Adding copepods, arctipods, tiggerpods

When I had my 14 gallon biocube copepods were swarming all over my tank. When I started my 40 breeder I didnt seem to have any.

1.What are the benefits of pods?
2.Do you think I should add them to my system?
3.What type do you use and have you ever added them?

Stephen

 

Benefits - free food for your fish and coral. However, they are not necessary unless you have a finicky eater (such as a mandarin) that will not eat anything except copepods.

If your fish are all eating and happy, you do not need to spend money on adding live pods to your system. If you want to feed your corals some pods, frozen cyclop-eeze will do just fine.

Having said all this, if you do plan to keep a mandarin, your tank is too small to sustain one on its own pod population (even if it was swarming with them), and so you would have to constantly add new live ones.

 

Pods are little scavengers they will help break down excess food/waste on a small scale, some fish and coral may eat them as well depending on the type/size of pod and fish/coral etc.
It's pretty impossible to avoid adding pods to your tank, you will end up getting some eventually on something you buy if you don't already have them. You could already have them and just haven't seen them yet because their population is so small and they are also quite small.
Before adding any commercial products I would ensure that A. They are live pods, B. they are tropical species that will survive in your tank (I'm not sure tiggerpods are tropical so they might not survive for very long in your tank), C. That there will be enough food in the tank for them to have a self-sustaining population.

I ordered some "starter kits" from Inland Aquatics when I started my tank along with some other small little critter starter kits, I love having a wide range of little things living in my systems so I decided to give their populations a head start, it can be a little expensive but I think it was worth it, for me anyway. I started my tank in October and I now have populations of all kinds of pods, mysis shrimp, etc living in my tanks.
Also, you may want to give them a few weeks to get their populations established before adding any potential predators like wrasses etc.