Copapod Hatchery Advise

[sothoth]

My wife has a 30 gallon SW tank that's been doing very nicely for about a year. She's thinking of increasing the size of the tank to 70gal and getting a scooter blenny or mandarin goby. I know opinions vary on keeping these species, but both of our experience has been that they'll do well if you do the obvious thing of keeping the copapod population high.

We're setting up a hatchery since our main tank isn't amenable to putting a refugium on it. The hatchery is a 10gal tank with a 10000K bulb, live sand, and lots of macro algae. We have alot of copapods already.

Question 1: Anyone want to share their experiences with raising copapods? Its pretty easy to get them, I'm wondering if we could be doing anything better than we are.

Question 2: What's a good method for getting them out and into the tank? We'll add a mandarin or blenny once we have that down.

Side note: most of my mandarins have taken to eating brine shrimp so I've never really had a problem with needing to breed copapods, but better safe than sorry. I hate killing fish/corals. Any my wife is 10x more paranoid than I am.

Thanks!

 

[Mr.September15]

Newbie Question: What is a copapod?

 

[SkiFletch]

copepods are tiny organisms that live on your live rock and are a mandarin goby's primary food source. They range in size from a spec to larger grains of salt. They look like underwater beetles under a microscope

 

[Dragonscales]

Firstly, if the mandarins are taking frozen brine shrimp then there is a good chance they will take frozen mysis also and should be switched out onto this as brine shrimp are practically inert when it comes to nutrients unless enriched (and even then they aren't a good choice as a staple diet). If they are eating live brine shrimp then you should consider trying to wean them onto frozen mysis (preferably enriched) or switching their diet entirely to pods (most mandarins are notoriously have to wean onto frozen foods).

The problem you may encounter is a shortage of pods with which to feed one mandarin, let alone several, with so small a culture (assuming you can't wean them onto frozen mysis to lower pod requirements). The main thing I would suggest is to upgrade the culture tank significantly. If you are experiencing a significant boom in the pod's numbers with what you are currently doing then I would do the same in the larger culture, why fix something that ain't broke? At most perhaps add a larger amount of live rock and rubble (I'm assuming you have some in the culture tank you have atm).

 

[sothoth]

there is a good chance they will take frozen mysis also and should be switched out onto this as brine shrimp are practically inert when it comes to nutrients unless enriched (and even then they aren't a good choice as a staple diet).

The brine is enriched and I'll try the mysis, I have some in the freezer. We've also bought tigger pods and put them in there, which seems to work fine, but they're pretty expensive. I'd like to put my own hatched pods in the main tank too, to save money. Any suggestions for getting them out of a hatchery and into a main tank?

They're too small to net...
Pour them over a coffee filter?

 

[Dragonscales]

A coffee filter or a fine grade seive should work ok.

Hope it all works out for you

 

[mr.dark-saint]

The 'pods loved being in "Hair Algae" . In my 50 gallon tall with only Atinic Power Compact they were very active. What I did was just pull out a rock and swished it about in the tank until they fell off . But if you're going the way of large or good enough supply I'd go the wayI did with the freshwater set up.

It was a 55 gallon garbage can filled with small chunks of lava rocks which was used as a biological for my small pond. Now I seeded the filter with Freshwater 'pods and let it go. When I turn the power off for about an hour all the 'pods would start to climb the sides of the garbage can in masses. Then I'd just take a net and scoop off a quarter pound or so and kick the pump back on. This can be utilized in a saltwater application by feeding them fish food directly. I suppose if you had a 20 gallon filled with lava rocks or bio-balls with a water pump oxygenating the water you'd be good to go. I got some going in my sump right now .