Culturing Tigger-pods

[philosophile]

I have a pretty good fuge but have noticed my pod population (Tigers) is way down/on the way out. Silly pajama cardinals are hunting them like they're wrasses! Also, I stopped dosing phyto. If you're guessing, is that the problem? No phyto to tide them over through that stage of development? I'm really not interested in culturing them if I can keep a sustainable population in my fuge. I don't have a mandarin or anything. I just like the bio-diversity.

Tigger pods are hard to keep in a fuge. My guess is that they are tide pool copepods, and so have a hard time dealing with anything but periodic waves. Constant flow, unless it is really low, would make it hard for them to keep populations up. Feeding is important too. I don’t think that they NEED phytofeast, but it definitely is optimal nutrition for them. So if you’re not feeding your fuge, they may have an even harder time surviving.

If you want copepods in your fuge, go for apocyclops (Apex-pods from Reed) or Tisbe Pods. Either will colonize a fuge and the rest of your tank in about a month.

 

[Hermie]

They only have one egg sac

weird... Reef Nutrition shows they are supposed to have two

 

[philosophile]

weird... Reef Nutrition shows they are supposed to have two

Well it might just appear that they have one, but two... they are pretty tiny. shrug. Regardless, in about a month, I have have thousands on the glass! So they're pretty quick in reproducing and getting to adulthood.

 

[philosophile]

So just a quick update. I've raised my first group of nauplii to egg bearing age.

Things I've done differently since:
I've almost entirely stopped water changes. this is for a number of reasons, but primarily because of the detritus being difficult to separate from the nauplii.

Solid foods will definitely produce more detritus waste than liquid phyto. So I'm not sure I would continue to recommend small container cultivation as a way to save resources. I would say that you might still have to worry about water fouling if you use a single bottle of pods in something larger like a 5g bucket. you just need to be careful how much food you add, and accept that food density will be low. I think the easy solution is to buy multiple bottles and start with a larger population. tigger pods, from my experience, will take a while to populate to the levels I want. (ideally a population where I can harvest maybe weekly to feed the tank) but I also lost a lot from the spill.... So, really that's my fault.

I'm going to be upgrading the setup to a larger container store flat plastic bin soon. I'm not sure if its better to do one really large continuous culture, or several smaller batch cultures to rotate through. I suspect the several cultures will be better, but at this point I dont have the population at a point that I feel ready to start splitting cultures.

I mentioned this earlier but Detritus is really difficult to separate from nauplii....... I have a 120um and 53um screen. the 120 catches detritus pretty readily, but there are also tons of baby nauplii there too. I don't see any babies in the 53um screen, but I'm just eyeballing it. there is some detritus that gets caught on this screen. Reed does batch cultures, so I'm assuming they just toss out the babies at the end of the batch cycle with the detritus. I'm not quite willing to do that at this stage, building up my population..... so another argument for starting with multiple bottles, to get to the population levels you are aiming for.

I've been playing around with several feeds, and basically have found they will eat just about anything, given a long enough time. pellet food, spirulina powder, yeast, etc. however, my tigs dont seem to have the bright orange color that they did in the bottle. they're a little paler. this is probably due to a lack of astaxanthin and omega 3s. isochrysis or something else is really needed to help them reach peak nutritional value..... I'm going to start trying to give tigs some selcon with some soy lecithin to help it emulsify in the water to see if that improves color. it should at least give them a good dose of essential fatty acids. that should still be cheaper than phytofeast.

 

[Hermie]

however, my tigs dont seem to have the bright orange color that they did in the bottle. they're a little paler.

same, will update soon

 

[bluprntguy]

I mentioned this earlier but Detritus is really difficult to separate from nauplii....... I have a 120um and 53um screen. the 120 catches detritus pretty readily, but there are also tons of baby nauplii there too. I don't see any babies in the 53um screen, but I'm just eyeballing it. there is some detritus that gets caught on this screen. Reed does batch cultures, so I'm assuming they just toss out the babies at the end of the batch cycle with the detritus. I'm not quite willing to do that at this stage, building up my population..... so another argument for starting with multiple bottles, to get to the population levels you are aiming for.

53 micron mesh has smaller holes than the 120 micron mesh. You should see nauplii in the 53 micron sieve and only adults in the 120. I use a 25 micron mesh for harvesting to insure I don’t lose any adults or nauplii. It’s way slower though.

I haven’t really found detritus to be an issue and I wouldn’t be overly concerned about it. I’ve had tisbe cultures hit ammonia levels of 4 and over and the little buggers continued to reproduce like mad. If you change a percentage of the water out regularly and restart the cultures every few months, then it should be fine. Another way to do water changes is to rubber band a coffee filter onto the end of a tube, put the coffee filter and tube in the culture and then start a siphon.

 

[Hermie]

got a few pics and stuff... it's really hard to accurately photograph these guys without a true macro lens...

my culture has started to turn much darker lately, I am not sure when to harvest but probably soon based on you all's timeline of 30 days or so, if someone can remind me that would be great

I feed mine largely Seachem Reef Phytoplankton because it contains some brown algae which is the secret to RN's pod's coloration IIRC. As was mentioned, the brown algae contains astataxin (sp).

I'll do a water change soon using the coffee filter technique, as was recommended. And I need to harvest... Thanks for that tip


Anyway, I'm reporting back that the sponge filter technique has been a phenomenal success. The pods love to congregate in the sponge, and if i shake it, I can see tons of pods jump around and swim in and out. I would definitely suggest others to use a sponge filter if culturing pods. There are tons of molted husks at the bottom of the bucket. My feeding regime is just 10 drops of phytoplankton per day.

