Culturing Tisbe Copepods

[oh207]

This thread is to document my progress with culturing Tisbe copepods. Its in the DIY section because I'm culturing the copepods myself instead of purchasing. :thrash:

A couple of months ago I purchase a bottle of Tisbe pods. I didn't really have a need for pods since my fuge is always crawling with them. But I had the livestock credit and didn't really need any fish, coral (gasp), or other goods.

I poured 80% of the bottle in my 120g and saved the rest to pour into my 65g. Two days passed, and the remaining 20% was still sitting in the bottle on top of the tank, and I never got around to pouring the remainder into the 65g.

Another few days went by and I attended a LIRA meeting where I won a raffle of Reef Nutrition products, which included Phyto Feast.

I added a few drops of the Phyto Feast into the the tisbe bottle and swirl it around and left it to sit there. Every 2 days or so I would give it a swirl. Fast forward about a month later, and the bottle is crawling with tisbe copepods....way more than was present when the bottle was full.

So I did this for about 1.5 months and then started to read up on how to culture these things.

I had almost everything I needed...
An air pump
Lots of airline tubing
A container to culture the copepods
All I needed was an airline control valve which I picked up a few weeks ago at the last LIRA meeting at Caribbean Blue Aquatics.

I'm using an old dosing container that has 3 chambers, at 1500ml each.
I fill each chamber to 1000ml saltwater at 48ms
Added phyto feast
Split the remaining culture in the bottle into 3 and added a small portion to each section
Turned on air-pump, and dialed down the bubble.

I'm hoping for this setup to be successful, or at least get the same success I had when the bottle was just sitting on top of the tank and growing these tisbe copepods like crazy without any airflow, and oftentimes, little to no phyto.

If I have any success with this setup, I will be trying to grow the copepods with live phyto and compared growth to using Reef Nutrition phyto feast.

I'm getting the live phyto from nuch (MR member), many thanks.

 

[oh207]

Culturing Tisbe Copepods Video

Culturing Tisbe Copepods Video

[YOUTUBE]BWomgMJt5DY[/YOUTUBE]

 

[trinimaddness]

Nice idea. Tagging along to see progress.

 

[Loose tenticle]

...

 

[SweetWasabi]

Following

 

[oh207]

I got a fresh brewed batch of phyto last night and will be topping up the culture tonight. I can already see the copepod culture water is getting clearer (less green). The plan is to take some before/after pictures before dosing the phyto.

I can also see copepods growing. They start off as white-almost clear, and then turn black as they grow.

They are so tiny, I'm having a hard time (near impossible) to capture them on a video.

I see there are some magnifying-zoom lens selling that clips onto the back of a phone.

Has anyone used this, and if so, would it be able to capture these tiny pods?

 

[oh207]

Fresh batch of Phyto on hand.

1st Picture - Copepod culture running low on Phyto in all 3 sections (getting clearer). Compared that to the newly arrived live phyto in the poland spring bottles (much darker green color).

 

[oh207]

Added half a bottle of live Phyto to the first 2 sections and added Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast to the 3rd section. The Phyto Feast is super concentrated so I only added a few drops. You can see the differences in the coloration. The Phyto Feast is a darker-brownish coloration. I also added a couple of drops of Phyto Feast to the algagen tisbe bottle which still has some copepods growing. I figure since I had success in the bottle for the past 2 months I should keep it going.

2nd Picture - Live Phyto added to section 1 & 2, and Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast in section 3 and the bottle.