copepod culture issue

So I am trying to culture copepods for feeding my mandarin, who is starting to look a little thin.

I have a 10g tank with a sponge filter connected to an air pump. The purpose of the sponge is mostly as a biological filter. The tank is bare bottom, kept at 75F, 1.025 SG, and ammonia/nitrites are zero (haven't measured nitrates). I add enough live phyto to keep the water tinged very light green.

Anyway, I added a bottle of live tiggerpods a few weeks ago, and haven't seen any sign of life in the tank since then. Here's my question - should I be seeing something alive/moving in the tank? The tiggerpods looked visible in the bottle?

 

Tigger pods are a cold water species that do not reproduce well in the home aquarium and are highly cannabalistic. They are a poor choice for a culture and the home aquarium.
Here is where I get my pods:
1000+ amphipods / copepods- FOOD FOR SALTWATER AQUARIUM - eBay (item 110432147146 end time Oct-06-09 11:37:32 PDT)

 

You could not be further from the truth. They are not a "cold water" species. They do not even live in the ocean. They are an upper splash zone animal that can with stand really high temps down to freezing temps. They range from Baja, Mexico (think Cabo San Lucas - warm to hot) to Alaska (cold) but researchers have seen them as far down as Honduras. They can live in triple strength salinity, down to half strength salinity. I've seen them in tide pools with enough ammonia to burn your nose if you smell them and with nitrates through the roof (picture tehm crawling through sea bird poop). They are incredibly hardy copepods and well suited for reef aquaria.

They also rarely prey upon themselves (just as much as any other copepod) as they MUCH prefer easy to capture items like phytoplankton (diatoms). To date we have not witnessed any cannibalism and we've grown the most world wide, hands down. It is true Tigger-Pods are kept in the refrigerator at the LFS. This is only to lower their metabolism and allow a longer 'shelf life". They are very happy at reef temps and breed just as much. In fact this summer we had out hottest tank temps yet (mid 80's) and we had our largest harvest ever during that time.

People who know very little about them and merely get their info from sound bites and the internet like to point to a single research paper where the abstract states at higher temps there is a male:female shift lowering the breeding population. If they read the paper (free BTW) they will see it was a minuscule 50:50 to 51:49 shift. Not enough to effect breeding levels at all considering the amounts copepods.

Amphipods and mysids are typically the largest predictors of copepods (behind fish of course). By selling a mixed culture the seller in ensuring a repeat customer. Not such a kosher practice in my opinion.

 

Was that off the back of the bottle?

 

Pretty much. And if he posts the link to the "study" I bet it's the one RN published themselves

 

Gresham, I appreciate your advice as you certainly know your own product. Can you please tell me, then, why am I not seeing anything in the water? Should I not be seeing little red specks swimming? As I said, I feed daily with live phyto and my ammonia and nitrites are zero?

And Packleader, thanks for the ebay link. I'll look into it if this tiggerpod thing doesn't work out for me.

 

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Please quote where I said study? I stated research paper It's on the net and we had nothing to do with it!

Keep in mind they collected theirs up in Canada and we collected ours 1000+ miles south (much warmer).

SpringerLink - Journal Article

 

Nope, but I wrote that as well.

 

You're not using a refugium, are you? They do best in fuges away from predation. Tank parameters really don't effect them so there is no issue there. It does take time to see a population increase *but* if there is predation (mysids, amphipods, fish, etc) or a high flow situation, it'll take much longer or may not take at all.

I highly suggest a fuge for such purposes, and to feed the fuge not only a bit of phtyo but also something like rotifers (dead) (or even crushed up flake food) to feed the amphipod and mysids. Both mysids and amphipods will seek the easiest food source and since the copepods are a moving target, a dead feed will be their preferred feed.

 

I have a pepperment shrimp in my fuge. I have some live rock and some cheato in there as well. I added 2,000 copepods to the fuge at night......Will my peppermint shrimp eat all these guys or should they be able to breed just fine?