Copepods - Podcast Episode 69

[JeffDubya]

Well... I may have killed all my pods. And I had a very healthy collection going.

With my rotifers, I would literally dump a liter of nanno into the tank, and within a week, the water was clear.

I have been feeding smaller amounts of tetraselmis and isochrysis to my pod culture, and things were moving along so well. Then, last thursday I split all my phyto cultures and dumped a large amount (probably one liter) of isochrysis into the tank.

Four days later, there is no activity. I spoke with Adelaide tonight, and it seems that I am guilty of pod geoncide.

So what did I do wrong?

Well, apparently pods need higher dissolved 02 levels than rotifers do. So, I smothered them. Additionally, Copepods are constantly recycling wastes in the tank that rotifers don't pay any attention to. So less food is needed.

So yeah, I am a pod killer. But I have already lined up a new, healthy starter culture to begin again with. I'm posting this here so someone else doesn't make the same mistake.

Cheers...

[ladygator]

Jeff - I am so sorry to hear the news. I am glad you have a back-up culture, that is definitely a good practice if you are going to change any part of your copepod regimen.

I find it difficult not to overfeed. I look at a culture, it is thriving, my first instinct is to pour in more food for more pods.

After getting stung a few times doing this, I have learned that the saying "less is more" holds true in the world of copepods.

As difficult as it may be, pod keepers out there, try to keep your phyto additions to a very light tint of green or brown (depending on phyto species) and if you are using crushed up fish food, just a few pinches will do.

Good luck Jeff on the restart, let us know how it goes.

Adelaide

[JeffDubya]

dumped em in tonight, we'll see how it goes.

[JustDavidP]

*puts on the 'Best of Barry White'* C'mon lil' poddy kids.. culture up!!!

[JeffDubya]

ooh... hadn't thought of a little Barry White...

[scootman]

I just wanted to say that this site is great. I appreciate all the work which has gone into it. I can't get episode 69 to download...is there something I'm doing wrong???

[ladygator]

I sent an email to Rob about this, thanks for the heads up.

[CarmieJo]

I tried it and also could not download it. It might have something to do with the recent outage.

[scootman]

Thanks Ladygator...I've been reading your bio on some of the various sites. If you're ever in the Florida Panhandle, let me know. I'd love to make arrangements with my local reef club to have you as a speaker. We recently formed ourselves as a non-profit and the club is growing. One of our goals for the year is to grow the club to the point we can bring in special guest speakers. Until then, I'll keep studying pods via these forums and Dr. Fenner's site.

Thanks again for passing along the word about the podcast. When it's working again, I'll check it out.

Wm. "Scooter" Moody
Pensacola, Fl

[THEJRC]

Just spotted this one out of the corner of my eye and am glad others are hoppin on board with the pods!! It's always fun for me when Adelaide wanders out of the woodwork and does a podcast or post!

I notice here (and a lot of other places) that the overfeeding peice is pretty prevalent and I think it stifles most attempts at culturing. Luckily the answer resides fairly cheaply on ebay ($20-$60 on average) in the form of an enteral feeding pump.

These pumps are used in medical scenarios to continously pump intraveinous food from an IV bag to a patient. They range in complexity from super simple to way too technical, tend to last a lifetime, most feature a backup battery, and the important part... meter and deliver based on ml per hour!

I've been able to increase both the production of my cultures as well as raise the water quality immensely by using these pumps and they have helped a lot in my studies and documentation by helping me meter and document actual food delivered. Take a look around for one!

I'd love to make a solid recommendation on amounts to feed but it's one of the areas I'm currently focused on and what I say today might well be wrong tomorrow!

[Rob]

sorry, it was a residual affect from the outage we had a few days ago.
everything shoudl be resolved now

[MikeT307]

Luckily the answer resides fairly cheaply on ebay ($20-$60 on average) in the form of an enteral feeding pump.

These pumps are used in medical scenarios to continously pump intraveinous food from an IV bag to a patient. They range in complexity from super simple to way too technical, tend to last a lifetime, most feature a backup battery, and the important part... meter and deliver based on ml per hour!

I've seen them on Ebay but don't know the complicated ones from the simple ones (other then the amount of buttons). Might you be able to recommend some user friendly models that are also budget friendly?

Thanks again!

[Captinsmooth]

Still cant download this podcast.

[CarmieJo]

Rob is working on getting it fixed.

[THEJRC]

I've seen them on Ebay but don't know the complicated ones from the simple ones (other then the amount of buttons). Might you be able to recommend some user friendly models that are also budget friendly?

Thanks again!

Just noticed this one... I prefer the compat (or nestle) models, though getting bags for that model is proving a little more difficult than the Kangaroo or other models. I have been lucky enough to find both bags and "spikes". the spikes are to peirce sealed bags of enteral feed (naturally) but I've found are really easy to sink the spike into a live culture on the rack and feed direct from there, this way you can keep the culture alive and bubbling but still feed from it.

ALWAYS, get extra bags / spikes... they foul over time and given the low cost cleaning them just does not make sense (at least not for me).

Really for features, there are only three you really need... the first is the ability to set ml per hour, the second is that you can set a "stop feeding @" point (so that the pump stops before the culture runs dry) and the third of course is that you can find bags / spikes easily. It's hit or miss and I've noticed when I hit ebay sometimes I find nothing, sometimes I see compat's in lots of 5 or 6... just keep checking back.

[ladygator]

This Link is Not Working --- Could someone please fix it. And, please remove the note to Manny, I think after 3 years, he should have found his controller software.

Thanks,

Adelaide Rhodes, Ph.D.