Pods - best ways to start and keep them thriving?

dmolavi · Dec 29, 2018

I have a mature reef tank (5+ yrs old), and would like to start trying to get copepods/amphipods going in the tank, in support of (hopefully) a future mandarin purchase.

I have a lot of live rock, and my tank has a sand bed..is it as simple as buying some from my LFS, adding them, and letting nature take it's course? If not, what's the best way to go about it? And how will I know if they are successfully multiplying?

Secondary to all that - would I need to modify my feeding at all? I'm thinking not, since my fish like the mysis that I feed them, and eat a lot of it.

I do have a sump, but do not have a fuge...

ihavecrabs · Dec 29, 2018

I'd be surprised if you didn't already have them with a 5yo reef.

If not it is as simple as adding them in or having a buddy give you some to seed your tank. No special feeding required.

dmolavi · Dec 29, 2018

They multiply like catholic bunnies?

How long should I reasonably wait before adding the mandarin? My LFS doesn't always have them, but is good about special ordering. I'd like one that eats mysis and/or calanus w/ the pods as backup...

PDR · Dec 29, 2018

Do you have any coral or inverts in the tank? If so, I can almost guarantee your tank is already full of pods. Feeding phyto regularly can spike the population but shouldn’t be necessary.

What size tank? Also do you have a refugium?

divetoday · Dec 30, 2018

It depends a lot on other tank inhabitants also. My melanaurus wrasse has decimated my pod population. A refugium with Cheeto helps, but I also supplement with pods from algae barn every once in a while.

A sea K · Dec 30, 2018

divetoday said:
It depends a lot on other tank inhabitants also. My melanaurus wrasse has decimated my pod population. A refugium with Cheeto helps, but I also supplement with pods from algae barn every once in a while.

Just thinking about this myself. I have 6 wrasses in my system and never see any pods but I know they are there.
If you have space add a live rock rubble pile in your sump (marine pure makes a fake rock but any of their medium is excellent for pod refugia) and regular dosing of phyto is the best course to increase your pod population.

dmolavi · Dec 30, 2018

PDR said:
Do you have any coral or inverts in the tank? If so, I can almost guarantee your tank is already full of pods. Feeding phyto regularly can spike the population but shouldn’t be necessary.

What size tank? Also do you have a refugium?

Lots of corals and 2 'nems. I don't see any crawling in/around the sandbed though. (That being said, I've just started noticing bristleworms after 5 yrs). It's a 40 gallon, 15 gallon sump, no fuge.

divetoday said:
It depends a lot on other tank inhabitants also. My melanaurus wrasse has decimated my pod population. A refugium with Cheeto helps, but I also supplement with pods from algae barn every once in a while.

Unfortunately, no fuge..no room in the sump.

A sea K said:
Just thinking about this myself. I have 6 wrasses in my system and never see any pods but I know they are there.
If you have space add a live rock rubble pile in your sump (marine pure makes a fake rock but any of their medium is excellent for pod refugia) and regular dosing of phyto is the best course to increase your pod population.

I could do this in the return section - there is some room there for a rubble pile. Good to know there are fake rocks out there...I wouldn't want to have to go through curing another pile from BRS. I could if I had to, I suppose.

How do you know they're there?

chefjpaul · Dec 30, 2018

https://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/about-us/articles/raising-live-rotifers-copepods/rotifers-101/

garbled · Dec 30, 2018

To get the larger ones to produce, I like to night feed just a tiny amount, in the absolute dead of night. (autofeeder). This gives them a chance to get the good food, and they will multiply like crazy. Use a red flashlight when it's dark to see the population.

fishybizzness · Dec 30, 2018

I added pods from podmyreef and after awhile I was also thinking that they were all dead until one night when I was looking at the tank and saw something moving on the glass. I got a flashlight and pointed it on the front glass from the inside out, backlight, and was shocked to see that they glass was crawling with them. I did the same with the sump and they were everywhere there as well!

dmolavi · Dec 30, 2018

chefjpaul said:
https://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/about-us/articles/raising-live-rotifers-copepods/rotifers-101/

This is an awesome article.

When harvesting like this, how often do you take them from the bucket and add to the tank?

dmolavi · Dec 31, 2018

So if I just add pods (and periodically..how often?) feed with phytoplankton, do I need to culture my own pods or will they reproduce and maintain their population on their own in the tank?

garbled · Dec 31, 2018

Assuming you don't have a predator of them (at least an efficient one, like a dragonet/mandarin), they will self-sustain usually. Sometimes it's not a bad idea to add some more, just for biodiversity, in case one outcompetes all the rest.

You really shouldn't have to do phyto feeding unless you want a seriously huge amount of pods... and that gets a little more fiddly...

dmolavi · Dec 31, 2018

My goal here is to get a population going, and sustained, to support a mandarin...so either culture my own or get a fresh batch every week?

garbled · Dec 31, 2018

What you need is a large amount of space that the mandarin can't get to. That might mean external culture, that might mean giant fuge. basically they need a safe haven where they won't be murdered faster than they can reproduce.

dmolavi · Dec 31, 2018

The page quoted above is one way (external culture), or I suppose I could culture them in my sump, but it doesn't have a fuge section. Would a live rock pile in the return section be good enough, and I'm guessing they'd survive the trip through the return pump?

garbled · Dec 31, 2018

Nothing does amazing on a trip through a pump. It's like one of those action movies with the spy jumping through the fan blade. Sure, if he times it right, but the other 5 spies are all dead. You make up for this in sheer volume.

I'll be honest, unless you have either a really big tank and light fishload, or a large refugium, it's going to be a fight keeping a mandarin. They are amazingly efficient predators. They can wipe out the pod population in a 125 gallon tank faster than you would believe. They sometimes adapt to frozen food, but not always...

As for culturing.. this is essentially it's own little nightmare. You need multiple cultures going on at once. They need to be physically separate, in case they crash (which they do, often). Are you going to culture your own phyto too? That's also a whole issue.

A good (paraphrased) quote from the plankton culture manual, which you should probably buy if you are serious about this:

"The problem was, that Japanese fish hatcheries had 90% of the available space dedicated to growing phyto and plankton that would be fed to the fish, leaving only 10% of the warehouse for actual fish production"

Over the years, a bunch of people have tried keeping/building continuous phyto/plankton reactors in-tank. I've seen tons of people try, and only a few succeed.

I don't think a pile of rocks will cut it. They need food, and that food is algae usually. It will be a ton of work without a large fuge. I'm not trying to discourage you, just trying to make you aware of the difficulty of culturing pods up front. When I was breeding bangaii cardinals, it was *so* much work raising the food, raising the actual fish was an afterthought.

dmolavi · Dec 31, 2018

garbled said:
I'll be honest, unless you have either a really big tank and light fishload, or a large refugium, it's going to be a fight keeping a mandarin. They are amazingly efficient predators. They can wipe out the pod population in a 125 gallon tank faster than you would believe. They sometimes adapt to frozen food, but not always...

This is what I was most concerned about wrt the mandarin - how quickly they eradicate the population. With 3 kids, I don't have much time to raise another couple hundred thousand mouths ;-)

I wonder if one of the captive bred ones that LiveAquaria sell, which supposedly eat frozen, is worth it. Expensive gamble though...

I'll probably get some just to add to my existing population (if they are there). The mandarin sounds like it might be a little...much. I don't like to half-butt things, and do as much research up front as possible, hence all my questions. Thanks to everyone for all their inputs