Growing pods

I just saw this on NJRC, and it sounds like a pretty cool idea I might try it out! Below I cut and paste the first post of the thread:

So after reading this article:

Coral - September/October 2011e decided that were were going to try to culture tigger pods because it made it sound so easy. So I will do this in step to try and make is easier to read.

Step 1. Buy one bottle of Reef Nutrition Tigger pods that just about every LFS carries
Step 2. We had two vases laying around that we decided to use as culturing containers (there are about 2.5 cups apiece of water in them even though they hold roughly a liter) We used two to give ourselves two chances of success.
Step 3. Add the pods, salt water from your tank and let it go
Step 4. We put the containers on the window sill to get plenty of light and did not add a heater or airline tubing.
Step 5. We threw in a few LPS food pellets in the beginning to get some bacteria growing.
Step 6. Let it grow.

So how did we do?
The culture has been going for 7-8 weeks strong and we have not added any more tigger pods. Nikki squirts in a turkey baster full of pods twice a week into our tanks and then adds 3 basters of saltwater from our tanks. The cultures are essentially green now, we did not add any phyto but it sure looks like we did. The corals love it and we are quite happy. You can clearly see the tigger pods of different sizes in the culture so we know we are getting babies. The only adjustments we have made along the way is adding some fresh water when we think the salinity is getting way out of control. These guys can take some extreme temp and salinity swings and we have seen that. I will try and get some pics and keep this updated as it goes along. So far I would call this a huge success though.[/QUOTE]

 

Who knew lol.

Going to put the on-line distributors out of business.

 

Hmm.... I might just try this out for fun.


Thanks for the post.

 

Sme pics would be cool. Deff interested in this!!

 

hmmm, this would be really great if true, whose doing it, should only cost $10 or so. My LFS literally does not sell them, ;( yep i live in that small of town

 

awesome. these are mandarin goby food too, right?

 

Tigriopus californicus is a swimming pod, which makes it harder for mandies to catch them. They do better with benthic/demersal pods such as Tisbe sp.. That's not to say they won't eat them if they can catch them.

Peeps are impressed with "tiggers" because they're easy to see...they're large, red, and swimming, and most fish have no trouble catching them.

JME/JMHO

 

I'm deffinitly going to try this

 

So has anyone tried this yet?

 

we did this......we used a round white pyrex dish to grow ours out. The white dish allowed for easier visualization I didnt use the food to get the bacteria going. We would put a drop of phyto in the bowl to feed the pods every few days. When we would feed we put the phyto in the center of the bowl, the pods would go to the middle to eat. This would make it easy to remove the old molts and clean out the bowl. We would add more saltwater to the bowl to try to keep salinity as stable as possible. Every couple weeks we would dump most of the pods into our tank, leaving some out and starting a new batch again with the ones we left out. It is actually very easy to do and will save a lot of money down the line