Phyto and pod culture help

Cornerboy · Jul 23, 2018

I want to start culturing phytoplankton and copepods for my tank before I get Mandarin and add Coral. Hopefully this is something I can do cheaply while I'm ensuring that my nitrates are stable. So, not knowing nothing about this I was thinking about culturing the following 6 things

Nanno
T-iso
Tetra
Thal

Apocyclops
Tisbee

How would you scale this down to get started?

DEWreefing · Jul 23, 2018

Youtube will teach you everything I was thinking of starting my own very informative.

lapin · Jul 23, 2018

Some good info
http://www.melevsreef.com/articles/culture-your-own-phytoplankton
https://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/about-us/articles/raising-live-rotifers-copepods/

Neo Jeo · Jul 23, 2018

I wonder how hard it is. I pick up phytoplankton for $10 per month from a guy that's 15min away.

Cornerboy · Jul 23, 2018

I'm thinking the tisbee, T-iso, and Tetrra would be the 3 to start with. That is if the tisbee eat those.

$10 a month would be a lot better than $100

Neo Jeo · Jul 23, 2018

Cornerboy said:
I'm thinking the tisbee, T-iso, and Tetrra would be the 3 to start with. That is if the tisbee eat those.

$10 a month would be a lot better than $100

It’s around $100 per month to grow?

Cornerboy · Jul 23, 2018

Neo Jeo said:
It’s around $100 per month to grow?

I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I'm probably going to need about $50 worth of PODS a month. Since I need to culture my own pods...and they need to eat something... I'm learning how to culture phytoplankton. I already have a huge refugium but I'm planning on keeping a pair of mandarins, 4 or more wrasses and some anthias...

Gareth elliott · Jul 23, 2018

Do you have an lfs nearby that cultures their own?
A lot of the price of starter cultures is shipping the liquid.

If there is no shipping involved, they are a lot cheaper.

Ive gotten say 3000 pods for $5 as opposed to the $20 prepackaged and shipped.

Cornerboy · Jul 23, 2018

Unfortunately, no, I don't. One local fish store 45 minutes away does phytoplankton. There are some industrial pod Growers nearby but they only sell to retailers as far as I know. Algagen and Ora are both within 40 minutes of me. But you're right, I should look into them and see what they can do.

ectoaesthetics · Jul 23, 2018

Culturing nanno is pretty easy. Never tried pods other than T. cali which are really easy in a bucket outside. Not so great for feeing mandarins (and don't reproduce like crazy in a reef tank IME). Even just adding nanno to your tank will drastically increase pod count. Do you have a fuge? I used to cut the circulation to my fuge for 10-15 min with the feed cycle and feed nanno straight to the fuge during that period. Logic being that there was an overabundance of food at least for a bit once a day -then a normal quantity from dosing phyto to the tank.

Supplementing with white worms also seems to help. Won't be a main food source for the little guy but can absolutely help out. Check out Paul's thread under the culturing forums. The white worms seem to stay alive in the tank for 5 days, which allows your mandarin to actually hunt for them as well.

Cornerboy · Jul 24, 2018

ectoaesthetics said:
Culturing nanno is pretty easy. Never tried pods other than T. cali which are really easy in a bucket outside. Not so great for feeing mandarins (and don't reproduce like crazy in a reef tank IME). Even just adding nanno to your tank will drastically increase pod count. Do you have a fuge? I used to cut the circulation to my fuge for 10-15 min with the feed cycle and feed nanno straight to the fuge during that period. Logic being that there was an overabundance of food at least for a bit once a day -then a normal quantity from dosing phyto to the tank.

Supplementing with white worms also seems to help. Won't be a main food source for the little guy but can absolutely help out. Check out Paul's thread under the culturing forums. The white worms seem to stay alive in the tank for 5 days, which allows your mandarin to actually hunt for them as well.

Great point about feeding Nano to the refugium!! I would not have thought of that. That's a big help. Thanks

Super Fly · Jul 24, 2018

buy from this guy... https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/copepods-fs-15.380272/ then u can try growing them or buy more later as others do. But he's pods r so popular u have to get on a waitlist.