Hi everyone,
I have a 125 gallon 6 ft long saltwater tank that has been up for about 8-9 months now running very well. Back when we first started we added Tiggers Copepods in our tank with Cheato, however there doesn't seem to be any culture and I believe this may be related to the fact that they are cold water pods.. and our tank is at 80 degrees.
With that said, not knowing this was the case (expecting a fully cultured tank) we purchased a Mandaran from the LFS for $40.oo and acclimated him to two bucks of our DT water, we heard that you can't QT them successfully so we took a chance and put him in our tank. Immediately after we added another 1300 tigger pods to the DT.
A few days later we ordered over 10K Tisbe pods online with Phyto bags. We dropped one bag of 5,000+ tisbe's into the water after floating them for 5 minutes. Turned off the pumps and lights and put them in on the side where the Mandaran seems to like to hang out, he did seem to move a lot more when they were introduced. We made sure to do this after we fed the other fish.
We did some research online and ran out and purchased two water dispensers, air tube and an air pump and put the other 5,000+ pods into one dispenser with chaeto and put the phyto in th eother (and one bottle in the fridge). We ran air tubes to each water dispenser so the air is coming out every ms and put a bit of phyto grow in the dispenser with phyto. We took water from the DT (1.026) and added it to both dispensers (these dispensers are like iced tea jugs with the little dispenser at the end).
We took some Phyto and put it in with the pods.
The president of our fish club says we really need to get the culture to happen in the tank, but we do not have a sump.. we looked into a HOB refugium, etc. So does anyone have any advice for us on what we are doing wrong, or what we could be doing better?
Getting rid of the fish is not an option - there is no catching fish in our tank w/o tanking everything out, and that we are not going through again (we had an ich problem and let the tank run 78 days fallow).
Thanks!
I have a 125 gallon 6 ft long saltwater tank that has been up for about 8-9 months now running very well. Back when we first started we added Tiggers Copepods in our tank with Cheato, however there doesn't seem to be any culture and I believe this may be related to the fact that they are cold water pods.. and our tank is at 80 degrees.
With that said, not knowing this was the case (expecting a fully cultured tank) we purchased a Mandaran from the LFS for $40.oo and acclimated him to two bucks of our DT water, we heard that you can't QT them successfully so we took a chance and put him in our tank. Immediately after we added another 1300 tigger pods to the DT.
A few days later we ordered over 10K Tisbe pods online with Phyto bags. We dropped one bag of 5,000+ tisbe's into the water after floating them for 5 minutes. Turned off the pumps and lights and put them in on the side where the Mandaran seems to like to hang out, he did seem to move a lot more when they were introduced. We made sure to do this after we fed the other fish.
We did some research online and ran out and purchased two water dispensers, air tube and an air pump and put the other 5,000+ pods into one dispenser with chaeto and put the phyto in th eother (and one bottle in the fridge). We ran air tubes to each water dispenser so the air is coming out every ms and put a bit of phyto grow in the dispenser with phyto. We took water from the DT (1.026) and added it to both dispensers (these dispensers are like iced tea jugs with the little dispenser at the end).
We took some Phyto and put it in with the pods.
The president of our fish club says we really need to get the culture to happen in the tank, but we do not have a sump.. we looked into a HOB refugium, etc. So does anyone have any advice for us on what we are doing wrong, or what we could be doing better?
Getting rid of the fish is not an option - there is no catching fish in our tank w/o tanking everything out, and that we are not going through again (we had an ich problem and let the tank run 78 days fallow).
Thanks!
