system(our aquariums) in comparison to the size of these little guys, can someone explain how it is possible for such a small amount of live
phytoplankton to be taken in by these little guys? I guess what I am getting at is if I am not seeing them much around the rocks and mostly on the glass, how are they getting to the
phytoplankton if it is in the water column? I am turning off my
skimmer for an hour after dosing
phytoplankton.
Thanks again for the info, Rob. Can't wait to hear a few more out of the million copepod topics in the future.
