Tigger & Tisbe Pods

[Reef Nutrition]

Tisbe pods blew up overnight. Checkout the update.

Great update. I look forward to seeing how fast your Tigger culture comes up. You might be right that the Tiggers may have contaminated the Tisbe tank. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top or if you create the next super copepod! LOL

Chad

 

[40B Knasty]

Great update. I look forward to seeing how fast your Tigger culture comes up. You might be right that the Tiggers may have contaminated the Tisbe tank. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top or if you create the next super copepod! LOL

Chad

When I did crash the first colony of Tisbe pods they did come up to a good size where I really don't think it will be a problem. Plus I have seen bottles for sale with like 4 different pods. That I could see not working. If the Tigger pods take over. So be it. I will not have to go buy a fine netting.
I learned from being a musician that if I ended up touching only one person's life to make a difference. Then it was all worth it. My goal with this was to get anyone interested in keeping a picky eater. How to get these kinds of colonies up and running in a separate tank from their display tank or refugium. With as low cost as possible and a step in the right direction to have their own take on it with confidence. To also inform them about the things I did wrong. So they can save cost from mistakes. I have heard so many dragonet stories that never ended good. To the handful of success stories.
Reef2Reef has been a great place for info for me. Here is one of many more to come on how I can give back to the community.

 

[Reef Nutrition]

When I did crash the first colony of Tisbe pods they did come up to a good size where I really don't think it will be a problem. Plus I have seen bottles for sale with like 4 different pods. That I could see not working. If the Tigger pods take over. So be it. I will not have to go buy a fine netting.
I learned from being a musician that if I ended up touching only one person's life to make a difference. Then it was all worth it. My goal with this was to get anyone interested in keeping a picky eater. How to get these kinds of colonies up and running in a separate tank from their display tank or refugium. With as low cost as possible and a step in the right direction to have their own take on it with confidence. To also inform them about the things I did wrong. So they can save cost from mistakes. I have heard so many dragonet stories that never ended good. To the handful of success stories.
Reef2Reef has been a great place for info for me. Here is one of many more to come on how I can give back to the community.

I applaud your effort! It's really cool that just about anyone can culture these animals and if anything happens to the cultures, there are plenty of copepod growers to buy back-ups from. I'm a huge fan of copepods and look forward to following your cultures in the long term.

 

[40B Knasty]

I applaud your effort! It's really cool that just about anyone can culture these animals and if anything happens to the cultures, there are plenty of copepod growers to buy back-ups from. I'm a huge fan of copepods and look forward to following your cultures in the long term.

I noticed there was already a bounce back after just one day. Usually by the end of a week of harvesting there is plenty to be harvested again.
For anyone that is following this. I want you to realize any white or darker dot you see in the Tisbe pod tank is a pod. There is that many blowing up in that. A Tisbe pod can live up 89 days. Have 2 fertilization cycles. Within each one of those cycles 1 can have a clutch of 30 to 130 eggs I have read. So the most you can get from only 1 pod is estimated at 60-260. Where vs a Tigger pod going from what Chad had mentioned the Tigger pods can have a clutch of 30.
Here is two pictures of the Tisbe and 1 of Tigger pods as of now.
I will be doing a water change for the Tigger pods when they are ready to be harvested. I figured out how to not lose pods when draining the tank. Took a piece of fine sponge and glued it to the airline. It even stops the smaller Tisbe pods from being siphoned out. Probably lost about 5. Were before I losing 100s! All I did was use a piece of rock. Take an elastic band. Put some glue 1/8" down from the tip of the airline and pressed a piece of foam over the line till it was solid. Rock acts as a weight to hold the line in the tank. Foam is keeping 99.99% of the pods in the tank.

Tisbe

Tisbe closeup to get the real idea of how many are there.

Tigger Pods.

 

[40B Knasty]

After 5 days pulling 5k pods out. Here is my bounce back to the population and some more tips and tricks to doing this.

 

[Reef Nutrition]

After 5 days pulling 5k pods out. Here is my bounce back to the population and some more tips and tricks to doing this.

Hey there @40B Knasty ! Thanks for the update.

Regarding Tigger-Pod fecundity and reproduction, here is some information:

• Vittor (1971) found that T. californicus females produced an average of approximately 300 progeny each over the course of their reproductive period, following a single insemination. (Burton, R.S. Mar. Biol. (1985) 86: 247. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00397511)
  
  • So if they are carrying, on average, 30 embryos at a time, they can fertilize 10 clutches.
• While females can mate anytime after their terminal molt, experiments using electrophoretically-detected genetic markers indicate that each mates only once in her lifetime (Burton, R.S. Mar. Biol. (1985) 86: 247. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00397511)
  • So, females only need to mate once and store the sperm long term.

So if you have 1,000, newly inseminate females, it's likely that they will all produce a total of 300,000 offspring over the course of their reproductive period! Not too bad.

Chad

 

[40B Knasty]

Hey there @40B Knasty ! Thanks for the update.

