pod culture question
 

I'm thinking about starting a copepod culture in a 5gal tank, has anyone ever done this using DT's live phytoplankton (i don't want to culture phytoplankton)? If so how much of it do you add?

thanks

Put in enough phyto to strongly tint the water. When it's reduced to a light tint, it's time to add more.

so what type of filter do you plan to use on the 5gal? i imagine with all the phyto in there it might fowl the water fast, i was thinking of doing the same thing.

That's the beauty of using live phyto, it doesn't foul the water and even acts as a filter ;)

Won't the live phyto inside of the culture tank inevitably become contaminated? I mean, in its own culture, the phyto won't have this problem. But, a culture tank is bound to have competitive organisms that will overtake the phyto. I understand that you need to feed phyto to a culture tank, but it sounds like you're suggesting maintaining phyto in the culture tank.

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11168097#post11168097 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by aninjaatemyshoe [/i]
[B]Won't the live phyto inside of the culture tank inevitably become contaminated? I mean, in its own culture, the phyto won't have this problem. But, a culture tank is bound to have competitive organisms that will overtake the phyto. I understand that you need to feed phyto to a culture tank, but it sounds like you're suggesting maintaining phyto in the culture tank. [/B][/QUOTE]

no i was wonder if anyone had a pod culture (continous batch) and fed DT's phyto to the culture....being that the pod culture is less then 5 gals, a small bottle of dt's might be possible to last for two weeks depending the the population of pods


as for the water quality, regular water changes

Yes indeed, I am suggesting maintaining live phyto in the pod culture tank, same goes for rotifers and even larval fish ;) It's what the pods and rots eat, so yes you need to maintain sufficient levels of phyto by constantly adding add fresh live phyto as needed. Culture tanks can become contaminated by unwanted organisms, but that will happen with both live and preserved phytoplankton. IME it happens faster with preserved phyto if your not very meticulous with maintaining your cultures. Live phyto is much less likely to cause problems with culturing pods and rots, and is more forgiving of overdosing or minor neglect of the culture.

So would one want to also add a light to the top of the pod culture in this case?

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11169141#post11169141 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by aninjaatemyshoe [/i]
[B]So would one want to also add a light to the top of the pod culture in this case? [/B][/QUOTE]

That would help.


lechee12,

I grow my own phyto, so not sure how the concentrations would compare to a bottle of DT's. In my case, I find around a liter of phyto culture will last about 5 days for a light pod culture in a 5 gallon container when starting out. As the culture grows and gets denser that figure will get around 2 - 3 liters.

thanks alot bill

I've got a pretty decent culture of copepods, amphipods and some kind of annelid worm going in a 5G bucket... when I moved a few months ago I never put the live sand back into my tank, so I've had a 5G bucket about 1/3 full of sand sitting on the floor for a while. It's got a wad of surprisingly healthy-looking chaeto in it and quite a lot of copepods, some amphipods and some kind of worm breeding very quickly. The worms look like pink bristleworms without the bristles. Not bad considering it has almost nothing maintaining it... no heater, no water movement, no aeration, I put a light on it every couple days for a few hours but even that's just a 13W compact fluorescent clip-on lamp. The water surface is a bit icky (like a layer of oil on top) but it's crawling with copepods, the temp is usually 68-70F. I know you're probably looking for more copepods than that, but they really don't take much :)