How do you cycle tank with copepods

[Bengals888]

Hi,

Just curious since I read some post about cycling the tank with copepods, someone called it pod bomb.

How exactly is this done?

I cannot find the original post.

 

[don_chuwish]

Sounds expensive unless you have a really cheap (like free) source of lots of pods. Only way I can imagine it working is that they die off and become the food for the bacteria. Like a cheap cocktail shrimp would do.

 

[User]

Bottle of 10% ammonia will run you $6 at ace hardware. Then you know what you’re adding, in terms of ppm, rather than chucking a load of expensive, dead pods in your tank and hoping for the best

 

[Ruben's Reef]

I never heard someone cycling a tank with pods but you never know.

 

[Bengals888]

I cycle my tank with few drops ammonia and seachem stability.

I guess the logic is you have lots of pods by the time tank is cycled. I am assuming fish food is still used to feed the pods.

As for exact details how much and when is what I was curious about. If I find the post, I will repost here.

Since there is not much on google, must not work very well or everyone would be talking about it.

 

[JoshH]

Reef nutrition made an article about the effects of ammonia on pods. They were saying pods can handle FAR higher ammonia levels than other livestock, even higher than what's recommended to cycle your tank at. I'll have to dig around and find it, using that logic you could technically cycle your tank and add pods at the beginning but I wouldn't think they would be a sound way to get your cycle going and you would have to dose ammonia or go the dead shrimp route anyway.

 

[lapin]

Prob not the best idea unless you have access to a lot of pods and the phyto or food to feed them. I guess it would make a difference if they were C-Pods or A-Pods. as to the food requirements. You could pull A-Pods out of the bay if you lived close to one. I would be tempted to just put my rocks in the bay and cycle them that way.

 

[Bengals888]

I guess it’s misleading to say cycling tank with pods, rather adding pods while cycling tank.

Definitely still need source of ammonia which could be from fish food or spirulina that feeds the pods?

I think it was the reef nutrition posts that had that info.

 

[cromag27 Verified Sponsor]

Bottle of 10% ammonia will run you $6 at ace hardware. Then you know what you’re adding, in terms of ppm, rather than chucking a load of expensive, dead pods in your tank and hoping for the best

this right here!!!! pure ammonia allows you to control your cycle. this is important to avoid any “stalled” cycles.

you can achieve a cycle using livestock including pods, but it’s not efficient, controlled and likely expensive with pods.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycling-an-aquarium.306554/#post-3759102