Copepods. When to seed?

[John A!10]

So I will be setting up my tank this coming week and was wondering when do I add copepods. I will be cycling with dr Tim’s and what I understood, is that you put a fish in the day after you add the dr Tim’s. But when do you add the copepods, and chaeto.

 

[Spare time]

I wouldnt add that until you have fish

 

[Dipan Desai]

I could be wrong but I dont see any issues of adding chaeto and pods the same time as fish.

 

[biophilia]

So I will be setting up my tank this coming week and was wondering when do I add copepods. I will be cycling with dr Tim’s and what I understood, is that you put a fish in the day after you add the dr Tim’s. But when do you add the copepods, and chaeto.

Copepods are pretty hardy and can even handle small ammonia spikes. That being said, they need to eat, so IMO a good time would be immediately after you see your first diatom bloom.

 

[Fishy212]

You should wait until the copepods have something to feed off of. Cycle first, add some CUC and then your fish, then supplement with the copepods. Corals, fish and inverts will eat the copepods too!

 

[nolifer]

you can farm them if you wanted to. All you need is a bucket and a banana skin add some salt water to the bucket toss it outside with the banana skin once it turns green/ yellow toss the bag of copepods in and they will start having babies I think you can harvest Daphnia and copepods in the same bucket keep it outside works a treat for mandarins.

 

[John A!10]

you can farm them if you wanted to. All you need is a bucket and a banana skin add some salt water to the bucket toss it outside with the banana skin once it turns green/ yellow toss the bag of copepods in and they will start having babies I think you can harvest Daphnia and copepods in the same bucket keep it outside works a treat for mandarins.

I live in the northeast so I wouldn’t be able to keep it outside.

 

[John A!10]

So I think I’ll add a fish, and some cuc. As soon as I get a diatom bloom, I’ll add chaeto, more cuc, and pods.

 

[nolifer]

I live in the northeast so I wouldn’t be able to keep it outside.

I live in the Uk and it's always wet and cold here I feel your pain thou, if you wanted to add the pods you can use phyto once a week should be fine. seachem or something like that will work.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

I haven’t used dr Tim’s, only biospira. That said, if they have similar results you can add life right away. Pods will be ok with the water, but will need something to eat. Chaeto might not do so well since you won’t have any nutrient supply in the water for it to consume yet. You’re insta-cycling your tank with Tim’s, and should be fine to add a fish or two minimum right away (depends on the tank size and bottle back size you add.). Plenty of folks have gone the bottle back route off a dry start, dropped in cuc, fish, coral, nems, etc. and took off running just fine. Not saying you should do all that, but look around, read up, and make your own judgement. I did mine with Biospira and started stocking after 5 days. I could have started immediately, but dosed ammonia just be sure. It processed 2 ppm in under 10 hours that first day.

 

[John A!10]

Yeah I I’m using dr Tim’s, and adding a fire fish afterwards. I would add the clowns first, but I feel like th fire fish is shyer, and should be added first.