Regarding Tigger-Pod fecundity and reproduction, here is some information:

• Vittor (1971) found that T. californicus females produced an average of approximately 300 progeny each over the course of their reproductive period, following a single insemination. (Burton, R.S. Mar. Biol. (1985) 86: 247. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00397511)
  • So if they are carrying, on average, 30 embryos at a time, they can fertilize 10 clutches.
• While females can mate anytime after their terminal molt, experiments using electrophoretically-detected genetic markers indicate that each mates only once in her lifetime (Burton, R.S. Mar. Biol. (1985) 86: 247. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00397511)
  • So, females only need to mate once and store the sperm long term.

So if you have 1,000, newly inseminate females, it's likely that they will all produce a total of 300,000 offspring over the course of their reproductive period! Not too bad.

Chad

Hey Chad checkout this video. Any guess as to how many I feed my tank?

 

[Reef Nutrition]

Hey Chad checkout this video. Any guess as to how many I feed my tank?

I'd say you have at least 2,000 in that jar. Great harvest. The culture looks like it also may have phytoplankton growing in it. They look really good and I see a lot of gravid females. Cool deal. Keep it up!

Chad

 

[40B Knasty]

I'd say you have at least 2,000 in that jar. Great harvest. The culture looks like it also may have phytoplankton growing in it. They look really good and I see a lot of gravid females. Cool deal. Keep it up!

Chad

I haven't used any phytoplankton. Just the spirulina powder. When the lights are off. The water color is more of an emerald green. It might be from the coral+ & blue+ lighting. But hey if it is growing. Bonus!

 

[40B Knasty]

Looks like a 5k harvest and still 2 more days to go.
Just doing the math alone on this is well worth doing. 52 weeks x $20 a bottle = $1040.
All I spent was $12 5g tank, $20 Tigger pods, $9 5g air pump, $8 air line, $10 spirulina powder. Salt I would guess is one bag of Reef Crystals per year. The cheato and lights is my choice to use.

 

[40B Knasty]

Well I decided to pull the trigger on doing two tanks of Reef Nutrition Tigger pods. One is now a mixed tank of Tigger and Tisbe. The other all Tigger. Had about 2,000 Tigger pods harvested that was going to make it to the display tank. Then I realized the tisbe pods are to small to harvest with the net I have and I am having such a huge success with the tigger pods. It was time to have two tanks of this awesome product. Plus from what I read the Tigger pods seem to be the most beneficial, because of the Omega 3. We will see if they can coexist or if the tigger pods will take over.
Checkout the Reef Nutrition Tigger pods sweet give away they are doing of 8 bottles!

 

[Bryn]

@40B Knasty what do you do about your ammonia levels, do they rise quickly, do you check them once a week, or more often. Also how often are you doing wter changes?

Thanks

 

[40B Knasty]

@40B Knasty what do you do about your ammonia levels, do they rise quickly, do you check them once a week, or more often. Also how often are you doing wter changes?

Thanks

First I want to say there is a few ifs and becauses due to the part of me not knowing the size of your tank, heavy feeding hand, water volume, growing cheato, dead rock, live rock, air flow, and population at the time that eats the detritus.
I do not test for ammonia. I am at a point of judging the tank by experience when to do a water change and how to get you there with the least amount of mistakes and money spent.

 

[Bryn]

Thank you, your videos have been very useful.

 

[40B Knasty]

Thank you, your videos have been very useful.

Thanks for watching them. There was a lot I didn't want to leave out for the water change. So I did the video just for our

 

[leahfiish]

Great thread and videos, following along.

 

[leahfiish]

I like the idea of using chaeto as a way to help with ammonia. But how do you prevent contamination from the chaeto? Also, any thoughts on using something like Prime to lock up ammonia?

 

[Murica]

Is getting the "odd end" pods, such as tangerine worth it?

 

[leahfiish]

Also, I'm curious about the different diets. I see you are having good results with spirulina powder but I know phyto feast is also highly recommended. I'm working on keeping a stable phytoplankton culture and have had good results so far but it is only one species. And feeding my own culture to the pods seems more likely to be another source of potential contamination than feeding phyto feast or spirulina powder.

 

[leahfiish]

I was also curious about the differences between the tisbe and tigger pods. I found this article that helped clear things up.
https://www.coralreefing.com/tisbe-pods-vs-tiger-pods-which-is-better/
It seems like the tisbe pods might be better for fish with very small mouths like seahorses and maybe smaller mandarins (like the captive bred ones that are <1") and small Pipefish. And they also stay smaller and stay in the rocks more so if you are dosing them to a reef system to supplement or seed a pod population they seem like a good choice. Especially the algagen ones. I think, because of the way they are packaged with the phyto and chaeto, that is mainly what they are designed for. Enough food to sit at the lfs for a few weeks and then feed them to a reef system at night and hopefully they will be able to stick around the rocks and populate on their own. Whereas the tigger pods are bigger so fish eat them faster. And the Reef Nutrition tigger pods are packaged differently to allow for a cleaner culture setup. But correct me if I'm wrong, I have never purchased Reef Nutrition tigger pods before.