Copepods Good or bad?

[aprillynd]

I recently saw on Saltwater .com that copepods(sp?) are good for ditriss clean up and will only eat that. I have a 29 gallon reef tank with excessive ditriss buildup and was wondering if this is a good way to clean it up? Any suggestions. HELP!

[CarmieJo]

Hi Aprillyn,

Copepods are good! They are at the bottom of the food chain and a great food for many fish. But, I don't know how really helpful they would be cleaning up in detritus. They might eat some detritus but mostly I think that they eat phytoplankton.

Tell me a little bit about your tank, tank size, do you have a sump, number of fish, how much sand and rock, how much flow, skimmer, mechanical filter, do you have bio balls, etc?

By the way, I wanted to tell you how pretty your name is.

[aprillynd]

My tank is a 29 gallon Bio Cube by Oceanic. I find that the water flow wasn't very good so I installed a power head to help. I also have bio balls and I have the skimmer made by oceanic for the bio cube.
The amount of sand in the tank I believe was about 2 inches thick as a base and I have a lot of live rock, coral and such. I've got 4 fish, 2 emerald crabs, a few turbo snails and astria (sp?)snails (you know, the ones that can flip themselves over if they get turned upside down).

I've even found baby starfish in my tank. I've tried blowing the ditriss off of the coral but it seems to build up under the return pump on the left side of my tank. The intake valves are on the right and personally I think they need to be larger.

I honestly think that I don't need 200 copiepods for my tank, but I really want to know if they will perform like the add says. I have also seen on Saltwater . com an add for a baby conch. It says that it will consume the brown algae buildup on the sand bed and keep it clean. I'm wondering if that is true as well.

[CarmieJo]

Well copepods are really small, like the size of a grain of sand, so 200 isn't anything. You have them already if you added LR. If you are thinking on getting some you should check out Ocean Pods - Aquacultured Copepods for the hobbyist a TR sponsor.

I would see if you can redirect your powerhead to create flow through the area where the detritus collects. I know that this is challenging. I just to ordered the nano size Koralia to beef up the circulation in my NC24.

I would recommend slowly removing the bioballs in your BC29. They can trap detritus and raise the nitrates in your tank. With rock, sand and a skimmer you don't need them.