Dosing pods to my tank

[raphgiroux]

Hello there,
I dose podCam (from Canada Aquamarine)into my 45 gallons tank and i only see a couple of them on the glass by night...
There's 2 strains of pods in a bottle. Apocyclops panamensis and Tisbe biminiensys.
The company says to dose a 250ml bottle/30 gallons every months and i started 3 months ago, dosing twice the popultion (2 bottles instead of 1) because I added a green mandarin to my tank and wanted him to be healthy. This is the only fish eating pods in my tank.
I dose 2 times 20 ml of phytoplankton every other day (morning and by midnight) as the company told me to do.

Now, this is becoming a little too pricy, having to buy that much every months.
Is there a way ican assume there's enough pods in my tank? Is there a timei'd stop adding pods to it? Is 40ml of phyto 3x/week too much/not enough for my population?
Any tips on dosing?

Thanks!

 

[Subsea]

If you don’t visible see copepods on glass when lights first come on, then you don’t have a sustainable population of pods.

Sustainable populations would be best achieved without carnivore in tank. What other fish are in this tank?

 

[N.Sreefer]

Apocyclops panamensis is a free swimming species so I imagine alot would be killed by filtration and wavemakers. Tisbe biminiensys is benthic and should be visible on the glass/rockwork with a healthy population. Do the bottles have any visible pods in them when you get them?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

your mandarin is eating them, thats why you dont see them. You should cultivate them yourself, instead of buying them. Just get yourself a small 5 gallon tank or a bucket, and put the pods in the bucket and add phyto. They will multiply and you can harvest them every 2-3 weeks. I have 3 small tanks cultivating pods for my mandarin. No need to buy them, thats $30 a bottle

 

[raphgiroux]

Apocyclops panamensis is a free swimming species so I imagine alot would be killed by filtration and wavemakers. Tisbe biminiensys is benthic and should be visible on the glass/rockwork with a healthy population. Do the bottles have any visible pods in them when you get them?

yes i can see healthy population within the bottles, and for the phyto, is there a rule of thumb over seeding it to the pods too?

 

[Simsung]

In my tank the pod population EXPLODES when I overdose phyto on purpose

try it for yourself - add more than the bottle calls for and give it time. You should see them on the glassthe next day

 

[raphgiroux]

is there any effects like algae bloom dosing phyto?

 

[mdb_talon]

Unless you have a refugium it is highly unlikely you can produce a sustainable population of pods in a 45g tank with a mandarin in there.

I agree with LordofCinder it is best to cultivate yourself in that scenario outside the tank.

Overdosing phyto can cause some issues so best to start with small doses and increase gradually. Eventually you will be able to dose very large amounts without negative impact(and in addition to feeding pods/coral can also be useful for reducing nutrients).

 

[N.Sreefer]

As long as its sieved out and doesn't have a ton of fertilizer left you really cant overdose phyto. You may see a rise in phosphates depending on the quality so increase the size of your doses slowly to see if your water quality if effected. Phyto that is live and "clean" (no residual fertilizer) should export nutrients and clean your water to a small extent. So it can actually help keep an algae bloom from happening

 

[Simsung]

By dosing phyto you are adding nutrients to the system
Some of it will be consumed by coral and other inverts but some will end up in your filtration and decompose.
Increase the dosage slowly until you reach the desired effect, this will allow the filtration to adjust to the newly introduced nutrients.