Wish I had better photographs to show. Very easy to do, just stick a light in a bucket and a small sponge filter with a tiny, tiny amount of air going through, just enough to cause some water movement.

 

[philosophile]

Good to hear the sponge filter is working out well. do you turn it off when you feed? I'd imagine that the sponge might clear out the phyto too fast. but thethen again, phyto probably just passed right through the sponge given its size.

Yesterday it occurred to me that if I was worried about nutritional deficiencies for these guys, I could try selcon to supplement their feed. So I tried a drop in the container, and they've cleared the water in a day. So I might feed a drop every other day to see if that helps with coloring.

But since selcon is about as expensive as phyto, it just kinda feels like I've made artificial phyto with spirulina and selcon! lol. the upside is that it keeps longer than phyto, but once my population ramps up, that might not matter, as I'll have to feed more.

 

[philosophile]

53 micron mesh has smaller holes than the 120 micron mesh. You should see nauplii in the 53 micron sieve and only adults in the 120.

Yeah, I catch most of the adults with the 120, and detritus doesnt get stuck in the 120, much. but the 53 catches almost everything, including most of the detritus, and nauplii. so I can never really separate nauplii from detritus. itll make harvesting a breeze.... harvest the adults to feed the tank, and leave the nauplii, but I'm just concerned about it long term.

 

[bluprntguy]

Yeah, I catch most of the adults with the 120, and detritus doesnt get stuck in the 120, much. but the 53 catches almost everything, including most of the detritus, and nauplii. so I can never really separate nauplii from detritus. itll make harvesting a breeze.... harvest the adults to feed the tank, and leave the nauplii, but I'm just concerned about it long term.

If you are culturing Tisbe or Apocyclops, the nauplii should be free swimming while the adults inhabit surfaces. Theoretically you could siphon the water column through your 53 micron sieve to catch all the nauplii and then siphon the bottom bits with the detritus through the larger sieve.

 

[philosophile]

If you are culturing Tisbe or Apocyclops, the nauplii should be free swimming while the adults inhabit surfaces. Theoretically you could siphon the water column through your 53 micron sieve to catch all the nauplii and then siphon the bottom bits with the detritus through the larger sieve.

I'm culturing tigger pods.

But the problem I'm having is that the detritus is as big as the nauplii.... 53 catches it all, detritus and nauplii. the 120 catches the adults.

 

[Reef Nutrition]

Hey there. I'm chiming in about the red coloration that you see with our Tigriopus californicus (Tigger-Pods®). There have been numerous papers on the subject of pigmentation in copepods. The pigments are gained from the algae they eat. Tigriopus are notorious for storing pigment enhancing compounds (carotenoids) that they get from the phytoplankton they consume and converting them to astaxanthin.

Below is an excerpt from this research paper: https://www.researchgate.net/profil...coid-copepod-Tigriopus-californicus-Baker.pdf
TIDEPOOLS AS REFUGES: PREDATION AND THE LIMITS OF THE HARPACTICOID COPEPOD TIGRIOPUS CALIFORNICUS (Baker) MEGAN N. DETHIER Department of Zoology, Universify of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, U.S.A

Here is yet another great paper on how Tigriopus convert phytopigments to astaxanthin: https://academic.oup.com/plankt/article/40/2/142/4791159
On the bioconversion of dietary carotenoids to astaxanthin in the marine copepod, Tigriopus californicus
https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbx072

The pigments are gained from the algae and are stored in higher concentrations within the copepod when it's exposed to intense light. Our pods are grown in greenhouses and fed our algae every day. They are exposed to filtered sunlight which helps them to gain more coloration. I just want to add that even if they don't contain high levels of carotenoids, and subsequently look more pale, doesn't mean they lack nutrition. They are much less conspicuous when they aren't so red which may help them survive longer in an aquarium or refugium.

-Chad

 

[Acros]

Will tigger pods reproduce in a refugium with chaeto?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Will tigger pods reproduce in a refugium with chaeto?

They generally do. Be sure to add phyto occasionally

 

[Butcher333]

What are your thoughts on urchin fecal pellets? @Reef Nutrition

I remember reading a paper somewhere about Tigriopus preferring fecal pellets of urchin over other foods.

I also read that Rotifers are eaten by Tigriopus and this helping them nutritionally with fats to grow faster.

I feel there is a secret sauce I’m missing to getting my T. pods to the size I’m buying from Reef Nutrition.

 

[Reef Nutrition]

What are your thoughts on urchin fecal pellets? @Reef Nutrition

I remember reading a paper somewhere about Tigriopus preferring fecal pellets of urchin over other foods.

I also read that Rotifers are eaten by Tigriopus and this helping them nutritionally with fats to grow faster.

I feel there is a secret sauce I’m missing to getting my T. pods to the size I’m buying from Reef Nutrition.

We feed our copepods phytoplankton, and lots of it. Never heard of fecal pellets of urchins. That would be pretty difficult to set up.

Also, we don't have evidence that they eat rotifers in any significant quantities. If we get Brachious sp. rotifers in any of our Tigriopus californicus cultures, we have to bleach the whole tank because the rotifers outcompete the copepods for food. We have strict biosecurity measures in place to prevent cross-contamination.

The secret sauce is lots and lots of phytoplankton. Since we have over a million gallons of microalgae in production, we have an unlimited supply to culture these animals on a commercial scale.

-Chad