Quarantine pods?

Mariette · Mar 16, 2019

Perhaps in being overly paranoid but I’ve had my share of bad experiences. DT going fallow for 76 days and we’re about a week in. I’m going to order some pods to seed while my fish are away, hopefully recovering. Should I restart fallow period once pods go in? Anyone had a bad experience. Realistically, we never know where these guys come from and retailer may be using pods cultured out of their own fuge or water from a DT. Am I being paranoid?

Lovemyreef2015 · Mar 16, 2019

I would not try to quarantine pods.

AlgaeBarn · Mar 16, 2019

Mariette said:
Perhaps in being overly paranoid but I’ve had my share of bad experiences. DT going fallow for 76 days and we’re about a week in. I’m going to order some pods to seed while my fish are away, hopefully recovering. Should I restart fallow period once pods go in? Anyone had a bad experience. Realistically, we never know where these guys come from and retailer may be using pods cultured out of their own fuge or water from a DT. Am I being paranoid?

Hi Mariette,

Our pods are disease free! We take biosecurity very seriously at AlgaeBarn! At our facility(12,000sqft), none of our pods come into contact with fish or fish water.

Cheers,
Sean

Mariette · Mar 16, 2019

AlgaeBarn said:
Hi Mariette,

Our pods are disease free! We take biosecurity very seriously at AlgaeBarn! At our facility(12,000sqft), none of our pods come into contact with fish or fish water.

Cheers,
Sean

Awesome! May I ask where you ship from? Also, having checked out your site, I see that you stock several types and blends of pods. What would you recommend for a 55 gallon, no coral, no dragonette tank? Something that will live and populate (not a snack)

Hermie · Mar 16, 2019

Lovemyreef2015 said:
I would not try to quarantine pods.

Care to explain why you would not try?

Lovemyreef2015 · Mar 16, 2019

NotASpammerDude said:
Care to explain why you would not try?

Sure, how are you going to quarintine something you can't see? If your going to go to the extreme as to seriously QT pods then why not just try to raise them yourself? If you want to pull off every amphipod on a frag and QT them that's up to anyone who wants to do that. Algae barn, reef nutrition take great care to do this for you with their operations so no, I would not buy pods to try and QT them.

Mariette · Mar 16, 2019

NotASpammerDude said:
Care to explain why you would not try?

Lovemyreef2015 said:
Sure, how are you going to quarintine something you can't see? If your going to go to the extreme as to seriously QT pods then why not just try to raise them yourself? If you want to pull off every amphipod on a frag and QT them that's up to anyone who wants to do that. Algae barn, reef nutrition take great care to do this for you with their operations so no, I would not buy pods to try and QT them.

What I did once was I bought pods, put em in a little tank w water from QT, and live rock. I fed a stead supply of phyto. For 76 days. Population exploded. Did a little cleanup then Dumped the entire thing into DT.

Hermie · Mar 16, 2019

Lovemyreef2015 said:
Sure, how are you going to quarintine something you can't see? If your going to go to the extreme as to seriously QT pods then why not just try to raise them yourself? If you want to pull off every amphipod on a frag and QT them that's up to anyone who wants to do that. Algae barn, reef nutrition take great care to do this for you with their operations so no, I would not buy pods to try and QT them.

Since you replied with questions,

simply by putting them in a bucket or small container and at the end of the QT using an appropriately sized net to remove them. furthermore, use a magnifying glass if necessary
People do QT frags and live rock, so why are you differentiating QT between the two (pods and rock)?
Algae Barn, Reef Nutrition are only 2 sources of pods. Plenty of LFS and other channels sell copepods and amphipods which do not have biosecurity in place. So you are therefore only talking about specific high quality sellers. The OP did not say where the pods would be coming from, which affects how one would handle the pods.

Lovemyreef2015 · Mar 16, 2019

Then I would suggest buying from a trusted source. I gave my opinion and you, the OP are free to do as they wish. Ran tanks for many years and I think the QT thing can get outrageous but again, my opinion and that's what the OP asked for. It's always a risk and if you want to QT every little thing then by all means, continue. It's not right or wrong.

