I'm becoming a pod farmer! Well kinda...

I did this when I had my 30 gal and I ran the same setup. It worked so well and kept my mandarin fat fat fat. I actually had a really great time watching the pod farm and their scurrying. Keep it dark, almost no flow(i used a 5 gal air pump and got a valve to throttle it back), and get a large holed aquarium sponge. The way I transferred them was by a sponge in the DT at night or by thrashing around the cheato and sucking water from the middle of it with a turkey baster. Good luck and post a pic of your creation.

 

I've got several filtration sponges (the kind you see in the backs of overflows or in sumps) that have huge pores and are very course, cause the pods love the breed and crawl around in them. I'll just take one of those sponges and shake it out in the DT at night, and then those pods will be in the main tank.

I may pick up another wad of chaeto for it too.

I know I have at least 3 kinds of pods in that thing now. The small white specks that are tiny that you get with DT's. As well as about 20 or so of the larger (around 3mm long) ones with shiny eyes/heads that swim around like nuts that I grabbed from our overflow box today (replacing the overflow box tomorrow with a better fancy one), some other smaller tank pods from Bo's tank, and there are at least 3 amphipods in there running around too.

And as far as water and params, like I said I'll be doing 2 gallon water changes every week using display tank water as the change water That along with the chaeto should keep the tank semi clean. Hopefully. Also there are a few small rocks in there, so if need be they'll function as live rock. But those sponges will have bacteria on them to help with the nitrogen process as well, so I'm not worried.

 

I cant wait to see this in action.

 

Well I have pictures on the camera. But I'm a lazy butt. So you'll have to wait until tomorrow I suppose.

Anyways, I used one of those super small C-clamps to restrict the air in the airline tubing for the air stone. So it's pumping out at about half power, which is how I like it I suppose. It's not fully on, but not fully off. So yeah.

AND the bigger shiny scooting around pods are zipping around everywhere. And I'm already starting to see some of the small white DT's pods on the glass and going into the sponges, and they've only been in there for about 3 days. I'm feeling pretty darn good about this

 

Well my pics have been delayed. But they should come soon now, I promise Because I'm finally done adding pods and sponges to my farm I've also overcome some heat and salinity issues, meaning there's about 7 gallons in the system now instead of the original 5. Also, we installed a new overflow into our 46, so that project is done. Other delays have included work, especially today where I made my first ever legit 911 call as I was helping a guy who had an alcoholic seizure in front of me walking to work today.

Pics to come soon I turned the airstone up a bit because I'm needing it to get flow to every corner of the tank to even out the tank temp. Other than more pods and sponges, nothing's changed in the tank. Except I can definitely tell the swimming around bigger pods are breeding I crunched up some flake food in there and sprinkled it into the tank. An hour later the little guys were running around with it like ants with break crumbs at a picnic. I swear these guys are just like an ant farm, except way cooler. Pod farms are better than ant farms IMO

 

killer! cant wait!

 

what temperature do you keep the pod tank at?

 

Sorry it took so long to get these...it's just the looks and face of my pod farm kept changing and changing and changing and I waited until it settled down (or i settled down) before posting pics of the finished product I finally stopped adding sponges and pods and it's how I like it.

As I said before, it's a 10 gallon tank with about seven gallons of water, a heater keeping it at about 78.5 degrees, and an airstone running at about half power. Right now it has 4-5 different types of pods. Your standard white speck copepods, your typical rollie pollie amphipods, the larger swimmy aroundy pods, and some bug looking pod things I got from my mantis tank. And maybe some other kind, because a shipment of them we got said it had 3 types of pods, amphipods, copepods, and something I didn't see. Frankly all I saw were amphipods in that shipment, but I trusted that there were more haha.

Well here it is! All pod types have been breeding. At least half of the amphipods are mating in the thing...kinda gross to think about. And the number of white specks scooting around on the glass has definitely increased alot, as well as the swimmy ones. Here are the pics:








The white specs in this one are copepods. I tried to get a closer picture but that's the best our macro setting would allow.



ENJOY I've already shaken out at least 3 sponges in the past week into the display tank, with amphipods and little white things flying everywhere. I made the mistake of shaking out a smaller sponge in the day time. My mom and I had fun encouraging the amphipods to flee to the rocks. About 3/4 of them made it too, but about 5 or so became fish food So now the main tank is definitely seeded, and our LFS is getting us two more jars of DT's pods. One for the display, one for the farm, and when we get those in I'll feel more than comfortable with introducing a mandarin I'll be updating our reef tank's thread as well tonight

 

wow thats a lot of work for one fish. mandarins are beautiful though...really cool pod tank though!

 

Thanks for the update Jwin.. Cannot wait to see the mandarin. Also how is "Mom" doing, I miss her posts around here. Its almost football season, I need my dose of banter from the Auburn crowd ;D