This is a sure way of keeping your pods happy with a quality food source. However, pods will also eat detritus, any left over food. It is very important to be mindful of keeping a good source of food for your pods to keep a thriving and healthy population as one starvation is one of the most common reasons why pod populations die off quickly. Make sure to check out our subscriptions to ensure you never run out of food for your pods.
A few ways to increase your number of pods include: manually purchasing more POD YOUR REEF pods and adding them to your refugium, being very thoughtful and mindful of where you are establishing your population by having plenty of surface area or macro algae along with rock rubble that increases more surface area, allowing more space for them to hide and reproduce in a safe spot where they are not being hunted by fish and other specimens in your tank, and dosing phytoplankton per a dosing regimen that works best for your system Thank you for joining us today and letting us share with you how to establish and maintain a happy and healthy pod population.
Josh Avila. Related Blog Posts. Read more. There might be some phytoplankton floating about in the aquarium waters. However, much phyto is trapped in mechanical filters or killed in UV sterilizers. This leaves little phyto for the hungry nauplii. In many cases, it is simply not a sustainable arrangement and the pod population crashes. Copepods are incredibly tough and adaptable.
Even so, they are ravenous little creatures and must have access to rich food sources to thrive and multiply. Die-outs such as these are avoidable with the regular addition of live phytoplankton. What is especially important is that the aquarist adds phyto whenever adding pods to their reef system to control. This is especially so when used for benthic algal blooms.
It might seem rather counter-intuitive to add algae to get rid of algae. But one should remember that there must be a suitable density of nutritious phytoplankton present for pods to successfully complete their life cycles. One of the most unique—and indeed desirable—aspects of AlgaeBarn live copepod products is that they include individuals in every life stage. This presents numerous advantages. For example, these mixed-life stage products contain individuals of various sizes.
Thus, they are immediately useful as food for filter-feeding animals with a broad range of preferred food particle sizes. But the primary advantage of adding pods of various life stages becomes apparent just after seeding or boosting a reef tank. Large pods are great for feeding, but if you aim to seed your tank to build a population, you want pods of all ages.
Products of this kind promote rapid and steady population booms. As they contain individuals in the earliest stages of development, they are best used alongside a live phyto product. Since the advent of copepods and phytoplankton by subscription, it has never been easier to add pods to your reef aquarium. An aquarist might seed a reef tank with pods to add to their clean-up crew.
A subscription for a mix of benthic copepod species e. Isochrysis galbana Phytoplankton. Nannochloropsis Phytoplankton Culture.
Rhodomonas Phytoplankton. Overview of Pod Diversity Copepods provide a near universal benefit to the reef aquarium. They feast on detritus, uneaten feed and pest algae, then convert that biomass into more pods. Excess pods are easy and nutritious feed for fish, corals and inverts alike. Don't overfeed them.
They will consume what they need and no more. Putting more food in the tank will not make them eat more. Test the ammonia in the tank to see if you are feeding too much. If your ammonia readings start to spike, perform a water change to lower the level and cut back on the food. It may take a bit of experimenting, but you should be able to find the right amount of food to periodically introduce to the culturing tank.
If an in-line refugium is being used, little maintenance will be needed. A stand-alone system will need a few water changes once per month or replacing water after harvest will suffice , as long as feeding is not overdone. Some Amphipods, such as the Gammarids, are amazingly tolerant to varying water conditions and tend to thrive in higher nutrient systems.
Harvesting can usually be done by siphoning the critters into a fine mesh fish net. If you are using old filter pads for a growth medium, just remove them from the growth tank and place them in a bucket of tank water, then pour the water through a net. The amphipods and copepods that you collect in the fish net can then be fed to your fish by putting the net in the water and swishing the tiny organisms out. The fish should immediately respond and swim toward the net to consume them.
Copepods and amphipods are often naturally introduced into closed aquarium systems when live sand and or live rock has been added. They will begin to multiply and grow in the tank when the aquarium water temperature is slightly warmer and a food source is available.
Live copepods are also available for purchase online such as AlgaGen ReefPods in a bottled form. If you find that your cultivating is not going as planned, don't worry. It can be hard to determine the exact cause.
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