Hermie · Mar 16, 2019

Lovemyreef2015 said:
Then I would suggest buying from a trusted source. I gave my opinion and you, the OP are free to do as they wish. Ran tanks for many years and I think the QT thing can get outrageous but again, my opinion and that's what the OP asked for. It's always a risk and if you want to QT every little thing then by all means, continue. It's not right or wrong.

Happy that we agree that source matters, I wouldn't want someone to dump a bunch of pods in from a tank with ich and have their system wipeout and then give up the hobby for good

Lovemyreef2015 · Mar 16, 2019

Source definitely matters but I don't want to turn this thread into another QT debate. To the OP, buy from a trusted source.

Mariette · Mar 16, 2019

NotASpammerDude said:
Happy that we agree that source matters, I wouldn't want someone to dump a bunch of pods in from a tank with ich and have their system wipeout and then give up the hobby for good

Absolutely. Source matters HUGELY. I bought pods online and, soon after introducing them to my tank, I had Ich. I also brought in a fish around the same time after a too short quarantine so no telling where ich came from. I wrote to supplier, explained that I’m not blaming them, and asked if they can queantee to parasites. No response. Twice. Makes me wary

AlgaeBarn · Mar 17, 2019

Mariette said:
Awesome! May I ask where you ship from? Also, having checked out your site, I see that you stock several types and blends of pods. What would you recommend for a 55 gallon, no coral, no dragonette tank? Something that will live and populate (not a snack)

Hey! We ship from Denver, Colorado. We are few blocks from the Denver USPS distribution hub and a few blocks (in the other direction) from the UPS distribution hub. We do free shipping at $40

We almost always recommend the 5280 blend(3 species) as we have had a ton of successful stories of people seeding their tank.Do you have a sump or refugium?

Mariette · Mar 17, 2019

I do not. Also, I’m in Canada. Do you have any Canadian retailers by chance?

AlgaeBarn · Mar 17, 2019

Mariette said:
I do not. Also, I’m in Canada. Do you have any Canadian retailers by chance?

We do ship to Canada, but it can get a little expensive. We have a meeting with DHL tomorrow to see if we can get better rates with a different service.

We don't have any retailers at the moment, is there a particular one you think we should reach out to?

Mariette · Mar 17, 2019

AlgaeBarn said:
We do ship to Canada, but it can get a little expensive. We have a meeting with DHL tomorrow to see if we can get better rates with a different service.

We don't have any retailers at the moment, is there a particular one you think we should reach out to?

Big Al’s is a fairly common and wide spread retailer here. But I believe they’re all individually owned. I can tell you from experience though that when one signs up, other soon follow (I got my local one to stock an item I wanted). There’s also petco and Pet smart. But Big al’s is the main one.

Ps - love the attitude

Reef Nutrition · Mar 18, 2019

Thanks to a few of you for the mention. We do indeed sell disease-free copepods. They never come into contact with fish or reef aquariums. We have very strict biosecurity protocols and that's why our algae concentrates and live feed organisms (rotifers & copepods) are so popular among fish and shellfish hatcheries globally. The quality that we provide into aquaculture is also applied to our products for reef aquariums . We have been selling copepods into the hobby for nearly 12 years now, so you can count on us for consistency, high-density and clean cultures. We sell direct or through retail stores and have been shipping to Canada for years now. Here are a few links: https://reefnutrition.com/product_apex_pods.php and https://reefnutrition.com/product_tigger_pods.php. These two species are great for seeding a tank or supplementing an existing population.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Best,
Chad M. Clayton
Live Feeds Supervisor
Reed Mariculture - makers of Reef Nutrition

AlgaeBarn · Mar 18, 2019

Mariette said:
Big Al’s is a fairly common and wide spread retailer here. But I believe they’re all individually owned. I can tell you from experience though that when one signs up, other soon follow (I got my local one to stock an item I wanted). There’s also petco and Pet smart. But Big al’s is the main one.

Ps - love the attitude

Thanks. I think we have a card from one of the Big Al's stores. We will reach out